My Fault
Chapter 29
Decisions

a note from the author: Thank you so much to Anonymous Human for the helpful and encouraging review, and for the messages we exchanged which gave me a lot of ideas for this story.

Kyo:

The next day, Yuki and I head towards the museum. Neither of us mentions it, but we both know the money from Ayame and the boat won't last us forever, and at this rate not even until the end of the month. But we pay admission, because right now, this seems the best place to go.

The museum is huge but quiet. The halls are filled with people, but when they talk, their voices are worn-out breezes. I remember school, writing exams and taking notes, and I think how odd it is to miss that. I think of how it felt to know, that after class was over, Arisa and I would talk to each other and complain about how much work we had to do, and it felt good, to talk to someone like that. The important things under the surface, sometimes rising up in the way she'd smile a bit too sadly, or she'd touch my hand and I wouldn't want to let go. The feeling that we had a lot to talk about, but didn't have to say those things now. There was still time.

I've zoned out in front of a suit made of sword-scarred leather scales, my eyes running over the pattern, over and over without seeing it. I walk down the hall, seeing the different swords and helmets, some battered and others shiny and unused. I wonder how it would have felt to wear that, the cold weight pressing around your body to keep the blades away. I wonder how Eri felt, being the only one on the battlefield without these defences. I wonder which blade finally brought him down, and whether he was angry, or sad, or grateful, or just tired when it happened.

Yuki taps my shoulder and I almost jump. I remember when I would have yelled at him for something like that, a wave of fire flaring over my emotions, but instead I say, "What?"

He points down an adjoining hallway, says, "Did you see over there?"

I shake my head and walk towards the reason we came here.

As I enter the hall, a tapestry of a kappa glowers at me with yellow eyes, and some sort of wolf-creature roars at a painted sky. Behind glass, a woodblock print of a nekomata. Large and orange, sharp eyes staring out from the dark space around it. Two tails twist behind the figure and I take a moment to think what that could mean - two forms? Two beings in one body? I push away the frail attempt at symbolism - probably someone just had a two-tailed cat and freaked out about it.

The next print depicts another nekomata, lying on its side in grass, a sacred arrow piercing its skull.

None of this changes the fact that these look nothing at all like my true form. I search frantically in the ink for some of the distortion, the long heavy arms, the huge claws and crooked spine, but these nekomata have orange fur, not green-tinted, leathery skin. These figures are huge for cats, but nowhere near the size of a person, much less actually bigger than people. No violet eyes, and no sign that they ever used to be anything but a cat, demonic or otherwise.

Something hurts in my chest, and I'm sure I can feel my skin stretching, my bones morphing. I run my tongue over my teeth. Smooth. I touch my face. I'm still me. My hand reaches for the single juzu bead around my neck, traces the familiar texture of the wood. I don't look down at the dye, the blood-dye.

Okay. No matter how ridiculous the nekomata sounds, I can't dismiss it as a myth. Not when I know so much weirder stuff is true. When I am one of those weirder things.

I find the plaques beside the artwork and begin to read.

-/-/-

Yuki finds me in front of the Hokusai exhibit, my gaze slipping up and down the waves of blue paint.

"I didn't know you like art," says Yuki.

"Everyone likes art," I say.

He doesn't argue with me, and this reminds me, again, how far I am from the life I'm used to.

At night, we eat cheap soba in our hotel room. He asks me what I thought of the exhibit, and I look into my noodles and say, "It gave me a lot to think about."

He leaves it at that, and after we throw away the empty styrofoam bowls, he goes to type an email to his brother and I stand on the balcony and look at the yellow squares of windows below me.

The words from the museum rattle through my head. Myths of destruction caused by the nekomata, firestarting and curses. A strange connection to the dead.

I'd say possession by an almost-zodiac spirit qualifies as strange.

Maybe some of the nekomata did look like me, just a little, the distorted proportions that let them walk on their hind legs. Sometimes the tails of cats were cut off, I read, to prevent them splitting in two, making the cat a nekomata. That's all they started out as. Just cats. The same as the ones that follow me in the streets, press their heads against my hand and purr.

