I'm back again with yet another chapter.
Disclaimer: The usual disclaimer applies.
18.10.93
Two days until the end of term.
Close now, and surprisingly uneventful. The end of the term feels like the light at the end of the tunnel, and I wake with great anticipation each morning, to look out at the slowly turning leaves. Someone's gonna have to rake the yard soon, and it will probably be me. Around this house, I'm menial labour boy. Tohru keeps the house, but they expect me to do 'manly' things like killing spiders in the tub and changing light bulbs. I think I'll have to do what I considered before now, I need to get Shimo somewhere where other people can't watch, like the forest, and tell him to explain exactly what he can and can't do. There are just way too many unknowns right now.
But how am I gonna get Yuki to agree? I mean, it's not like he's going to readily agree to help me
"Kyo-kun?"
My pen stops abruptly, and I slap my book closed. Tohru stands in the doorway looking uncomfortable.
"Tohru! I mean, yes?"
I'm definitely not a gifted talker.
"I was just wondering if you're okay. You've been acting strangely lately, and…"
Tohru trails off to look at her small hands.
I stand up, walk over to her, and take her hands in mine, trying to comfort out little housekeeper.
"I promise I'm alright, okay? It's nothing."
A sudden thought inspires me, and I remove one of my hands to reach behind me.
When I bring it back it grasps a sunflower, and I hand it to her, feeling wonderful as she flushes and smiles like the sun rising.
I smile slightly at her, the best I can manage without grinning like a loon. "I'll be down for dinner, okay?"
She beams at me again and practically skips off down the corridor.
With a small sigh, I slip back inside my room and shut the door manually. Eyes closed, I lean against the doorframe for a few moments
I still don't really feel like eating, but the promise to be present for dinner makes the girl happy. Besides, I'm getting a little skinny.
Tohru's so damn nice. She's like the sister that you always wanted, someone sweet that you can look after just as much as she looks after you. She's going to make a wonderful mother some day.
I sigh place my pen back down on the deck next to my memory jar, and rest my head against my fingers, which are laced behind my head. The ceiling is turned a sooty orange as the sun sets out my window.
Random acts of kindness, I decide, are not a bad thing at all. In fact, they make everyone involved feel good.
I lean back further in my chair, and stretch my arms out and above my chair, fingers still laced together and palms facing the ceiling to my fingers bend back satisfyingly.
Self-congratulation will only get me so far though, and I gather that Shimo will not be particularly impressed with my display of compassion. Not if it reveals my fairly shaky secret.
I wont let him get to her though; I don't want him wiping her memory again. Her mind is already fragile enough.
I trudge downstairs with my hands sunk in my pockets through the living room into the kitchen. On the kitchen table my sunflower sits in a glass vase, half-filled with water, and it seems to be a testament against the ending summer.
"Do you need any help?"
Tohru looks up from the rice that she was spooning into a bowl, and blushes again slightly. Her eyes dart down again.
"No thankyou, Kyo-kun, I'm alright."
I roll my eyes. "I want to help, alright?"
Tohru smiles slightly. "You could stir the soup…"
It's a good a job as any. I head over to the pot boiling on the stove, lift the large wooden spoon and stir the contents, letting the aroma of fish waft up to me. Maybe I'll make more than an appearance after all.
I place my chopsticks next to my empty bowl, and mumble Tohru thanks for the meal. I grab my plate and bowl, then pile Shigure, Yuki's and Tohru's on top.
Shigure gasps dramatically. "Be still my beating heart! Who are you want what have you done with the real Kyo-kun?"
I shoot my cousin a look that promises a slow and painful death, then carefully carry my load back out into the kitchen.
I place them in the sink, push the plug in, and fill it up with warm water.
"Oh, no, Kyo-kun, you don't have to do that!"
Tohru sounds almost distressed as she hurries over to me.
"I don't mind,"
"It's alright, I can do it myself, unless you want to do it that badly…"
I smile slightly. "If you insist…"
Shimo sits opposite me with a slightly amused look on his face. "I've got to say, Kyo, you've really changed."
"What do you mean?" I ask, arching an eyebrow. Blossom, who is sitting on my lap squeaks and reaches up a small paw to bat at the side of my face slightly. I chide it softly, capturing it's flailing paw in one hand, then pick up the other and bounce Blossom, much to its intense glee.
"You've developed manners."
I narrow my eyes. "Are you saying that I wasn't polite before?"
"Yes, actually, I am."
