March 22…
Tohru went to the grocery store to buy fish for dinner.
"I'm sure Kyou would like tonight's dinner!" she thought to herself as she paid for the fish.
She went through the automatic doors and took her route back home. Her path usually included a walk through the park, so there she went, watching her two bags of groceries closely.
"I'm her friend, not yours," a little girl pointed to another brown haired girl.
"That's not fair! How come you get to be her friend?" asked the browned haired girl.
"That's just the way it is," the other girl said and walked away.
Tohru thought of this for only a short while as she walked home.
"Tohru!" Shigure slammed open the door so hard that Tohru swore she heard a crack in the wall behind the open door.
"What is it?" Tohru asked. She hadn't even reached the doorway when Shigure told her.
"It's a disaster! Yet a miracle," Shigure said.
"What are you talking about? Something happened?"
"Of course. I'll let you observe this predicament," he led her into the living room. There, she found Kyou and Yuki watching tv together.
Tohru looked back at Shigure, then, instead of asking what the big deal was, asked, "Hey you guys."
Yuki and Kyou both looked at her in the same time with disbelief.
"Kyou, did you hear something?" Yuki asked.
"Yes I did. But that was just probably the wind," Kyou said.
Shigure said, "See Tohru? They seem to be nice to only each other. They ignore everyone else."
"What? But, how could it be?" Tohru wondered. Could it possibly be the monkey's paw?
She started to chop the onions while thinking, "If it was the paw, I only wished for them to be friends, not enemies to everyone else."
Kyou walked in.
"Kyou," Tohru smiled. "Want a bit of fish before the dinner is served? I know you always want that!"
Kyou just ignored her.
She was upset for the entire week. It seems that Yuki and Kyou are best friends. They spoke to only each other and ignored everyone else except certain people such as the teacher. Even worse, it seems as though…they may be a little closer than friends?
Girls were freaking out when Kyou and Yuki were hugging each other goodbye, only to hug each other to say hello when they reach home.
Tohru quickly ran back home at the end of the school week, barging through the door and into Akito's room.
"Akito!" she yelled.
"Oh, Tohru. Please update me on how Kyou and Yuki's progress is going," he said calmly.
"Akito, don't you know that Kyou and Yuki may become…closer than friends?" she asked a little freaked out.
"You mean…best friends?" Akito asked.
"Akito, they're hugging each other!" she yelled.
"I saw them as well," Hatori made his entrance into the room. "Who knows what'll they'll do next – kiss?"
"Well, that did happen in the swimming pool," she muttered to herself.
Outside the window, the three of them see Kyou and Yuki sitting under a cherry blossom tree – and it so happens that cherry blossom petals blew at the same moment – and they were sitting very close together.
"Tohru," Hatori said, "would you mind explaining?"
"I'll spare her the shame she will soon have," Akito said, opened the cabinet and brought out the monkey paw.
"The monkey paw!" Hatori said out loud from shock.
"Yes. She had cursed me into giving her the monkey paw so that she could use it," Akito accused her.
"Cursed?" Tohru was scared.
"Is this true, Tohru?" hatori asked.
"What are you talking about?" tohru asked.
Hatori said calmly, "Akito, please, Tohru would not do or even know of such curses."
"Have you ever searched her room for other symbolic emblems?" Akito yelled.
Hatori looked at tohru straight in the eyes, saying, "Tohru, tell me. Do you have any of these emblems?"
"No," Tohru said.
"Then why did you have the genie in your room?" Akito asked.
"The magical lamp?" Hatori asked Tohru with wide eyes.
"I…I didn't do anything evil with it!" Tohru yelled. "Akito made me wish the paw."
"No, Tohru," Hatori said. "The paw only takes wishes from people who are willing to make the wish. There's no way. Let take a look at your room, if you don't mind."
Hatori went up to Shigure's house.
"Hey, Hatori! How's it going?" Shigure asked. Hatori was to horrified from what Akito said to answer him. Shigure got up to follow him, but stopped to eat more.
Hatori opened the door and saw the lamp under a pile of clothes. He picked it up and weighed it in his hand. "The genie is gone. This may be a fake or you freed him," Hatori said.
Tohru kept staring at the genie.
