The Curse of the Cat

176. Fire

All he had to tell him about the outside world were sounds.

A deafening, inescapable silence.

The even patter of rain or hail that saw him clawing walls.

Howling winds that had him shuddering in a corner.

Voices too far away to discern, but still he yearned…

He didn't know how long it had been. His sparse comforts were dwindling fast and only the meals came, like clockwork.

He'd stopped counting them. Stopped keeping track of the days. Stopped trying to fill the days with senseless things. Stopped trying to remember why he needed to endure this, because only the ambient silence replied.

Sometimes, he couldn't even hear his own breathing in it. But even if he had another attack, what could he do? His inhalers were run dry. He'd used too much, perhaps, or perhaps a month had gone by.

The clock was ticking, now, and he was sure there was a fire smouldering somewhere as well, waiting to take him.

Already, he was too sensitive. His skin prickled at the slightest change in temperature. His ears screamed at the slightest change to sound. His mind screamed at the blackness of it all: at the tedium, at the little prison that closed in on its sides.

He'd thought it spacious, for a little. And maybe it would have been a generous prison if it wasn't to be his forever home.

If only he could claw the walls down.

If only he wasn't just a little bit human still.

177. Lies

He wasn't sure when he started not being so human. He always was, he supposed. Maybe, he'd finally stopped listening. Maybe, he no longer had anyone to tell him.

He wasn't sure when he'd first slipped or ripped those beads off. He wasn't sure when that made the tightness in his chest and the ringing in his ears ease. He wasn't sure when he drowned in the scent of death and shivered in the chill it left behind and searched for a burrow to hide behind.

He wasn't sure when the banging of the wind sound like whips and gallows, and when blankets were flimsy things but matches, matches were warmth and they lit up gloriously…

And he wasn't sure when burning along with artefacts that weren't so comfortable after all didn't seem like a bad thing, whether it was hellfire or the match girl's blaze.

178. Stormy

It somehow seemed terribly unfitting that there was a storm raging outside.

As far as storms went, it was hardly a bad one; rain was pouring down in sheets but their raincoats kept them dry. There was no thunder cracks, no whips of lightning – only the wind howled and tossed the water like a child in the sand. It was that wind that made umbrellas useless; Risshun had attempted one but was forced to abandon it at the foyer of the main house.

Fuyuno had not borne her notice, simply continuing on through nature's reproach. It was only when he stopped in front of the Cat's prison that he turned to the Sheep beside him.

She looked once, then understood. 'You decided.' A pause. 'Why now?'

'Holding the key forever is a chore, too,' he replied. 'After all, I can't just let him starve. He has to live. Which means I have to remember to order meals to be taken to him. To order new clothes every now and then. Blankets. Occasionally do maintenance on the house, and him.'

'His health,' she repeated. 'And you erased the rat's memories. His health. But it didn't work.'

'Out of sight isn't out of mind,' the Head sighed. 'Why did the others start this?'

'Why didn't you change it?' Risshun replied.

'You're the sheep,' Fuyuno snapped. He'd always irritated quickly, even when he wallowed in his own powerlessness.

'Sheep follow the herd,' the sheep of the zodiac agreed. 'But you're the one who's indecisive and it's the flock who suffers for that.'

'You're not supposed to fight.' But he did nothing about it. 'They're not all supposed to fight.'

Except they did. One committed suicide. One attempted it and used that as an excuse to blow the coup, so to speak. One pair he'd tried to separate and he'd failed three times over, apparently. And that's not counting everything in between, how he'd brought scrutiny to a clan that had escaped notice for hundreds of years while worse atrocities had occurred…

And now look at him, taking a battle he'd technically won and spurning its reward. But what reward was it? The moment that boy walked into the cage by himself, he'd lost. Choice made the difference. Pride made the difference. And the twelve zodiac animals had been present.

And then again, when he'd tried to at least make the rest of the world forget, one by one, he'd failed. The world was too big for him to control. It always had been.

It always had been for him, the frail and failed god.

179. Terrible

Outside was cold and rainy and windy.

The handle, bizarrely, was warm. Fuyuno hissed when he touched it. Risshun gave him an odd look, then even odder when he handed the keys back to her.

He paused a moment, before the threshold, then pushed open the door.

There was a figure curled up on the floor. That was all he could tell through the smoke that ceased its chance to blow out of the room.

Risshun drew in a sharp breath, then bolted. He heard her voice calling, from far away. 'Fire! Fire!'

He'd never heard her be so loud before.

And the figure on the floor, it shifted between human and monster: human and cat and beast, rather. Its eyes, blue and yellow, rolled right passed him. Instead, they looked, glassy eyed, only at the flames.

Where the juzu beads? Already ash, possibly.

Where was the family member he'd come to save? Already gone, possibly.

But no. It was when firefighters and the ambulance arrived and dragged him away to give him an oxygen mask that the mass on the floor shifted.

Shifted… and screamed as the fires began to choke. He couldn't see at all, now. Only yellow and red and black. The rain began to drown even the smoke.

Their family came out, bit by bit, to watch. And, in the end, there was only rubble and a tightly wrapped cat.

180. Decay

There'd be too many questions, even if this hadn't been something they could keep confined.

They had a private ward. Private doctors who were related closely enough to the Sohma curse that they didn't bat an eye at treating a patient who fought unseen demons and couldn't settle into a form.

Fuyuno watched the proceedings with an impassive face. Behind his eyes though, a storm churned. It wasn't until the children turned out that things changed. It wasn't until then that the storm calmed a little. It wasn't until someone had the sense to call his mother, as well, and his mother ignored the blindly swiping claws and the smell that was starting to seep through smoke and ash and embraced the thrashing form.

And then there was a pale, dark cat curled into the crook of Kimura Tomoko's arms, and more than a few people murmured a prayer of thanks.

His eyes were still yellow though, Fuyuno noted. Yellow and glass.

There was more than one way to live.

There was more than one way to break beyond repair, even if there was only one way to die.

And maybe this… this is the answer they can all accept. Maybe guilt is a more bearable taste than a dangling carrot ever-obscuring his vision.