Kimihiro was tending to the bushes, for they were in sore need of trimming, when he saw a spirit—a little purple blob of a thing with three tiny eyes and far too many legs—floating in his yard.

For some reason, this was odd to him, but he couldn't place why. Spirits are everywhere, he saw them constantly. This one wasn't even that bad. Tiny.

He sprayed it with the hose, but nothing happened, as expected, so he just rolled his eyes and went inside for some salt to throw at it.

It was while retrieving the salt from his kitchen (the one place in the shop that truly felt like his) that he realized why this was such an odd occurrence: there were no spirits in the shop, or at least not ones like that.

Was there a hole in the wards?

He quickly got rid of the dumb thing then inspected the perimeter, looking for a hole in the barrier that might have let it slip through.

"Yo."

In his focus Kimihiro hadn't been paying attention to anything else and the sudden presence of Doumeki behind him was enough to startle him.

So Kimihiro got ready to turn around and yell at him, call him rude, call him obnoxious, call him a dumbass, a moron, an idiot, a-

"Ah, is it that late already?" he said instead, not looking up from his work. He didn't have it in him anymore. Their act.

"Broken fence?" asked Doumeki.

"Maybe…" Kimihiro sighed and laid back on the ground. "I wouldn't know what to do if it was."

"Is it just wood?"

Kimihiro looked up at Doumeki's blank, expressionless face. "Wood?"

"The fence."

"No, the, the barrier," Kimihiro clarified. "I caught a spirit in here earlier—just a small one. I'm concerned the wards are degrading."

He stood back up and wiped any dirt off his pants, which had been odd after so long wearing just the silks and linens from Yuuko's closet but it wouldn't do to garden in a kimono, whether it was tied correctly or not.

"I'll have to learn to make another one," he decided, then turned back to Doumeki. "You bought the miso?"

Doumeki nodded and held up the shopping bag, which Kimihiro inspected. "Fine."

/

"I think there's a hole in the shop's barrier," he told Haruka that night. They sat on the porch, as they tended to, as clouds rolled overhead, threatening rain. Or, they would threaten rain were it not a dream. "Just a small one."

"Ah, but a small breach quickly becomes larger," Haruka rightly told him.

Kimihiro tapped a finger on his chin. "Yes, but I can't fix it."

"And why not?"

"I don't do magic," Kimihiro reminded him.

Haruka just laughed. "Here we are in a dream and you tell me you can't do magic? What about the divinations you've performed—quite well, might I add."

Kimihiro blushed a little at the compliment, but didn't let it get the better of him.

"You imbue items with magic as well, and you told me not long ago that you made a very lovely seal for a customer."

Yeah, and I took the wrong price and spent an hour getting the bloodstain from the carpet.

"That's different," he told him. "All I do is see spirits and listen to…" He gestured vaguely, unsure what he was listening to. Intuition? The shop? The universe? Something, surely. "I grant wishes. I can't do… spells. Not active magic of my own."

Could he?

Haruka gave Kimihiro an amused smirk that just put Kimihiro on edge.

"Perhaps you should learn then."

"I don't have that kind of power."

Haruka eyed him oddly, taking a breath from his cigarette before he bothered to reply.

"You do. You always have."

Kimihiro had half a mind to roll his eyes at that.

"That's why you're in this place"

Haruka didn't specify what he meant by 'this place.' The dream? The shop? Why was he in the shop? Now, or in the first place? The time he could remember, or before then? Or did he just mean that's why Kimihiro existed at all.

"I don't understand."

"The reason you're here isn't just a price; you know this."

Kimihiro was struck with Haruka's words. Being here wasn't his price? What does that even mean? He wasn't able to leave the shop; how was that not-

But when he tried to leave the shop, just for a moment, he didn't hit a barrier at all. Nothing prevented him from attempting. He put his hand right through and it simply stopped existing.

Then what was his price? The time within him. To be stuck in place, pinned to a single moment, like a butterfly behind glass. Like Yuuko had been.

He knew though, that this decision would leave him tied to the shop not only in spirit but in location—why? If it isn't just a price… then why?

