Disclaimer : Matantei Loki does not belong to me. Nor does Matantei Loki Ragnarok. Yes, I'm generally not witty enough to think of an interesting statement to insert here. But now that we've got the essentials over with...
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Kakinouchi Koutarou absolutely loathed displaying his vulnerabilities in public.
So, when the doctor had shaken his head in apologetic regret, he had deployed his usual intelligence and slipped away from his ever-vigilant attendants, wandering deliberately till he found a secluded, suitably empty park.
Then, settling down upon the lush grass beneath a sakura tree in full bloom, he proceeded to bawl his heart out, secure in the knowledge that nobody would chance on him indulging in such an undignified act.
He wasn't counting on a little, pink-haired girl, clutching a little, pink-furred bunny.
"Why are you crying?"
He looked up, mortified. A pair of crimson eyes peered curiously at him over the woolly head of a stuffed rabbit. "... I'm not." A most blatant lie, since he had to force the words out through a stuffy nose.
"But you are," she insisted, her wide eyes growing even wider with confusion. The floppy ears of her ragged toy bobbed in limp, eager agreement.
He glared at her, feeling raw and exposed and faintly ridiculous. "Fine, so I am. Now will you go away?"
Apparently she was incapable of taking even the most obvious of dismissals, for she promptly flopped down onto the damp earth beside him. "Why are you crying? Are you lost?"
He would - should - have picked himself up and walked haughtily off at that point, if he had not been feeling drowsy and childishly unreasonable from the after-effects of crying. By all he'd ever valued, he would not be run off his spot by a child; and most definitely not by a girl! "I'm not lost, and it's none of your business why, either."
A ringing silence, unbroken save for the placid rustling of leaves, fell; the kind which had him burning to peek surreptitiously at the girl beside him, if only to get the suspense over and done with. Young curiosity and resilient pride waged battle for a brief moment. Curiosity won by a resounding landslide.
Pushing his face upwards so that it would seem as though he was merely interested in a falling flower - and not, God forbid, wondering what she was doing - he glanced.
From the untenable angle, he saw that she actually seemed to be meditating upon something; and he found himself thinking that the solemn expression didn't really belong on her round, cherubic face at all.
After a spell, she rocked abruptly to her feet, and he breathed a sigh of relief that she was finally going to leave him in peace... When she trotted purposefully to his front instead.
And then, she patted him on the head. Him, the heir to the Kakinouchi empire!
His hackles rose instantly at the patronizing gesture. "What on earth did you do that for?"
She blinked innocently, and gave a perfectly angelic smile. "Mama used to do that when I was crying! It always made me feel better!"
It was an infinitely odd tense to use, and compelled him to ask,"... Used to?"
Her bright smile didn't even falter. "Yep!"
"Doesn't... she do that anymore?"
"Nope! Papa said that Mama went to heaven, so she can't pat my head, or hug me anymore..." Her face fell just a little, in... Sadness? Longing?
He laughed roughly, the bitter sound strangely harsh in a ten year-old's throat. "There's no such thing as heaven."
"There is!"
"Is not."
"Is!"
He gave up, and drawing his knees up to his chest, buried his face in them. She 'buu'-ed her discontentment.
"When did she leave?" His knees muffled his voice.
She thought for a while, then replied cheerfully, "A year ago."
Does she really understand that her mother is dead? "... Stupid girl."
She huffed, "I'm not stupid!"
"Yes, you are."
"Mou-!"
He felt the ticklings of amusement in his chest, but couldn't muster the strength to laugh.
"... Ne, do you want to hug Bunny for a while?"
His head snapped up so quickly, a distant part of him wondered why his neck wasn't dislocated. The dominant part of him, however, was too busy staring incredulously at her. "Hug what?"
She held out the silly stuffed toy, her eyes ingenuously sincere. "He'll make you feel better."
He spent a moment gaping at her idiocy, before letting his head thud back against his knees. "No, he won't."
She shoved the sad affair of cotton and cloth insistently at him. "Mama gave him to me."
Why am I doing this? "... Ugh." Gripping the plushy distastefully by one battered ear, he held it out at arm's length, the way one might handle an alien object of dubious origins; or for that matter, cleanliness.
The bunny swayed dolefully in a cold gust of wind as she observed his discomfiture. "... You're supposed to hug him, not pinch his ears." She puffed one cheek petulantly at him.
He eyed her stubborn expression for a second, then sighed resignedly. Cautiously, with all the embarrassed incompetence of one unsure of how to go about... hugging, he folded his arms over it, curling it into his chest.
It was warm from being held by her, a cushy sort of comfortable resistance against himself. And to his astonishment, he found that she was actually right; its residual heat seeped through his belly in a soothing wave. Not the way coiling up against a hot-water bottle in bed felt, either. This warmth was like... Like being held by another person; reassuring, calming, a soft solidness his senses wholly welcomed.
She searched his face for a bit, then smiled in delighted satisfaction when no abhorrence registered itself on his features. Plonking back down onto the grass, she sighed contentedly and declared, with the artless wisdom of a child, "Hugging always helps."
The tears were beginning to flow again, and he fought desperately to stem them. I'm not going to cry in front of a girl who turns to a stuffed toy for consolation, and who thinks her deceased mother is watching over her from above the fluffy clouds...
