***

And then broken bridges

Swept by cruel torrents

1 And the salt water washed the wounds

***

Chapter 2-

Darkness had long since swept the sky when he left that place; still brooding despondently, and shoulders slumped. He felt tired, more so than he had been in his entire life. Tired of everything. He wanted change most desperately; be it for better or worse. All this despite that nagging thought at the back of his mind, that Fate is a book already written.

A little change, of course, had been brought into his miserable (he winced at his own thought) existence when Tohru came along. Tohru-chan- no, wait, since when had he been on first-name terms with her? Honda-san... Nevertheless, there was no denying the fact that she treated him a lot better than most of the other Sohmas did. He did feel a twinge of guilt at that. Honda-san was always pleasant to him, and what of him towards her? He was, granted, rather... impolite.

And so what? Kyou felt like kicking himself at that. Why had he been so disagreeable towards her anyway?

Then he thought of the two of them walking together. Yuki and Honda-san always walked to school together. And in the afternoons, they came back home. Together.

And then he saw Honda-san's face in his mind; her face, brilliantly lighted by her cheerful smile. A sincerely happy smile.

A smile not meant for him.

A gale sent leaves flying towards him, and he stopped and shielded his face impatiently. Damned wind. He stood there for a few moments, as this wind really was quite strong, and he braced himself against it. Inside he berated himself. Weakling. You even let yourself get defeated by a silly breeze...

Just like you let yourself get defeated by a rat. A strong, white rat, perhaps, but a rat all the same. Yuki Sohma... A stubborn pride grew within him, and he decided to continue on walking, despite the wind, and the rain that was beginning to fall. The obscurity above him began to rumble; the sound of an approaching storm. Kyou wiped the raindrops from his face and picked up his pace, he needed to get to his shelter quickly.

The raindrops began falling in heavy sheets, and he was still stuck on the mountain path. It was a long way down. He looked at the muddy ground, brown dirt and muck soiling his shoes. Shit. Of all the streams that he could have gone to, he just had to choose one that lay beyond a mountain.

Kyou got off the dirt path, and into the woods. Here, at least, the grass covered the ground like a carpet of sorts, and the trees acted like giant umbrellas. The raindrops that trickled through the web of treetops fell in soft pitter-patters onto the grass. He climbed up a tree and settled on one particularly large branch, and he fell once again to his thoughts of Yuki and Honda-san...

But then, after all, Honda-san had once told him that she was fond of cats. What was it that she had said again? He had not remembered exactly, but the meaning had been imprinted deep into his mind. He remembered it was then that he had snapped at her not to interfere… when he was fighting with Yuki.

And still, when he had talked to her later on, she said that she liked cats. That she had wanted to have been born in the year of the cat.

Yuki entered his mind again, a Yuki who smiled and said that cats do not deserve to be among the Chinese zodiac signs. Something to that effect.

Red eyes glowered in the darkness. Tomorrow, things will change.

I will change.