Even telling Arisa about that form, harmless and small, I felt like my heart would stop. The only way I could keep talking was because I knew if I didn't say anything, it would be worse.

I don't know that this time. I don't know if I leave her alone, stay out of her life, if that would be better for her. But I owe her answers. I know that much.

I think of Tohru's face, her eyes wide, her skin pale as I pushed her away. The sick feeling all through my body as I saw the damage I'd done, her shirt torn, her neck and shoulder bleeding. There was no sound outside, but the inside of my head was all percussion.

But she stayed. What… what does that mean?

One thing that's the same, between the myth and me - the nekomata's a vengeance spirit. It destroys whatever's around it.

But she stayed.

I know most people wouldn't.

I don't blame them. Her. It was… it was her choice, right? You can't make someone live for you. But it throws everything you know out of balance, when someone says, "I love you little one," "Just wear your beads, everything will be fine," "You're safe now," "Everything will be fine," "I love you." Maybe she did. Maybe there's a limit to how much you can love someone, and what it took to live with me was just too much.

I don't blame her.

Tohru stayed. I repeat it to myself, over and over, as my hands grip the cold metal of the banister. I breathe the air. It tastes like night. Tohru stayed. Each time, the words sound foreign, unexpected, a surprise. A dream. No, not a dream. Real. The type of real you can only think about in short bursts before you get overwhelmed, like when you read about the size of the solar system, or in the newspaper about people running back into burning buildings to save a stranger. The type of thing that you know is true, but that flips all your thoughts upside down because it's so outside what you believe about how the world works.

She stayed.

Even knowing what I am, or who, I have a friend. And Yuki, Kagura, Shishou… they're here. Not all here at this moment, but… they don't hate me.

Shishou would want me to tell her.

Maybe she won't hate me. I look down at the yellow boxes, each of which holds someone, going about their separate evenings behind the bright pane of light. And even if she does, I owe her the truth.

I listen to the sound of the wind and try to convince myself I'm doing the right thing.

-/-/-

The sudden silence snaps at me, and I realize Yuki's stopped typing. I turn back to see him walking towards me. "So you and Ayame are emailing now?" I say.

"Yes. I... kind of felt I owed him," Yuki says softly.

"I'm going to talk to Arisa soon." The words come out in a rush. "I mean, she's the reason I came here. It's stupid of me to keep putting it off."

He's quiet for a long time. I breath the dark air in and out. He says, "You think about her a lot, don't know?"

"Yeah. Like you think about Tohru, I guess."

Another long pause. Then: "She emailed me today."

"Tohru? What'd she say?"

"She's coming here. She and Hana-san."

"You told her where we were going?"

"No, but... she must have known. She's pretty perceptive, and... where else would we go?"

It's a good point.

I say, "What did you tell her?"

"I didn't answer yet. I think I need to sleep before I decide."

I nod, though I'm not sure what he has to decide. It all seems pretty simple to me, but trust the prince to overanalyze everything.

Later that night, I lie down and feel the blank buzz of sleep start to fill my head. My eyes roam the insides of their lids as they follow imaginary shadows. The shapes of darkness shift like sand dunes.

The dark shapes gather, form legs and a head, with two emptinesses that shine like eyes.

Hey, nekomata, I think at it. Or whatever you are.

The figure turns to me. In its mouth are two rows of emptiness sharpened into teeth. Its shadow-spine curves, a taut branch ready to spring. I wait for the shape to cover me, close around and swallow me. I don't look away.

But the pounce never comes.

The nekomata waits. And I walk. My dream-legs are heavy and my skin is cold.

I don't try to run. I don't strike first. I concentrate on my legs, and make them move.

The nekomata closes its eyes as I approach. When it opens them, slowly, its eyes are not blank. They are brown-orange and filled with light, intricate and delicate in that way only eyes are. Human eyes. I look at them for a long time, listening to the nekomata breathe, before I realize they're my eyes.

I jolt myself awake to darkness