If Kimihiro didn't exist outside the shop, there had to be a reason. Was it because he wasn't a real person? Just a construction, a replacement for the real thing, a-

No, that wasn't it.

"If it isn't due to my price… then why?"

Haruka smiled again, that bizarre smile that was so unlike Doumeki, and leaned forward, chin in his hand. "I wonder…"

It seemed, some days, the questions he had would only ever be answered with new questions, and lately it felt the more he learned, the less he knew.

Before he could ask for any further information from Haruka, Kimihiro awoke in the bed with the girls on either side of him. He kissed them each on the head and woke up to check on the barrier to see exactly how long he had to learn to fix it.

Not long, it seemed, for there were now two more spirits in the yard.

Kimihiro quickly dismissed the spirits and sat in the yard, staring down exactly where he knew the hole to be now. After inspecting the entire barrier so closely, he had a better idea of what the it and the wards looked and felt like. The shell of his life for the foreseeable, lengthy future.

"It's right there," he mumbled to himself. "I could just patch it with a seal, but that's a bandage, not a fix. And if it's breaking there, is it breaking elsewhere as well?"

Would he have to remake the wards around this entire barrier?

Obnoxious.

Until he could find a way to patch the barrier, he made a seal to put over the hole so no further spirits would enter in the meantime. He had practiced his kanji, previously a mess and entirely unartistic—completely unsuitable for channeling magic for seals and wards.

As he made the seal, he tried to piece together what Haruka was trying to tell him. All Kimihiro wanted was a way to fix the barrier and suddenly Haruka is bringing up his price?

But Haruka… wasn't wrong. Kimihiro's price was the time within him. For time to never touch him, at least for a good long while.

Stuck in time, but… not in place.

Then why, why, why could Kimihiro not leave? He knew this the moment he made his choice and had assumed, had thought it was part of his price, to be stuck. For as long as Kimihiro existed he would be stuck.

Besides that, what did this have to do with magic?

A question to ponder on the side, for he had to figure out what to do about this barrier.

/

"How did Yuuko-san set up the wards around the shop?" he asked Mokona and the girls over lunch, considering Haruka's unhelpfulness. "There's a hole that needs patching and I'm unsure how to do that."

The girls each made a circle with their hands to show Kimihiro.

"Magic!" Maru said.

"Circles!" Moro said.

Mokona bounded up on top of Kimihiro's head to finish the explanation. "Spells!"

Kimihiro rolled his eyes. "I don't know how to use a magic circle," he explained. "Or magic at all, at least not like that. I can channel something else, but I can't make anything."

"Mokona can help!"

"I was afraid of that."

The last person Kimihiro wanted to learn from was Mokona. The round little whatsit and its terrible drinking habits. But, as a magically created creature, Kimihiro supposed it could be helpful, with the proper motivation: alcohol.

"For everything you say that's helpful, I'll allow you extra drinks today," Kimihiro explained.

"Mokona is going to be so helpful you'll be out of alcohol by tomorrow!"

"Somehow I doubt. Now explain."

/

"Magic is all about intention," it told him, then looked to the paper Kimihiro had brought out to tally how helpful it was to him.

Kimihiro did not put a mark down.

"How was that not helpful!"

"Intention is obvious. Keep going."

Mokona groaned and continued.

"It's like talking instead of listening. You only listen and don't talk."

Kimihiro's pen hovered over the paper as he considered this.

Was that helpful?

Maybe.

He narrowed his eyes at Mokona, and made a mark.

"Yes! I'll be swimming in sake by the end of this!"

Kimihiro scribbled out the mark, and Mokona's mouth fell open in distress.

"Watanuki is a tyrant!"

"Watanuki wants to keep spirits out and can't do that with alcohol. I need more."

It grumbled but acquiesced.

"Magic tells you what to do in a fortune. You tell magic what to do in a spell."

Kimihiro made a mark on the paper.

"Yuuko used a magic circle to do that. It's a pattern, unique to you."

Kimihiro made another mark.

"Once you can make it, you can throw your intention in it and then magic!"

