Tohru's Demons
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Mabudachi Trio's Complete Waste Of Time
Shigure stood in the middle of the vast library, slowly gazing around at all the books. He was definitely going to need help sorting through everything if he wanted to find something on the Sohmas, and without any references...
I wonder if I ought to tell Akito... he thought. Not yet. I'll tell him, but there's no point if I don't find anything, and I'm not sure how he might react. But if there's a chance to break the curse... I think I'll tell Ha'ri and Aaya, though. Yes, I think I'll go tell them now and while I'm at it, I'll enlist them in helping me search.
Shigure turned on his heel and fifteen minutes later, he had somehow taken several wrongs turns, arrived in the kitchen where Hatori and Ayame were still seated at the table. Ayame was talking animatedly, while Hatori just sat there and pretended to listen.
"Hey, where are Kagura and the others?" Shigure asked, looking around the otherwise empty room.
"There you are, Shii-chan! We were wondering when you'd get back!" Ayame cried, waving at Shigure to come join them
"Where's everyone else?" Shigure asked again, stepping closer.
"They went off exploring about ten minuets ago. Come sit with us!" Ayame said, pointing to nearby chair.
"Not right now, there's something I want to show you two," Shigure said seriously while he jumped around on his toes in place like a little girl.
"Oh, okay!" Ayame agreed at once as he stood up.
"What is it?" Hatori asked. He hadn't moved.
"It's a surprise! Come on now!" Shigure sang and led Ayame and a reluctant Hatori out the kitchen door, up and down the several flights of stairs, down a few hallways and through the Library door.
"What is this place?" Ayame breathed in wonder.
"The Royal Library!" Shigure announced. "It has everything ever written from our world. Every book, every comic, every diary, every porn magazine, every screenplay, you name it, we got it!"
"It has everything?" Ayame gasped incredulously.
"Yes! Everything anyone has ever written. That includes any documents or manuscripts on the Sohma family... or our Curse."
"Tohru-san brought you here? This is what she mentioned you might like?" asked Hatori.
"Yes, she did, actually. It was Tohru-kun that mentioned I might find something on the Zodiac Curse in here."
"But how did it all get here?" Ayame asked.
"Tohru-kun said it was probably magic... But think of what we could find here!"
"Well let's get started, then!"
"Ummm... there's a problem."
"What?"
"There are no references."
"Then how are we supposed to find anything...?"
"It doesn't matter," Hatori interjected. "Anything you want to find on our family would be in the Sohma library. And we've looked through there at least a hundred times and found nothing that might tell us how to break the Curse, or whatever it was you were thinking of doing."
"But what if there's something here that's not in the Sohma Library? What if it was destroyed, or lost, or hidden? And there's no harm in looking," replied Shigure.
"And without references how do you propose we look?"
"Tohru-kun said there was a certain order to the books," said Shigure. "All we have to do is figure out that order and then we can figure out where the Sohma documents are."
"But that could take hours," Ayame whined.
"What else do we have to do with our time? Tohru-kun said we might be here for several days, so we might as well be doing something worthwhile."
"All right," sighed Hatori. "If you're so set upon doing this then you go right on ahead."
"You're not going to help?"
"No." was the flat reply.
"Aw, come on Ha'riiii! You would be a great help in our most noble search for answers to the questions we've waited so long to have answered!" Shigure cried.
"...Oh, fine. But I still think this is a complete waste of time."
Ten minutes later the Mabudachi Trio had spread out through the room and were scanning titles, searching for anything promising.
"Hey, look at this!" Ayame called from the top of a ladder on the first story.
"Is it about us?" Shigure yelled from the second story balcony on the other side of the room.
"How are we supposed to look at it when we're more than thirty feet away from you?" Hatori wanted to know, currently clinging to a ladder between Shigure and Ayame up on the third story.
"No, Shii-chan, it isn't about us," Ayame shouted.
"Then who cares?" Hatori muttered and continued looking, shutting out his friends banter.
"What is it?" Shigure hollered.
"It's a diary!" Ayame cried.
"A girl's diary?" Shigure asked.
"Yes!" Ayame replied.
"Read it!" Shigure responded.