"Tohru," Hatori seeing this as a chance to clarify things without Akito's presence, "sit down," he patted on the bed. She obediently did that.
He continued, "Tohru, every zodiac animal has their own special emblem. The magical lamp belongs to Akito and the monkey's paw to Ritsu."
Tohru was wondering what the other emblems were.
No matter, Hatori wanted to finish his explanation, "Only Akito can wish on the lamp, and Ritsu for the paw, but for a girl with no curse from the zodiac to have been able to wish on the lamp and the monkey's paw is very fascinating. Though, all these emblems have a curse, Tohru. They're very bad. Sometimes, the wish can never be broken."
At this point, Tohru started to cry because she wanted Kyou and Yuki to be friends with everyone else again.
Hatori gave Tohru the lamp. "If you could call the genie to do your wishes, then you can call it back into its lamp to serve you one more wish, one last time."
"What should I wish for?" Tohru said in between tears.
"Wish for all the consequences of the monkey paw to be gone from this world by the next day," Hatori said specifically. "Can you remember that?"
"Be with me," Tohru grabbed Hatori's sleeve, as she continued to sob. "Be with me, so that I would not get the words wrong!"
"I will."
"I'll call him back now," Tohru said.
"Okay," Hatori said, calmly took Tohru's hand off his sleeve and gave her a tissue. He knew that tohru would not be the kind of person to have done these things. Akito had the whole situation planned out, he was waiting to find a way to get rid of Tohru, but too bad that no one will believe him.
Tohru, with wet tears on her face, held the lamp for a while, then looked at Hatori with a blank face.
"Call him, Tohru," he said.
"How?" she asked.
"Huh?" Hatori was not expecting this. Even he did not know how to call the genie back. "Umm…" he pondered, "…maybe we should…" but he knew there was no time to wait. "Maybe," he started again, "maybe you already called him and it takes a while to come back."
"Maybe," Tohru stared back down at the rusty lamp, looking doubtful. "Hatori?"
"Hmm?"
"If Akito wanted to get rid of me, why didn't he wish for me to go away with his genie?"
By this time, it was falling sunset, and Hatori suddenly felt really tired. He yawned and started to head to the door. "Next time, Tohru," he said. "Tomorrow, I will tell you of how all these emblems came to be and all your other questions…but for now…just make sure the genie comes to clear everything up." He yawned again and headed out of the house sleepily.
Back in the main house, the housekeeper was trying to have Akito drink his tea, but he refused.
"I don't want to drink tea!" he yelled and went back to his room, only to leave his tea cup grow cold.
Hatori entered just as Akito slammed the door shut.
"Would you like some tea?" the housekeeper asked. "I brewed it for Akito, but I guess he doesn't want any. You want some?"
"Huh?" Hatori was a little sleepy to figure out what was going on. "Tea? Sure…" He drank some, but the time to drink the tea made him even sleepier. He got up, said his goodbye to the housekeeper and went to Akito's room to check up on him, but found himself land on Akito's bed and fall asleep.
Seven days had passed…
April 1…
Tohru woke up hearing a scream from the main house. She saw Shigure running with slippers and his pajamas down the hall (with a night cap as well! XD if only he had a candle and a wick.) to rush to the main house. Tohru got up, put an overcoat over her sleep-wear and ran with only slippers to cover her feet from the hard pavement outside to the main house.
"What happened?" shigure yelled as he opened the door.
"He's dead!" the housekeeper pointed at Hatori's dead body in the bed.
"Dead!" Shigure yelled. He looked at Akito, who looked shocked. "What did you do!" Shigure yelled at Akito.
"I didn't do anything!" he yelled out an unbelieving plead of innocence.
"He was in YOUR bed!" the housekeeper yelled.
"Well, I tried to call you to remove him, but you were too busy humming to yourself in the kitchen to hear me!" Akito yelled back.
"So that means you have to fetch a knife and stab him!" the housekeeper yelled.
"Who found Hatori's body like this?" Shigure asked.
"I did!" the housekeeper said. "You can't hide from this one, Akito. We all know you!"
"What! I-I didn't do it!" he yelled.
"Like how you didn't try to accuse me of the monkey's paw?" Tohru asked accusingly.