The firm assertion of his self-discipline didn't help, and he turned his head away from her in a last attempt to salvage the tatters of his pride.
She crawled around to face him. He glowered at her, even as he sniffled pathetically. Would she leave him no quarter? "... What?"
She tilted her head sideways, comprehension flowering in her innocent eyes. "Did... your mama just go away, too?"
He scowled.
Not because he was genuinely angry, or because he was annoyed at the overly inquisitive girl, (although, he thought irritably, he should be, by all the laws of the natural universe) but because he didn't want to admit it, to either her or himself. Didn't want to put it into words... Not so soon, after his loss.
Amazingly enough, she got the picture. "Oh."
There was a rustle of grass and skirt as she got to her feet unsteadily, and he felt a detached - and quickly repressed - tug of disappointment that she was leaving.
She hugged him, her tiny chin resting on his head.
His heart bucked with surprise. "What are you...?"
"Hugging always helps!" Through the enthusiasm of her declaration, he recognized tears, and something sorrowful, encouraging, gentle; an understanding born from shared experience. Something he wanted to push away, and yet not, because the needy child in him was too strong and he was too weak... And maybe, maybe just a little because of the fresh scent of sakura blossoms and a warm touch, on a surreal spring day.
"... Stop crying all over my hair, you stupid girl."
"Am," she retorted hotly between sniffles, "not."
A tiny chuckle clogged his throat. "Are so... On both counts."
She moved away a little, and looked down at him with anxious eyes made bright by tears. "Ne, why aren't you crying?"
Warm liquid splashed onto his face as he looked up. Weariness seemed suddenly insurmountable. "Why should I be?"
A frown pursed her mouth. "You're supposed to cry when you're sad."
How very, very simple she made things sound.
"Besides," she added cheerfully as she hugged him again, and he knew what she was going to say even before she said it, "crying helps, too."
This time, when he felt the urge to smile, he did. It felt watery and wan and strange, but it was a smile nonetheless. "I'll try," he told her against her shoulder, and closing his eyes, willed the tears to come and slough the pain away.
He did not know how long he cried, nor how long he slept; but when he awoke, his tears had dried, night had fallen, and she was gone... But in his grip still lay the evidence of her presence, mere hours before.
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"Ahh!"
"And what misadventure should I expect from that this time, Mayura?" Loki, that detective friend of hers, turned another page of his book languidly, his small frame stretched out in his armchair.
Koutarou looked over at her from his own perch in another cushion-lined chair. It was one of those evenings he liked best; warm, cozy, quiet... Well, as quiet as it could get with both her and - what was his name? - Narugami around.
She appeared distraught. "I can't remember where I put my stuffed rabbit!"
The rustle of another page being flipped. "... As always, the... direction of your thoughts never fails to amaze me, Mayura."
"Mou, Loki-kun! That rabbit was important to me!"
"One would think that you'd take better care of it, then."
She pouted petulantly. "Mou... Loki-kun is so unsympathetic..."
"It was your own fault, was it not?" The four-foot boy deigned to arch an inquiring eyebrow at her, in that vastly superior manner that - quite frankly - had entire platoons of adults wanting to grind their teeth... Safely out of his sight, of course.
He returned to his own novel, carelessly crossing his left leg over his right. "Well, look at it from that rabbit's point of view. At least it has a chance of falling into more loving hands than yours."
"You make it sound like I maltreated him!"
From the corner of his eye, he spied the amused glint of the tantei's glance, and grinned. "No? Knowing you, you probably used him as a bolster when you slept, and drooled all over him..."
"I did NOT!" Color rushed to her cheeks in mortification.
"Dribbled pudding down his face while trying to feed him..."
"... Well..."
"Pulled on his ears when you were bored, perhaps?"
"..."
"And I seem to hear a guilty conscience." He shrugged with a smug flourish.
Narrowly, he dodged the pencil-case hurled at his head, but could not escape the hot abuse of her words as she railed at him and his insensitivity and oh, why do I even bother?
He saw the tantei sink a few inches into his chair, lifting one shoulder in an elegant shrug. Soon, they both knew, she'd tire of her accusations, and they'd get a few hours of peace while she sought out refreshment and a listening ear in the kitchen. It was a thought they both relished. For now, though...
Settling back into the plush embrace of the armchair, a brief smile touched the corners of his mouth, and he wondered whether he would one day remind her of that one damp afternoon of blossoms and tears.
Up three flights of stairs and two rooms to the right, buried behind a multitude of stern-looking books, a rather battered toy lay...
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Authoress : Well, I'm back! After a long, long hiatus in which I just couldn't muster enough energy to write.
I'll admit though. This piece was started almost a year ago, and just about completed... I simply finished it up. I'm going through the fear-inspiring period that nearly all writers experience, at one time or the other... The dreaded Writer's Block. And while I'm not short of ideas - my backlog of half-constructed snippets bear testimony to that - I just can't put them into a form that will satisfy myself! Grr...I hope you liked, or at least didn't hate, this piece. It just might be linked to another fic I have in mind, although not in any significant way... Nonetheless. Till next time! ;)
PS : A review would be very, very nice. :D Pretty please?
Edit : And it just shows how damn long I haven't posted a story, when I forget the disclaimer. Darn. I hope no-one sued me. TT mutters I just KNEW I forgot something...