"Aren't we supposed to be looking for Sohma texts?" Hatori demanded frankly.
"Oh yeah..." Ayame said in disappointment, and replaced the diary on the shelf and went back to scanning titles.
"Shigure, Ayame, what are the authors' names in your areas?"
"You think they're organized by the name of the author? It doesn't look like it. I've got Norman Vincent Peale, Ayn Rand, Fulton J. Sheen... Huh. They're all foreign names, so I don't suppose I'm going to find anything on the Sohmas here."
"Really? Because all I have are Chinese names here," Ayame said. "And none of them seem to have anything in common… Except the fact that they're Chinese, of course."
"I think the books here are from Africa," Hatori stated. "And they don't have any alphabetical order either. What about by title?"
"Thank God they have Japanese translations… Okay, here we go… The Power of Positive Thinking, Life is Worth Living, Atlas Shrugged... No, it doesn't seem like there's any order there either, though these authors certainly are optimistic."
"Huh, they remind me of you..." Hatori commented dryly. "What about you, Ayame?"
"Oh, let me see... At Middle Age, A Small Town Called Hibiscus, A Log Cabin Overgrown with Creepers, Half of Man is Women... Hey, I like that last one!"
"But no alphabetical order..."
"Maybe there isn't an alphabetical order to anything," Shigure said.
"But there has to be, otherwise how would anyone find anything?" Hatori demanded.
"No listen, the books I'm looking at are from an English speaking country. Ayame's books are from China, and yours are from Africa."
"What's your point?" Hatori asked.
"If you lay out a world map, we would be in almost the exact same positions as the countries these books are from. I'll bet if Aaya comes around and positions himself across from me, he might find the scripts from Japan."
"Shigure, you may be on to something. Well, well. You aren't as stupid as I thought you were," Hatori said.
"Oh, Ha'ri, stop it, your sweet, beautiful words are making me blush!" Shigure twittered while Hatori shot him a half-lidded glare.
"Hey, Shii-chan, you were right! Here's some books with Japanese titles!"
"Wonderful, just stay there! We're coming over!" Shigure and Hatori climbed to Ayame's level and made their way over to him. Again they spread themselves out with Ayame working the first floor, Shigure searching the second floor, and Hatori the third.
After about half an hour, while Shigure was entertaining himself by dropping fuzz balls from his pockets into Ayame's hair, Hatori suddenly dropped down next to him and began pulling out books and flipping them open briefly before closing them again, replacing them, and pulling out the next book.
"Hey, you're supposed to be up on the third floor!" Shigure reprimanded, rather embarrassed by being caught off task.
"Be quiet. I wanted to check something."
"You could have called down and told me what you wanted..."
"You looked far too busy to be bothered with my speculations," Hatori retorted calmly. Shigure opened his mouth to answer with some sarcastic reply, thought about what Hatori had said and its implication, and closed it again, the picture of defeat.
Meanwhile Hatori was still scanning Shigure's titles, then he dropped down next to Ayame, pulling down one book after another.
"I knew it," he said finally, an uncharacteristic smile tugging at his mouth.
"What is it?" Shigure and Ayame cried, now very much curious.
"The dates. The books get older by century by each story. The higher they are, the older they get. It looks like the oldest ones up there are from the fourteenth, maybe thirteenth centuries."
"Wow..." Ayame breathed, craning his neck so he could see the books at the very top near the ceiling.
"Okay..." Shigure said slowly. "So we know the books are sorted by date and by location. But the date shouldn't matter; the Sohmas have been cursed for hundreds of years, we should have at least found something by now, no matter how high we are."
Hatori was silent for several moments before he said, "Come down to the first floor, Shigure. Perhaps if we all concentrate our efforts in a limited area we may have more of a chance of finding something."
Shigure climbed down to join his companions and they renewed their hunt with vigor.
"Hey, I found a book by me!" Shigure cried excitedly after about half an hour. "But... Oh my... I haven't even finished this one, I'm still writing it... And look, there are more here."
"If your depraved books are here, then the Sohma family records should be around here somewhere as well," Hatori said, coming over to scan the shelves. "Yet I don't see anything." After another half hour, they still hadn't found anything.
