Warnings: None

Children of Misfortune

"April Fool's Day"

It was April 1, 1991, and Kurama stared at the plastic bag in my hand with one brow raised alarmingly high. I shoved the bag into my shoe locker and out of sight, trying to play it off as nothing suspicious whatsoever, nope, nothing to see here—but it was too late. Kurama had caught sight of the bag's colorful contents, contents most definitely not allowed on school grounds, and his curiosity had been piqued. He leaned against the locker next to mine and crossed his arms over his chest, staring while I pretended to act casual. Around us, other students exchange their outdoor shoes for their indoors slippers before the start of the school day.

"What do you have there?" he said, voice silken amidst the chatter of the other students.

"Oh. Um." I tucked my hair behind my ears, trying not to look totally guilty. "Nothing special."

"Then why are you being so secretive?"

"No reason."

"Kei," he said.

Kurama didn't need to use logic to draw out the truth. He just stared, eyes intense and bold, until I caved under the pressure of his silence with a sigh. "OK, fine," I said. "For your information, I'm playing an absolutely hilarious April Fool's Day joke on Yusuke."

I opened my locker and parted the plastic bag, shielding it from other students with my body. Kurama leaned toward my locker to take a closer look. His brow shot up even higher.

"You're playing a joke with those?" he said.

"Yes."

Now his brow threatened to merge with his hairline. "Forgive me if I'm being obtuse, but where in this situation, precisely, does the humor lie?"

"It lies in the unexpected." I shut my locker and cupped my hand around my mouth to whisper, "Come with me after school if you want to know more."

His eyes gleamed, barest bits of gold flecking around his pupil. "Color me intrigued," Kurama said, and after school I found him waiting for me by the front gate.

Atsuko answered the door after only the first knock, unusually alert despite the bottle of beer hanging loosely from her fingertips. "Hey, Keiko," she said, words only barely slurring. "Yusuke isn't home right now."

"Good." I held up my bag and shook it. "I was hoping he wouldn't be."

Her eyes lit up in recognition when I opened the top of the sack and showed her what lay within. She released a slow whistle, impressed, and took a swig of beer.

"On the ceiling or in drawers this time?" she asked.

"I'm thinking closet ceiling, actually," I confessed. "New twist on an old favorite."

She cracked a lopsided grin. "Good call. He hardly ever goes in his closet. Too busy leaving his crap in piles on the floor, natch." Atsuko's eyes flicked over my shoulder. "Who's your friend?"

Kurama, behind me, smiled his most winning smile. I stepped back and gestured at him. "Oh! Atsuko, this is—um?"

I faltered at the name. Kurama's smile faltered a little, both of us stumbling over his names since Atsuko was technically in-the-know about the supernatural—but Atsuko spared us the agony of deciding on Kurama vs. Shuichi. Her eyes scanned Kurama top to bottom before she cracked a languid smile.

"Red hair, green eyes, bad with introductions. You're the one with two names, right?" At Kurama's surprised expression she said, "Yeah, my son's mentioned you a few times." She tipped him a gummy, drunken wink. "Don't worry. I don't go to PTA meetings. Your secret's safe with me, Shuichi."

He looked both relieved and alarmed, somehow, a veritable feat of facial expression. "Thank you for your discretion," he said, and I think he wanted to change the subject because he nodded at my hands and the bag within them. "Now, about that?"

Atsuko ushered us indoors, where I led the way to Yusuke's bedroom. True to her word we found said bedroom buried under piles of clothes and trash, the room of a teenage boy to its very core. I picked my way over the debris toward the closet door, snagging his desk chair on the way. Kurama watched from his spot by the bedroom door as I kicked clothes out of the way to open the closet and drag the chair inside.

"What are you doing?" he said as I stood on the chair.

I tossed a grin over my shoulder. "I am gluing these—" (I pulled an object out of my bag) "—to Yusuke's ceiling."

Kurama eyed the copy of Crash Bandicoot in my hand with lighthearted confusion. He looked between it and the bag hanging from my elbow, which contained an additional eight copies of Crash Bandicoot, as though he'd just been asked the most complicated riddle in the world. He appeared to struggle with words before saying "Why?" in a tone that sounded absolutely, adorably helpless.

I shrugged, uncapping the bottle of glue I'd brought with us. "No reason." I scowled. "Though it's cost me at least a month's worth of my allowance."

Kurama was not convinced. "I thought you said this was for April Fool's Day."

"That's… kind of just an excuse, really? Yusuke and I prank each other all the time." I sighed, rolling my eyes as I coated one of the game boxes in glue. "Yusuke started our little prank war a long time ago."

Somehow Atsuko heard this claim from all the way in the living room. "That's not what he says!" she called.

"Of course that's not what he says!" I returned. "He's an asshole!"

