Author's Note: Yay Chapter 9! In which Kazuki gets a Hello Kitty Band-Aid!
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Karen and Seiichiro were both working late that Thursday afternoon so Kamui found himself called upon to watch Nataku and Kazuki, as he'd learned the girl's name was.
When he had arrived, Nataku had informed him in a hushed voice that Kazuki was taking a nap so they had to be quiet. Kamui nodded in acknowledgement and agreement, even though he knew the little girl was down the hallway in her own bedroom with the door closed so speaking normally out here would have most likely been fine.
"Hey! Can we build a blanket fort onii-chan?" Nataku whispered excitedly.
Kamui shrugged. "Sure." He replied softly, wondering why he too was keeping his voice unnecessarily low.
"Awesome!" Nataku disappeared into his bedroom for a moment and when Kamui glanced in behind him he saw the boy pulling all of the blankets and sheets off of his bed. "The living room is best cuz it has couches and stuff we can put the blankets on." He told Kamui matter-of-factly. He carried his bundle of blankets into the other room and began tucking the edge of a blanket under the cushion before vanishing into the dining room and returning with a chair to drape it over.
Kamui joined him, unfurling the sheets and fondly remembering the times he, Kotori, and Fuuma had done this together as children. He frowned to himself, wondering again where Fuuma was now.
"What's the matter onii-chan?" Nataku leaned over from the armchair he had been tucking another blanket onto to peer at Kamui over a sheet that was hanging between them.
Kamui started, having forgotten about the boy for a moment. "Oh… nothing."
"Oh, well then can you hand me that blanket with the stars on it?" Nataku paused. "Oh- please? I almost forgot the magic word."
Kamui smiled and helped him place the rest of the blankets he had gathered, tying the corner of the last sheet to a bar stool.
The both stood in front of their creation to admire it. Nataku put his hands on his waist. "It's almost perfect!" He declared and Kamui tried not to chuckle as he watched the blankets sag in a haphazard mess across the room.
"Almost?"
"Yep. But it's missing something."
"What's that?"
"Us!" Nataku grabbed Kamui's hand and dropped to his knees to crawl under the blankets.
"Now what" Kamui asked, adjusting a sheet so that it didn't hang in his face as he crouched next to Nataku.
"Now we tell ghost stories!" Nataku announced. "Oh but wait… he ran out of the fort and a moment later the lights went out and Kamui poked his head out of the blankets.
"Nataku?"
A little light came on and the boy's face was lit by a flashlight. "Yeah?"
"Oh okay." Kamui realized what he was doing and settled back into the fort with him.
Nataku began animatedly recounting a tale of a ghost that haunted the playground at school, including his own shadow puppets, lit by the flashlight. "And that's the bear that ate her." Nataku informed Kamui, indicating the shapeless blob that his small hands had created.
"I see." Kamui nodded seriously.
"It ran away from the circus you see. It was scared of clowns."
"Clowns are pretty scary." Kamui agreed.
A soft scuffling sound came from down the hallway.
"Intruders!" Nataku whispered and stuck his head out of the fort to shine the flashlight down the hallway. Kamui looked around him.
"Onii-chan?" A small voice wavered with fear.
"Over here Kazuki, follow the light." Nataku called to her soothingly.
The little girl hesitantly toddled over toward them but unable to see very well, she tripped over a part of the blanket and fell. Kamui hurried over to pick her up as she began to cry and turned on the living room lights to see that she had a small scrape on her knee. He carried her into the bathroom and cleaned it up, putting a hello kitty printed Band-Aid on it. Soon she was smiling up at him again from behind the bear she always carried. He patted her head and helped her down off the counter, holding her hand as they walked back into the living room.
A part of the sheet had torn on the rough edge of the barstool that had cut Kazuki's knee and Nataku was holding up the stray strip of it with a strange expression on his face.
"I'm sorry Nataku, maybe your mom can sew it back together?" Kamui knelt beside him.
Nataku looked over at him and Kamui suddenly felt unsettled by the distant look in the boy's eyes.
"It's okay." He replied, his voice sounding far away and strangely older than his six years.
