The Curse of the Cat

106. Believable

'Can you tell me more about your family?' Zoe asked.

Koichi stopped walking suddenly.

'I mean, the Sohmas, the Zodiac members,' the blonde was quick to clarify.

'Why do you want to know?' Koichi asked.

'Well…' Zoe paused for a moment, considering her words. 'I'm… it's not just curiosity, but I feel like I'm misjudging them somehow.'

She came up beside the other, and they both started walking again. 'Well…' Koichi shrugged; he couldn't say he understood since those people – or most of them – weren't particularly important to him except in relation to the curse. The Sohma family spread wide after all, and he and his mother had fallen out of even the financial influence. 'You probably know Chiaki –'

Zoe blinked. 'Chiaki, as in the one from our class.'

Kouichi nodded.

'She's a member of the Zodiac?' Truthfully, she hadn't seen that one coming at all. 'But she's – she's wild, and –'

Zoe clammed up when Koichi looked at her, almost reprimanding. 'She's not wild,' he said quietly. 'She lives apart from the main family, the same as my mother and I do. She's just…estranged, I suppose.'

'But –' The blonde was still grappling with the idea. 'I know she and I never get along, but you guys never talk to each other. I don't really know about you – ' And she was ashamed to admit she really didn't, 'but Chiaki goes out of her way to ignore you.'

'We don't get along,' was the explanation.

'Because you're the Cat?' That was said in some bitterness.

'…why do you say that so bitterly?'

'Because you're not.' Zoe frowned. 'Something must come from the end of it.'

107. Repeat

'My mother has a theory about that actually,' Koichi said, half smiling.

'Oh?' Zoe was caught off guard. It was rare to see Koichi smiling as though he meant it, and she was starting to see the difference between the genuine happiness and the small smile designed to keep others content.

'Yeah. She says I've found the best friends in the world, because they can look past the monster and see the human inside.'

She opened her mouth, and closed it again. The words: "don't call yourself a monster" got caught in her throat, and she realised that her heart knew, even if her mind refused to believe, that the true form of a cat would always be defined as a monster. Whether fair or not, whether that image had been deserved or the innocent had been forced to suffer, a monster would always be a thing of nightmares and horror. And every person had that sort of monster in them; the Cat's curse was just the most pronounced.

'Millennia of envy,' Koichi said suddenly, and Zoe realised he had fallen behind. 'Accumulated hatred, anger – towards others…and also oneself. Because Terou's right you know.'

'Teruo –'

'The Cow.' Koichi hurried on as if only unconsciously recognising the interruption. The smile took on an image of pain as he continued: 'he calls me a masochist a lot; whether I obey the summons or not it seems like some God is trying to punish me for trying to belong –' He touched his face, and Zoe noted again how odd it was for him to wear a mask when he wasn't sick. It was though, in his case particularly, better to err on the side of caution; there seemed to be a flu virus wandering around and causing mayhem.

'Why are you talking like this?' Zoe interrupted, staring at the back of the other's head.

The other stopped talking. 'I don't know,' he said finally, his voice sounding more controlled…and more usual.

'You should do it more often.' Maybe she could have smiled as well, if he hadn't sounded so hurt before. If they'd been talking about first crushes or embarrassing moments, then that would be a different matter, but it didn't seem fitting when someone was putting their pain on the card table…even if it was still somehow restrained. 'You know Koichi, you don't need to hide from us. It hasn't been long, I know, but I plan to be friends till the end and so do the others.'

'Why?' Koichi asked.

'Err…' Zoe fished around for a way to describe the feeling. The same thing –or similar, rather – that she had felt with Takuya: a sense of teasing, like a little brother. And Tommy: a maternal, protective feeling. And JP, sort of the older brother. And Koji, who she'd laugh at because he was just so stiff at times but protective all the same. Another brother. 'Love at first sight?'

Koichi stopped walking again and stared at her so incredulously that Zoe couldn't help but blush. 'Uh, I mean – ' She waved her hands. 'Not love love, but…I guess family-sort – hey, stop laughing!'

Sadly, he had stopped by the time she realised that his laughter – like that anyway: bubbly, free – was something she had never heard before.