"Where are they?!" Shigure cried in exasperation. "It's like they don't even exist!"
"Still searching, Shigure-san?" said a voice behind them. Shigure, Ayame, and Hatori whirled around to find Tohru, Yuki, and Kyo standing behind them, apparently back from wherever they had gone, Kyo looking a bit more worn out than usual and Tohru and Yuki hiding dirty hands. It was Tohru who had spoken.
"So, how far have you gotten? Found anything yet?" she asked interestedly.
"I would think you have, seeing as you've drafted Hatori and Ayame to help you look," Yuki said, and Shigure feigned outrage.
"Oh Yuki, I knew you cared!" Ayame cried in ecstatic joy. "And I'm so flattered to know that you know that Shigure cannot function without my presence!"
"We found out that the books are organized by date and by location. They're roughly where they'd be on a world map and the higher they are, the older they get." Hatori explained, while Yuki glared at daggers at his brother.
"Yes, but we can't find anything on the Sohma family," Shigure said regretfully. "So we're stuck."
"But you already know all that, don't you, Tohru-san?" Hatori asked calmly. Shigure and Ayame looked at Hatori with surprise written all over their faces. Tohru blinked and grinned sheepishly.
"Yeah, I did."
"But then... why didn't you just tell me...?" Shigure asked in confusion.
"So you let us go through all that over nothing?" Ayame wanted to know, his normally smooth brow wrinkled slightly in bafflement.
"If you two would just be quiet she'll explain," Hatori said, a hint of coldness in his tone, and his two friends closed their mouths at once and looked at Tohru expectantly.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I couldn't. If I had told you how the library was organized and you used that information to find what you wanted, in this case the manuscripts of your family, the library would have moved them else where, by magical means of course. If I had tried to take you directly to the scripts, or even if I just tried to get them for you without you being actually present, I would not be able to find them. You have to unlock the library's secret in order to find anything you want. One of Lucifer's more... annoying little jokes on anyone stupid enough to come in here and try to steal anything."
"Well, now that we've figured it out, what now?" asked Ayame. Tohru smiled, turned around and walked towards the closest column.
"This column holds nothing but family records, the interesting ones at any rate. The other column contains the boring stuff like deathdays, birthdays, income, that type of thing. Let's see, your family should be around here somewhere... Ah! Here it is!" Tohru cried, pulling down a thick, dusty volume and laid it open.
"This is a record of all the Sohmas ever to exist. And this book here..." she pulled down another book, though this one was not as thick. "This has the names of all the Jyuunishi ever to be born, the Head Sohmas, and the Cats. These bare the only two records here, as well as a family tree around here somewhere... The rest of it is important events, anything written by a Sohma, decrees, stuff like that."
"Do you mean to tell me that what we were searching for was only a few yards away?" Ayame cried in childish dismay.
"What about any information on the curse?" Shigure asked eagerly.
"That's where this gets tedious," Tohru sighed.
"Like it wasn't tedious before?" Hatori said mordantly.
"You'll find any mention of the Curse scattered all the way up the column. Sohma documents take up an entire shelf, and they reach all the way to the top. My best guess at finding anything soon is to start at the very top, and work your way down."
Everyone stared up at the distant ceiling, taking in the impossibly enormous task before them.
"I believe we can start on that tomorrow," Hatori said after a while, his eyes still drawn upwards. Somehow hanging from a ladder nine stories above the ground did not appeal to the Dragon at the moment. "Now, I think it's time we inform Akito-sama of our activities."
To be continued...
Disclaimer: I do not own Fruits Basket for the twenty-second time
Sorry everyone for taking so long to write this. I know it's a little boring, but I didn't know how else to do it, and I had a slight case of writer's block, and all the while I was rather distracted. The cause of my distraction is the unbelievably adorable, tiny, irresistible new kitten we adopted. We've christened him Sammy, and he's orange and white and CUUUUUTE!
Anyway, the next chapter will be WAY better, I promise. It has more Millie-ness, and Rahallion may have a part in it. Yes, I know I've been neglecting him, but the story has been too busy and I couldn't fit him in anywhere, so I'll try from now on to include the familiar if not in the next chapter, then in the chapters to come.
-Raha-