"Look, onii-chan! Hello Kitty!" Kazuki happily stuck her leg out for Nataku to see the Band-Aid, pulling him back into the moment.
"Cool! Hey, come on, we still have ghost stories to tell!" He dragged Kamui and Kazuki both back into the blankets.
Kamui settled across from the boy again and Nataku rearranged some pillows for himself to sit on. Kazuki stood, looking at them both as the covers brushed across the top of her white blonde head, clinging to a few pale strands of hair. She gave Kamui a shy look then, much to his surprise, settled into his lap, sticking her thumb back in her mouth and leaning a head against his chest contently. Not knowing what else to do with them, Kamui loosely wrapped his arms around her and waited patiently for Nataku to begin his next story.
"Once upon a time, there was a man who looked like a lot of different people. It depended on who looked at him what they saw." Nataku began and Kamui frowned, his thoughts sliding back to Fuuma.
"To one little girl, he looked like her father, and she decided to stay with him for that reason."
Kamui sat up a little straighter, wondering now where Nataku had heard this story.
"Then the little girl found a person who looked like her mother. But the man with the changing faces wanted to kill the woman because he wanted to hurt the person with the same name as him. The little girl didn't want the woman to die though, so she protected her. But the man who looked like her daddy killed her instead."
Silence echoed through the room, as Kamui scrambled for something to say.
"S'not a ghost." Kazuki pointed out around her thumb.
"Huh?"
"Has to be a ghost." She added.
"Oh, the little girl didn't become a ghost." Nataku answered.
"Where'd she go?" Kazuki questioned.
Nataku hesitated. "I don't know…"
The front door suddenly opened, startling all three of them.
"Daddy!" Kazuki slid out of Kamui's lap and crawled out of the blanket fort to run straight into Seiichiro's open arms as he knelt down waiting for her.
Kamui disentangled himself from the sheets and watched as Aoki picked her up and kissed her forehead, asking her if she had been a good girl and if she had had fun.
"Sorry about the mess." He added sheepishly when Aoki looked up at him.
"Oh it's fine." He smiled and reached down to stroke Nataku's hair as the boy wrapped his arms around his leg. "Nataku loves building forts, in case you haven't guessed by now."
The boy grinned up at him. "Hey daddy can we sleep in here tonight? It'll be like camping!"
"Not tonight, kiddo, but how about this weekend?"
"Kay!"
Kamui began taking down the blankets and folding them neatly.
"Thank you for watching them." Aoki helped him clean up and saw Kamui off after handing him a couple of bills.
Kamui walked home silently, thinking over what Nataku had said. Did he remember? He wondered. Or was it just at the back of his mind?
"Where'd she go then?"
Kamui remembered Nataku's funeral and how Karen had wept for him as he were her own.
"Daddy!"
Well at least Aoki wasn't going to kill either of them. Kamui couldn't decide whether to be happy that Nataku was safe this time around or concerned that he remembered such a violent previous life.
When he got home, he told Subaru about what happened as he helped him prepare dinner.
He paused in cutting up the carrots.
"Hey Subaru? If you and I remember and Kakyou's dreamed about what happened and Nataku's got some sort of vague memories… do you think the others do too?"
Subaru shrugged and pushed back his sleeves to wash some cabbage. "I dunno. It's possible. Have any of them acted unusual like Nataku did?"
Kamui didn't answer for a moment, staring at the faint bruises on Subaru's wrists.
Message received. He thought with an angry glare, then turned back to the carrot, chopping a little more furiously now. "No, none of them have acted strange."
"Then maybe they don't remember anything. Nataku's a kid, they tend to be really sensitive to the supernatural. You remember because it was you who made the wish in the first place. I think I only remember because I figured out what your wish was and I was right there when you made it. And Kakyou of course was a dreamseer so maybe some residual bit of that power slipped into him in this world?"
Kamui thought about this for a moment. "Kotori…"
"What about her?"
"She used to be a dreamseer too. Or had dreamseer abilities… Do you think she might remember too? Or dream about it?"
"It's in the realm of possibility."
Kamui recalled the day he had arrived at school and the look of surprise and recognition she had shot him but before he could tell Subaru about it, Seishirou entered the kitchen.