Atsuko replied, "Truth!"

The two of us cackled in unison. Kurama looked between the bedroom door and me in mystified turns. Eventually I settled down, sticking a copy of the video game to Yusuke's ceiling and pressing it tight so the glue would set.

"Anyway," I said. "Despite what he would have you believe, he definitely started this. Every day in elementary school Yusuke stole my hardboiled eggs, so I started hiding pencil erasers in his gym shoes, and it just escalated from there. Now we leave random crap in random places in each other's rooms and wait for each other to notice." I snickered into my hand. "Once he didn't find the Barbie magazine I'd hidden in his pillowcase for three months, which makes me wonder how often he does laundry, but anyway." I pointed at the game on the ceiling. "He probably won't notice these for ages."

Kurama's smile looked more polite than truly humored. "I'm sorry, Kei, but I'm afraid I don't quite understand. What is the point in playing this prank if Yusuke doesn't notice what you've done?" He coughed into a fist, embarrassed. "I was under the impression April Fool's is a time-sensitive event."

"I mean. It technically is?" I scratched the back of my neck, awkward all of a sudden. "But I like to think of April Fool's Day as a state of mind as opposed to a single day of the year." It was a joke, mostly, and lucky for me Kurama took it as such. I beamed when he laughed, coating another copy of the game with glue. "Admittedly, Yusuke might not notice the games on April Fool's Day itself, but he'll sure as hell notice me smirking and making Crash Bandicoot puns for no reason over the next few weeks—and he knows we well enough to know that when I make incessant puns, I'm up to something." I couldn't help but throw back my head and perform an evil laugh, fingers crooked into claws, face contorted into a mask of hideous merriment. "He'll probably turn his room upside down for weeks looking for these bad boys, once he catches on! It's gonna be great!"

"I see." Kurama laughed again, finally catching on. "Thank you for explaining." He paused, seemingly weighing his words before admitting, "I'm afraid demons aren't the pranking kind."

"Oh?" I said.

"Pranks between demons can become lethal, and quickly." A resigned shrug. "Simple shows of humor like this are rare."

I blanched at his casual admission of violence. "Remind me not to get in a prank war with you, huh?"

"Noted," he said—and his smile turned the lightest shade of wicked. "Especially if it will spare me your puns."

I pretended to be offended with a dramatic gasp, wrist thrown across my forehead as if I meant to faint. "How dare you?! My puns are magnificent!"

Kurama laughed, offering to help me glue all nine copies of Crash Bandicoot to the ceiling in apology. I handed him the glue with a flourish, but I had to wonder if he truly understood the urge to prank someone else in a harmless fashion. Kurama, in many ways, was still learning to be human. Hopefully this April Fool's taught him a little something he hadn't known before—even if it involved attaching a fuck-ton of video games to the top of someone else's closet for no particular reason whatsoever.

Four months later my phone rang at about 2 AM, waking me from a very good dream involving champagne, expensive cheese, and the entire cast of Hamilton. I groped for the handset with a muttered curse and lifted it to my ear, blearily muttering "Who the hell is this?" into the receiver.

"You wanna fucking tell me why there's no less than eight copies of Crash-goddamn-Bandicoot glued to the ceiling of my closet, Grandma?"

"Nine copies, actually." I grinned into my pillow at the sound of his indignant squawk. "Happy belated April Fool's, Yusuke."

"Yeah, you too," he grumbled. "Sweet dreams, old lady—though be careful to cherish those dreams while they last."

"Hmm?"

"Those dreams might be your… Final Fantasy."

I sat bolt upright in bed. I knew that tone. I knew that sneaky, conniving tone and I wasn't so sleepy that I didn't recognize a video game pun when one hit me in the face at 2 AM on a school night. "Goddammit, Yusuke, where the fuck did you hide it?" I whisper-screamed into the phone.

"What, and spoil the suspense?" Yusuke cackled like the devil he very much was. "Not a chance! Happy hunting, Grandma!"

He hung up before I could wring the truth of out him, and with an irate sigh I slid out of bed and began to search. The April Fool's joke was on me, it turned out—but I'd pay Yusuke back for it, all in good time.

I had at least seven copies of Spyro the Dragon stashed in my closet, after all.

Yusuke wouldn't know what hit 'em, and it wouldn't take till next April Fool's Day for me to get my revenge, that's for freaking certain.

NOTES

Quick April Fool's one-shot I wrote in about 30 minutes. I definitely think Yusuke and NQK have an ongoing (and very petty/random) practical joke war going on that it will last (and has lasted) for years. The specific joke in this chapter was inspired by a Tumblr post regarding intimacy in friendships, and how it can manifest as pranks. The games mentioned are a little anachronistic for 1991, but oh well. Thanks for reading!