'I'm stealing a lot of your firsts,' she said quietly, and refused to repeat it when the other caught only the murmurs of her speech and missed the words.

108. Addictive

'JP.' His mother was calling from the kitchen. 'I have a basket here. Could you take it to your grandmother for me?'

'Sure Mum,' JP yelled back, zipping up his overalls (there was no need to be spick and span at home after all) and pulling down the sleeves. 'Be right there.'

'And don't eat all the chocolate this time.' She sounded exasperated. 'Really, it's not healthy, no matter how many endorphins they produce.'

'Diabetes, heart attacks, I know.' The brunet poked his head in the kitchen.

'And this is why I still find you buying chocolate bars with your allowance?' She put her hands on her hips. 'Do I need to cut it again?'

'I haven't brought any recently,' the other protested, before reconsidering: 'well, that one bar, but that was for the cookies.'

Mrs Shibayama looked closely at her son. 'Are you telling the truth?'

JP bobbed his head up and down.

His mother sighed. 'I hope so,' she said. 'I suppose these new friends of yours have been a good influence.'

'The best,' JP agreed, glad to be away from that scrutiny… even if he was telling the truth and thus should have nothing to fear. 'I still feel like I don't know everything about them, but we just sort of – clicked, you know.'

'Well, I'm certainly not complaining.' His mother handed him the basket and stepped back. 'You know, I think you've trimmed some of that fat away.'

'Mum, I'm not fat.' He pouted. 'Mean, calling your son fat.'

'And this is why you only get carrot sticks for morning tea.' She pushed him out the door. 'And don't tell me you starve; your father gets the same.'

That was, of course, the carrot sticks plus any extra goodies lying around the house he happened to pick up. Less of late though, as he was more occupied with other things.

109. Write

Takuya sighed, looking at his blank paper. It was just his luck that everyone else would be enjoying the good weather and hanging out while he was stuck indoors in detention. As Koji pointed out though, the detention was largely his fault. Nothing at all like the one where the teacher hadn't believed his innocent face.

Still, they'd scored a new friend and a detention was well worth that. This one, whether he deserved it or not, was most certainly not. Because he wasn't getting anywhere staring at the empty page; he almost wished they were back in primary school and the teacher would make them write lines. At least he would know then what he had to write.

But this was an essay: an open-ended one. And he was always hopeless with them.

'The importance of other people,' he read aloud, before smacking his head on the table. 'C'mon brain, you must have something to write about this.

Shame everyone else were playing games over at Tommy's house…

A lightbulb suddenly flashed in his mind.

'Got it!'

A few icy stares greeted him, including that of the teacher supervising.

'Sorry,' Takuya muttered quickly, picking up his pen and beginning to scrawl before he lost his train of thought again.

110. Soulful

Takuya stood nervously in front of the teacher's deck; her straight line of a mouth had tended increasingly towards a frown as she read his paper. He'd managed to finish the three page requirement in good time after all, so even after he'd spent half an hour staring out the window he wouldn't be the last to leave. A surprise, and a pleasant one from his perspective.

Since it had never happened before, the teacher was more suspicious, apparently more so as she continued reading through.

'Mr Kanbara,' she said after the last line.

'Y-Yes ma'am?' Of all the teachers he could have had supervising him, Takuya thought, why do I get the scariest?

'Why do I not get work of this quality in my classes from you?' she asked sternly.

'I – well –' It took a moment for the comment to click. 'It's good?'

'Yes, it's good. Much deeper than the babble you usually spout. What I would like to know is why you seem incapable of producing this sort of quality elsewhere?'

'Well, I was just thinking of my friends,' Takuya confessed. 'We almost always hang out after school and even though we haven't known each other that long, we all just clicked, you know.'

'Hmm.' The teacher hummed thoughtfully, before sighing. 'I suppose it's a lost cause convincing you to appreciate your enemies and your homework in the same way.'

Takuya shuffled his feet, feeling a little ashamed. 'I do try,' he said.

'On your homework perhaps.' She raised an eyebrow, and Takuya had to admit he didn't really try to get along with his enemies. Though Tommy was a good influence in that. 'Do keep this in mind the next time you decide to fight in the courtyard.'