The Curse of the Cat

181. Dramatic

Luckily, the fire didn't damage the outside. Or unluckily, as it was. The rest of the Sohma family didn't know what had happened: only a select few.

And, really, if he'd thought to control the information a little better, Koji and Teruo wouldn't have known either. But he'd slipped up there. They knew. And those friends of theirs and there wasn't anything he was going to do. Let them have that. He'd battled once and failed, after all. He simply couldn't bring himself to battle again.

It burned. His hands had blisters too: the ultimate irony. And that, ultimately, stumped him. Caging the cat was normal. It was what they'd done for years, in different ways. Living in the compound was the norm. And yet it had spiralled so quickly out of control.

Something had fallen apart somewhere, and he didn't even know where that was. And now he was disappointed in himself. His family was disappointed in him… except the zodiac members, of course. Except the ones who kicked at their cages wanting freedom.

Twelve people. Or, rather thirteen. And he was failing utterly at conforming to the tale his ancestors had told.

182. Panic

'People can't be alone.'

She was a previous head. So old she'd seen another generation of zodiac members come and go, and yet she'd never stepped in. She'd let things run their course and a mix of pride and fear had kept the latter ones from asking for help.

Between them, one was dead: the previous god. And another had retired to a quiet life on their mountain property.

But now he was stuck. Now he could only bury this, like he'd buried two Zodiac members already, and what did that leave?

'People can't be alone,' he repeated.

What was all he'd given her, and then he'd been shoed out. Old and frail and honouring him with words that barely meant a thing…

Except they were all alone, weren't they? And there was nothing he could, or should, do about that.

183. With You

Even if the other zodiac members could be happy, even if they didn't have the skeletons of their family to worry about as well as the curse, the young god-head would always be alone.

In their family records, there wasn't a single god who'd married, who'd born children. Not the female ones. Not the males.

They were too weak. Too frail. Died too quickly.

Weak in body. Weak in mind as well.

And with each generation of Zodiac members, the skeletons twisted even more.

So who was going to stay with a dying god?

184. Killing

One thing the god had no say about was death. Not him, playing the act of a god in this dead banquet of theirs. Not the true god, who didn't or couldn't listen to all their prayers to live just a little bit longer.

They didn't truly live, in the end. And the bitterness didn't allow anyone else to live, even if there was no curse.

Or, perhaps, it was just the nature of their curse.

But he couldn't choose when he died, and for all of them, the zodiac members living as long as they can was the most advantageous. Meant they might skip an extra generation. Meant other parents could breathe easily while the old generation were still around, knowing there was a slim chance of that last spot being filled, of their being the rare fourteen all at once, and knowing there was an impossible chance of anything else being born.

That had happened too, in the scrolls. More than once entire generations had been culled… and for what? For new beasts to be born without days, months, years… and for everyone else to have to deal with the bloodbath.

185. Jump

Out of sight, out of mind, perhaps.

If he told the zodiac members – those in the compound, anyway, that they were suddenly free to go, what would they do? Where would they go?

Someone might have found it amusing, too. Tell them they had five minutes to leave and not to come crawling back if they failed. How many would leave? How many would stay, seeing the trap for what it was? How many would come crawling back and find themselves tied down forevermore? How many just wouldn't? Would stumble upon some good fortune or some stubbornness and never turn back?

Too bad no-one was going to offer that to him? He had only himself to answer to, on that one. And if he wasn't so afraid of dying, he might have just stepped off a building and gone splat on the pavement like Shokun years before, and then it wouldn't be him struggling to hold up the ripple effects thereof.

But he couldn't blame Shokun, could he. For Chiaki, yes. For Koichi… probably not. The cat was always going to get caged. The cat was always going to rebel. The cat was always going to be too broken to rebel properly… but that was the only way to ensure the cat would come back at all.