"Monkey's paw? You've been toiling with it, weren't you? That's why Kyou and Yuki became gay!" Akito yelled back.
"Don't say such accusations!" Tohru had never been so angry before in her life.
"You should go to prison for this, Akito," the housekeeper pointed her finger at him.
"I can't believe I thought you turned over a new leaf!" Shigure yelled.
"I DIDN'T DO IT!" Akito yelled for the final time, before he was taken away to the solitary confinement he once put the last year of the cat in.
"Now, the killer is sealed from the rest of the family," the housekeeper said angrily. "I never thought he would sink this low."
"Yes," Shigure said, then went back home to catch up on his missed sleep, despite that it was already well into noon.
Tohru walked back with Shigure. "Shigure…" she started.
"What is it, Tohru?" he replied. She could see Shigure still didn't sink back into his happy face yet and was a little annoyed by that.
"What do you know of the emblems of the zodiac?" she asked.
"It's nothing you need to know."
"I think my wish on a paw made Kyou and Yuki like this," she looked at Kyou and Yuki still under the tree, giggling at something they told each other.
She looked disappointed and upset. She continued the trek back to the house, but found Shigure stood his ground.
"You made a wish on the paw?"
"yes."
"The paw?"
"yes. The paw. The monkey's paw!"
"Shh!" Shigure covered her mouth with his hand. "Not so loud."
They went into the kitchen. Shigure made sure no one would over hear them, closed the door, then turned to face Tohru.
"The emblems of the zodiac is something that no member of the zodiac wants to touch. It is secretly kept stowed away with Hatori. He had hidden the emblems. Now that he is dead, no one knows where the others are.
It was only a few days ago he told me and Ayame of the two missing emblems: the lamp and the paw. He told me that he expected someone else other than Akito to have stolen it."
"Why not akito?"
"Because Akito knows that if he uses the emblems, he will die."
Suddenly, Tohru felt a cold chill down her spine and in came the genie, looking happier than before.
"You called me, Madame?" he bowed low to Tohru. He respects Tohru a lot, he considers her to still be his master, despite the fact that she had freed him.
"Genie!" she stood up, jaw wide open, happy, yet surprised that the genie actually came to her calling. "Genie!"
"You look like you're in some sort of distress!" genie said.
"Oh, Yuki! You're so beautiful!" Kyou said.
All three of them shivered from Kyou's words.
"Um…Genie, I accidentally – no, I made a wish on the monkey's paw. I made a wish for those two under the tree to be friends. I want to make things normal, from the beginning, as if Yuki and Kyou were…never as close as they are now…"
"Oh, Miss Honda!" the genie said in sympathy.
"Could you fix it?"
"Of course. But, you have to say that you believe in my genie powers!"
Tohru took a breath in, then out. If saying those words will end all this mess on wishes, she'll take it. "I believe that you have magical powers, okay?"
The genie said, "Okay! Bye."
In an instant, he was gone, with only a cloud dissipating at the spot he disappeared.
Tohru and Shigure ran outside to see Yuki and Kyou shoulder to shoulder.
"Yuki! Kyou! You okay?" Tohru asked.
"We're going to get married," Kyou said happily.
Shigure and Tohru's jaws dropped.
"Really?" Shigure asked.
Kyou and Yuki's faces seem to almost break from happiness to even greater happiness, then after staring at Shigure and Tohru's faces, they broke into laughter. They had let out a laugh that seemed to have been inside of them ever since the start of their friendship. Then Shigure started to laugh and gave each of them thirty dollars.
"What are you doing?" tohru asked.
"You fooled me then!" Shigure said after giving them the money.
"You see, last year, during april fools, shigure said that if we could pull off the biggest prank on april fools day, then we'd get thirty dollars each. So yuki and I decided, after you went to meet Akito, that we should pretend to be friends to each other. Then as the week progressed, Yuki thought that to make it worse, we'll become gay. Then, here we are, thirty dollars richer!" Kyou explained in between laughs.
"Then, the death of Hatori?" Tohru ran over to the main house, but sure enough, hatori wasn't there.
Shigure had followed her, but both of them stood very still at the doorway of Hatori's room, as the housekeeper putting away items into a cabinet. She seemed to not have noticed them.
