Chapter 5
Tsuge was keeping an eye on the boys, Hiromi was hip-deep in little girls, and Haru was taking the chance to lie down on a picnic blanket and catnap in the sun.
A smile drifted onto her lips as she thought that. She had always liked catnaps, until she had gone to the Cat Kingdom and nearly turned into one. After that, it hadn't been so appealing. Here in the sun though, with the sound of her orphans playing just were she couldn't hear what they were saying, and the blanket atop the thick green grass… it was just about heavenly.
"If you like catnapping so much, maybe you should grow whiskers and a tail," suggested a slimy voice from somewhere to Haru's left.
She knew that voice. Cracking one liquid brown eye slightly, she saw him: the ex-Cat King. He was barely a foot away from her left elbow, and smirking hideously as he stood there, staring at her, on all four paws.
The woman also saw Baron leap up at the king's memory-invoking tones, his cane held at the ready, preparing to fight the moth-eaten looking monarch.
"Go away, I refuse to make time for your disgusting advances," she said, absently grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and tossing him in the general direction of the waste-bin.
"I would never have associated you with a throw like that, wherever did you learn it?" asked Baron, settling down once more by Haru's ear, his green eyes locked on the ex-king as he retreated under a cloud of depression.
"Children's shirts are really very useful when they get into fights. Without actually laying a hand on them, you can pick them up and separate them. After that, it's a matter of scolding, sending them to different rooms, and enforcing their punishment. His moggy-ness is much lighter than a ten-year-old," explained Haru.
The cat gentleman hadn't quite been sure that it was an explanation, until she had gotten to that last part about the ex-king being lighter than a child. Of course – she hadn't spent the last fifteen years doing nothing after all.
Baron sighed, almost painfully aware of how much of her life he had not been part of. He was about to lose himself in thought when the sound of a sigh escaping Haru's lips drew his attention back to her – though she always had it, it just became more focused sometimes.
"Is something the matter?" he asked gently.
"We are at a strange sort of impasse," she answered, turning her head slightly to look at the man... cat... one that she loved. "I can't love you properly because I'm neither cat, nor Creation – and I can't change because I have so many children depending on me. I couldn't, and wouldn't, ask you to change either – being a human can be so ridiculously painful sometimes, not to mention hard."
Baron was silent for a long time, just staring at the blanket beneath them.
"Being a human is really so hard?" he asked at last.
"Mmhm. That's why we're given so many years to get used to it, to numb ourselves to some of the harder things, to learn in and grow in. Even when we grow up, there's still a lot to learn. Every day brings it's own challenges and hardships, as well as joys. I don't recommend it."
Haru sighed again and shifted on the blanket, sitting up.
"I love you just the way that you are right now Baron. Promise me that you won't ever change?"
He felt a lump lodge in his throat, and a sickening weight on his chest as he thought about what she had told him, what she was asking of him. He wanted to find out for himself – just for a day perhaps, being human and holding Haru to him. Yet, she wanted him to promise to not change, to remain true to the way he had been created. He swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to smile. Hadn't he once told her something very similar?
"I promise Haru," he said, gently stroking her hand as they sat together.
The smile she gave him almost made him want to break that promise, just so that he could hold her, but … she didn't want him to change, and had said that she herself would like nothing better than to leave the human world behind. She was a woman now; she had experienced life and grown up. She wasn't a girl who clung to her humanity because it was hers, because she was frightened of what something else might bring.
"Always believe in who you are. I have done this, and I have nothing to fear, not even my heart when it twists inside me, ready to shatter at my own stubbornness," murmured Haru, lying down again and closing her eyes to doze in the sun.