It was night and Kurama sat in a restaurant, next to his mother. Her fiancee and a few others ringed the table.
Someone said something and everyone laughed.
Someone said something and everyone gasped and denied.
Someone said something and everyone started to talk at once.
Kurama sat quiet, drank the soda before him and popped a sushi in his mouth. He sighed and that's when he noticed his mother hadn't laughed with the last joke or talked at the last remark. She was watching him.
He smiled at her, but she didn't seem convinced.
He kissed her cheek and said he had too much homework. He should return home.
"I'll be there soon." she said.
Kurama made it to the empty house quickly. He hadn't bothered taking the streets. The roof-tops were much better and he moved fast enough no one would see him. The wind in his hair, the sound of wind against his clothes, the sound of the wind screaming past in his ears...The smell of the human city, the concrete a hundred stories long beneath him, the sounds of the human city...
His foot hit the edge of a sky-scrapper, he crouched and jumped in a single motion, flinging himself into a freefall.
As he walked into the house, his hair was a little wind-swept, but there was no other proof of his activities.
He was very good at hiding such proof.
He made it up to his room and didn't bother turning on the light. The moonlight came through the window. He reached up a hand and the tree reached a branch through the window. A leaf just turning from green to red fell to the floor.
It wasn't such a bad ruse, this life, he conceeded, as far as ruses go.
He remebered the way his heart had beat when he thought Hiei would reveal the truth to his mother.
He closed his eyes. "She will never discover the truth." he whispered and the tree brushed against his clenched hand in concern.
Kurama opened his eyes and they settled on the moon.
Why did that fact bother him so?
Could it be that he wanted her to know?
He laughed. What purpose would that serve? A voice in his head that sounded very much like Hiei's sneered, "Where is the logic in that, Fox?"Kurama sighed.
The fire demon was wiser than Kurama gave him credit for.
Kurama looked out the window. Hiei had vanished that morning after Kurama had had his little revenge on him.
Now, could it be, that Kurama was regreting that little manuever?
Kurama shook his head. "Enough." he said to his thoughts. He crossed the room and changed, running fingers across the two slashes on his chest and the third across the span of his firm belly.
He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes and somewhere between his thoughts of Hiei, his mother and the moon, he fell asleep.
...to be continued...