"On to a million bucks we go…on to a better life I go…" she sang as she gathered the things. All around her were wigs, clothing, and make-up. She turned around and saw Shigure and Tohru.
"hello," she said as she quickly closed the cabinet behind her.
"what are those?" shigure asked suspiciously.
Tohru spotted an out-stretched finger sticking out of the cabinet. "Hey! That looks like the monkey's paw!"
"And these wigs!" Shigure stepped in and looked straight at the wigs, then to the housekeeper. "What are you doing with the emblems?"
"Emblems?" the housekeeper said.
"Don't pretend like you don't know what you're talking about," shigure continued to bore through her eyes with his own.
"Alright! I was the one who tricked Tohru into wishing on the monkey's paw!"
"And you did it by disguising as Akito, huh?" shigure continued. "How'd you keep Akito away while you were pretending to be him?"
"I put sleeping powder in his tea," the housekeeper.
"Then, why did you want to kill Hatori?"
"Hatori was screwing up everything!" she yelled. "He was telling that girl all about the emblems. When he entered the room yesterday, he expected me right on the spot. He's seen Akito almost everyday for examinations. He could tell who was an imposter or not, but he looked a little unsure. I didn't want that to happen."
"So you killed him for it?"
"Yes."
All Tohru could think of right now is Hatori's death. The anger bubbled within her. She wanted to lock the housekeeper into the room Akito is confined in at the moment. Despite the terrible situation, she could hear people laughing outside.
"Why did you want the emblems?" Shigure asked.
"The emblems would hold it all. All I had to do was make Tohru Honda wish for the Sohma family to hate each other – to not trust each other and become broken family. Once the family is noticed as an unstable family from a psychologist, I will be able to inherit the massive amount of inheritance money and the estate while everyone in this estate is sent to the asylum," she laughed a little psychotically.
"Hatori is dead!" Tohru yelled. "You want that just for money!" Tears were clouding her view of the woman who an she trusted as a close friend.
"Dead, but reborn once again!" a voice shouted with a little hint of laughter.
In came Hatori again, this time, making his entrance even grander than ever before with Akito following behind.
"hatori?" shigure said in shock while the housekeeper had her jaw open wide.
"Thanks for being so stupid as to tell us everything," Hatori continued.
"Explain!" Shigure, being the worried friend in all of this, demanded of him.
"Surely! Though, my truth will not be as greedy as the housekeeper!" Hatori said. "Akito had turned a new leaf, so I trusted him that we could play an April fool's joke on everyone. I was going to remind him of the plan last night, but the nurse put in sleeping powder in my tea, so I fell asleep before I could speak. That was when Akito continued with the joke and put fake blood on me with this retractable knife taped on me. He went to sleep next to me, but I guess, the april fools joke went a little too far, huh?" The housekeeper looked as though she wanted to claim her actions as an april fools day joke as well, but Hatori stopped her. "You on the other hand, fool or no fool, took the emblems, which is an action too far to be considered a joke."
The housekeeper looked really nervous. She became psychotic at the moment and tried to commit suicide by jumping out the window. The glass shattered all over her head as she jumped. Unfortunately, by the time the four of them ran down the stairs, they found her still alive, yet not right in the head.
"Her brain is damaged. She'll have to be diagnosed as being mentally ill," a doctor said after examining her.
Shigure, Hatori, and Tohru were in the doctor's office.
"I'm sorry to bring you such bad news," the doctor left.
"All that, for money," Tohru said contemplatively.
The housekeeper came out smiling and laughing at nothing in the air.
"Come on," Hatori said. "You're fired. We'll bring you back to your family."
"Family?" she asked. "I like my family."
"You do?" he asked.
"Yes."
Hatori told her family that it was she who accidentally fell from the window while cleaning the floor. He said that she slipped on a puddle and out the window she went.
That was Tohru's April Fool's day, and it wouldn't have ended this way, not for if the Genie was not there to help her out.
The End.
I hope you liked it. It will be the last chapter of this story. Sorry if this isn't what you expected, but tell me in a review how I did. I would like to know. Thanks to those who read all three chapters and special thanks to reviewers.