"I thought something smelled great when I walked in!" He smiled, checking the pot where some of the vegetables were already boiling. "Shall I lend a hand?"
Kamui reached past him to dump the carrots in, hoping they splashed him.
Seishirou gave him an amused look and stepped away to stand behind Subaru at the sink, wrapping his arms around him. He lightly ran his fingertips down Subaru's arms and over his wrists before helping him rinse the leaves, making sure Kamui saw.
Kamui glared and turned away to set the table. Why did Subaru have to like an abusive jerk like him?
All he's done is leave a couple of bruises on his wrists. Fuuma pinned you to the wall with a sword and broken glass. A voice at the back of Kamui's mind pointed out. And yet you're still looking for him.
Kamui tried to push the thought away.
"The man who looked like her daddy killed her instead."
Kamui shuddered.
No! That's not Fuuma! I have to find him, the real one, my old best friend. He told himself.
"Maybe… he doesn't want to be found."
He rested a hand on the table by the glass he had just placed there.
Is that true Fuuma? Do you not want me to find you? He had to admit, it was beginning to look like it.
But why?
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It was strange to feel this heavy and this weightless simultaneously, Satsuki thought to herself. Somehow or another Yuuto had discovered that although she had her own pool, she did not know how to swim. Oh, yes, that was right… He had wanted to take her to that water park as soon as it reopened when the weather was warm enough. When she had mentioned not knowing how to swim, hoping that would get her out of it, he had taken it upon himself to teach her.
She suspected it was just an excuse to use her pool but decided it did not really matter since it was not as if she used it herself.
Then again, here she was in it now, treading water. It had not been that hard to learn a few basic strokes and she certainly was not going to drown, but she still felt uncomfortable being in this much water.
"Do you learn everything that fast?" Yuuto questioned, floating lazily by on his back.
"Generally, yes." She wished she had her glasses, she didn't like the way things were blurred without them. Satsuki preferred her world to be clear cut.
"You really are a genius huh?"
Satsuki decided that was a stupid question and neither deserved nor needed answering. "How do you do that?"
"Hm? Float on your back?"
He never seemed to mind when she did not answer his questions. He never really seemed to mind anything. Satsuki wondered how he was able to so easily brush things off. It was as if insults slid off him like… like water.
"Here, I'll show you." He flipped over and made his way back toward her. "You just kind of lean back and let yourself float…"
She tried it but promptly began to sink and quickly put her feet back down on the solid, reassuring floor of the pool.
He shook his head. "You have to relax."
The next thing she knew his hand was on her back and another was reaching down behind her knees, lifting her easily.
"Just let the water carry you." He held her right at the surface of the water and she tried to relax but was distracted by how vulnerable she felt, lying on her back with him over her like that. Especially when she was already out of her element.
Yuuto noticed her tension. "It's alright. I've got you." He smiled at her reassuringly and she was surprised to find that her muscles were actually beginning to relax in response.
She closed her eyes, lay back and focused on the feeling of the water gently rolling under her and after a few moments she opened her eyes again to see that Yuuto had let go and she was floating on her own. She nearly panicked for a moment before she realized he was still close by, treading water next to her.
"See? Easy peasy."
"I think I have it now. Thank you."
He grinned then stretched out. She watched him swim a few laps himself as she practiced floating, rather enjoying the way his muscles flexed with each stroke…
At last he made his way back to her, chattering away about how she was going to love the water park. She listened absently, watching the water drip from wet tendrils of hair, wondering why with her dislike of water, she found that so damn attractive.
She jumped when he reached forward to brush a bit of her own hair that had gotten plastered damply to her cheek away. His fingers lingered for a moment and she decided to take advantage of the proximity and leaned forward, tasting the chlorine on his lips.
She had never kissed someone before. And she had never really planned to either, truth be told. She had never practiced it on teddy bears or her best friends or at silly parties with games like spin the bottle. But she had a feeling he'd be willing to teach her as they went along.
As usual, she was right.
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Never get involved in a land war in Asia and never argue with Satsuki. Both are losing battles.