Shimo's boldness surprises me. He's been spending way too much time around Yuki. If he starts calling me 'Baka-neko' instead of 'Kyo', I think I'll scream. There'll be two of them.
"And you haven't attacked Yuki for a week."
"Challenged, I haven't challenged Yuki for a week."
Shimo sighs like I'm sweating over the small things.
Personally, I think that there is a fine line between attacking and challenging. I always give Yuki fair warning… or insult him so much that it's only morally right that he hit me.
As I decide over the morals of my fights with Yuki, I see something flit around the corner of my eye and at the same instant something seems to tug on my soul. I whirl around, dislodging Blossom to see nothing but my shadow.
I can sense that it's still here, but I see no sign of it.
"What was that?" I whisper to Shimo, who is on his feet and staring intensely around the room.
"I know not. Another Elemental, perhaps?"
Nodding my head to acknowledge his theory, I run my eyes over my room once more. In the corner by the window lies my bed, and a few feet away, pressed up against another wall is my desk. Opposite my desk is my wardrobe, which has a mirror on the front, and the door is opposite the window, with a whole wall to itself. My room is bare bar the junk across the floor, but it serves its purpose.
Blossom had disappeared back into the recesses of my mind, leaving Shimo and I alone to deal with the unknown entity.
Something catches my attention. My desk has a second shadow.
I make a split-second naming decision.
"Shade, please stop playing around,"
The shadow slinks across the ground to join into mine, making it longer, and casting itself over the wall.
The shadow waves, and feeling rather strange, I wave back.
Shimo stands behind me and clamps a hand down on my shoulder.
"That's two."
I close my eyes, and Shimo's hand, lighter and more delicate now, slips boneless off my shoulder.
I turn around in time to grab his falling limb, and wince as Yuki hangs, half sprawled across the ground and partially held up by my hold of his limb.
That doesn't look comfortable.
Hauling Yuki over my shoulder almost like a sack of potatoes, I shuffle out of my door, and with a flick of my free wrist, Yuki's door opens and I eventually manage to get Yuki onto his own bed. I pull off his socks and tuck him inside the blankets, but refuse to go any further.
As far as I'm concerned, no one needs to wake up with the knowledge that the cat has stripped them.
I pause at the doorway to stare back reflectively at Yuki.
"Damn rat, corrupting my Shimo." I smile slightly as I say this.
If Yuki sees this moment of weakness, I will never live it down, though.
Yuki groans slightly and turns away from the light cast into the room from the hall.
I step backwards out the door, and close it in front of me. With a sigh, I lean my head against it.
Tohru's feet scuffle, alerting me to her presence as she reaches the landing. Her eyes widen, and she gasps "Kyo-kun, what are you doing up so late?"
I blink stupidly at her, turning my head slightly so I can regard her without removing it from the door.
"Why are you up so late?"
Tohru flushes slightly. "I'm just going to bed now…" The concern for Tohru's health that washes over me is soon deemed irrelevant as she presses on, "Why are you outside Sohma-kun's door?"
With a startled exclamation, I leap back from the door, my cheeks aflame. "Ah! Well, I… uh."
Tohru smiles knowingly and pauses to put her hand on my shoulder before she passes me. "Don't worry, he likes you too."
19.10.03 1.23 AM
Okay, so it barely qualifies as a new day, but I have something to say.
AM I REALLY THAT TRANSPARENT?!?!
Tohru could tell that I like him, and thinks that he likes me back!
Argh!
How does she know these things, that's what I wanna know. I haven't given the slightest indication of anything but the ordinary, and the only one that I thought knew what Shimo, but that's only because he knows all my memories. And how does she know that the ice-prince feels anything in return? He's either exquisitely courteous, or calling me names until his tongue turns black. This doesn't seem like a love-situation here.
Holy shit, what the hell did I just call it?! Wait, stop everything while I think back over this. I honestly can't know anything yet. Love is not a term to be playing around with, so I'm going to forget I ever wrote that.
Yuki has got to never see this book, or I'm screwed.
I dress my book in shadows with my new-found Elemental's talents, then put it in the existing shadow of a larger object. I can only tell it's there now when I reach out my hand and touch it.
I'd like to see him get his skinny little fingers on it now.
Satisfied, I slip inside the covers of my bed, but my eyes stay trained on the place where my book is until I sleep.
There.
Please remember to review if you read, cuz reviews make my world go round, and make chapters come out faster.
BTW, I realise that I need to do something about my italics, or lack thereof. They futted out in the middle of the prolouge, and the diary entries can be a little confusing without them. I'll change that next time.