Kimihiro did not make a mark.

"Smaller spells don't need a circle when you get stronger."

Kimihiro made a mark.

"Big big big spells always need a circle."

Kimihiro made a mark.

"So just make the circle!"

"Okay. How?"

Mokona considered this while inspecting the marks on the paper. Four so far; four too many.

"You have to figure that out on your own; now give me my drinks!"

Kimihiro crumpled the paper up and huffed. "After dinner."

"Cruel!" Mokona whined, but Kimihiro didn't listen.

/

True to his word, he did allow Mokona after-dinner drinks, then excused himself outside to stare down the fence yet again.

"So I'm supposed to just… speak my intention," he mumbled to himself. "Talking instead of listening. But not actually talking so why am I talking to myself like this."

He sat down, rolled his eyes, sighed, and looked down at his hands.

"Magic."

He wiggled his fingers, as if that was going to do anything.

"Abracadabra," he joked, to no one but the empty yard.

"Thinking isn't going to do anything. Talking isn't going to do anything either, but here I am talking."

Well actually, talking is what he'd been told to do, but it was metaphorical talking. Metaphorical talking is thinking though, right? Was he supposed to just think spells? Just think really hard and then the spell would work? How in the hell was he supposed to just figure out magic?

He desperately wished Yuuko was there. Of course he wished that daily, that was the deeply held wish in his heart, but in this moment he particularly wanted her.

She would probably look at him with lidded eyes, face serious, and put a finger to her chin as she thought up the best way to explain it. And then she would say…

She would say…

Something about him already knowing how to do it and then when he expressed confusion she would tell him to go cook her something ridiculous.

Kimihiro smiled fondly at the thought.

But smiling wouldn't help him with this.

So instead he frowned.

But frowning also wouldn't help him with this.

He needed to learn this though, Haruka was right. Not only to fix the barrier, but to care for the shop, to grant wishes, to do what he needed to do to live as much of a life as he could from within a few hundred square meters.

Okay.

Okay, what did he want?

The shop barrier to work properly, for starters. The paper wouldn't hold up much longer.

So there was his intention: protection.

Now he just had to… speak it. He had very much figured out how to listen to the barrier, but as far as speaking back at it…

Kimihiro closed his eyes and listened for the barrier. He could feel an implacable hum, but one that felt off somehow. Some part of it was… incorrect. The breach.

"Hello," he said to the discordant hum, as if it was going to reply. Perhaps he was taking this whole thing a little literally, but could he be blamed at this point? It's not like he had a manual, though part of him wanted to make one for whomever took over for him when he eventually…

No, Yuuko would take it back from him before that, of course.

Naturally, the breach did not reply, for what are human words to a magical object?

Nothing, that's what. This wasn't about speaking in words. This was about speaking in magic.

He tried to match the pitch. Not audibly, but in thought. Try to tune himself into it, somehow.

Which amplified it and that was absolutely not what Kimihiro wanted to do.

Immediately he felt a wave of nausea like he hadn't felt in a good long while. Seemed he managed to make the breach worse. Great.

But he didn't open his eyes to look. No time for that. He just… had to… fix the damn barrier.

No, getting angry would do nothing.

He fought back every instinct that told him to run away screaming, focusing instead on the barrier.

With a breath out, he focused on his intention: protection, enclosure, safety. Then, he gathered up the thoughts in his mind and when he was sure he had the words, the feel, the objective properly defined, he tried to let it fall, but it felt like… something was blocking it. It was as if the intention hit a wall somewhere in him.

Well, no wall is impenetrable, right? Clearly not or he wouldn't have to do this in the first place.

He held the spell in his mind, in his body, in his thoughts and tried to break through whatever was preventing him from doing this. Whatever was stopping him. It felt like trying to remember a word you've forgotten—you know it's right there but something is in the way of you saying it.

And then the same way the word suddenly occurs to you completely unprompted as if it had never been hiding from you in the first place, the intention loosened itself, found its way through the block and Watanuki could manipulate it.

Magic.

He released the desire, and felt as it fell through him, to the ground. Hesitantly, Kimihiro opened his eyes to find a glowing circle beneath him—not one like Yuuko's, this looked more like a sun and a moon, with odd symbols. He could tell, somehow, that this pattern held his spell.

Spirits had gathered in the lawn and were brushing against his arms, giving him goosebumps as they passed, but Kimihiro would have to deal with this in a moment. Now was a matter of getting the spell out of the circle and into the barrier.

He closed his eyes again and tried to tune into that circle below him, that spell he'd just created and was waiting for his instruction.

Oh, was it just waiting? Well, by all means.

Kimihiro let out a breath and with it, his hold on the spell, feeling the protective barrier strengthen almost immediately.

The spirits, too, dissipated, though surely Kimihiro's spell hadn't been enough for that. But his confusion only lasted a moment when he felt someone enter the barrier.

Sure enough, when he opened his eyes and looked to the gate, there was Doumeki, staring at him with that blank-faced stare he made when he… well, he made it all the time.

"Fence is fixed," Kimihiro called over, standing up shakily.

No reaction from Doumeki, as expected. Or rather, Kimihiro didn't seem him react as his vision blacked out and he fell.

He came to quickly though (he was fairly sure), as he was still laying in the yard when he awoke, rather than in his bed or on the couch or all manner of locations he tended to wake up. Really, was it so much to ask to be conscious when he wanted to, now that he actually did want to?

Doumeki and the girls were both by his side and Mokona was atop Doumeki's head.

"Is Watanuki alright?" asked Maru.

"Is Watanuki okay?" asked Moro.

He smiled at them and stood on annoyingly shaky legs. Doumeki supported him however, and Kimihiro didn't have the energy to complain about it.

"I'm fine," he told them all. "It was just… oddly draining."

"What did you do?" asked Doumeki. It almost sounded almost like an accusation.

Closing his eyes, Kimihiro listened again for the barrier, just to be sure he patched it up correctly. It was humming correctly now, no odd pitches, but at what felt like a different frequency.

"I replaced it," he realized, then laughed. That explained why he was so tired suddenly. Sleep would be nice.

He leaned on Doumeki to stand to at least get inside, then called it an early night, allowing the girls to join him as they seemed particularly concerned.

Haruka appeared in his dream that night, which Kimihiro was glad for. He had an idea of what Haruka had meant before, but wanted to be sure (didn't want to know).

"Watanuki-kun," Haruka motioned for Kimihiro to take a seat next to him, which he did.

They sat in silence, Haruka smoking and Kimihiro trying to come up with the words to articulate his thoughts. He never used to do this. He would just spit them out and let them fall where they lay. Only think to regret them later, if he bothered to at all.

"The reason I can't leave the shop…" Kimihiro began when the silence became too much.

Haruka turned to him with a smile.

"The reason I can't leave the shop isn't my price."

Haruka nodded, so Kimihiro continued.

"My price is my time, and I am the Shopkeeper so I will see Yuuko-san again, but the reason I'll be here and only here for so long is… the power in me."

"That's right."

"It isn't enough yet, for me to exist outside this shop."

And somehow that was so much worse.

A/N:

Yeah, I think I'm going to keep this with him using Kimihiro in his POV, but if it's odd, definitely let me know.

Anyways, there are a lot of ways to interpret Watanuki's circumstances. I think a lot of people believe that all of this is just to see Yuuko again, but I personally believe it's deeper than that, though she was a big influencer in his deciding the price to leave the void with "Syaoran". If "the void" means nothing to you, sounds like you may not have read Tsubasa, which I would highly recommend you do, as it fills in a lot of blanks. It also adds a lot of blanks, but hey! It's Clamp! I have a few ways I've taken to interpret it, and what I've shown in the story is one way.

Agree? Disagree? Want me to elaborate? Just want to say hi? Leave a review! I love hearing people's opinions! I have half of the next chapter written, but am going on a road trip for the week so it'll take me some time to finish. Not four years though, promise!

In the meantime, if you want some upbeat Shopkeeper (yes, it can be done!), I've posted two somethings that are much lighter fare.