The Troubles with Cat-Sitting

Hej! Here's to more adorable nonsense from my head today. :)..

On December 7th, a girl named Amu walked the long distance to the Tsukiyomi house, where she was instructed to care for the eldest child of the daughter to the head of a major cooperation named solely as EASTER. The boy's name was Ikuto and, after having been severely injured on account of the numerous days (years) of abuse, torment and neglect from his trusted guardians, Ikuto now was facing an unforeseen future of whether or not he could recover from the incident and make it out positively in the end.

...

It was these specific thoughts that continued to plague Amu's head until she had reached the house, had acquainted herself with Ikuto's mother, Souko Tsukiyomi and came to understand her role in this narrative of caring for Ikuto in a way in which she hadn't done before.

...

Amu POV:

After having set her backpack down on the ground near the brown, leather couch in the living room, Amu proceeded to walk up a small flight of wooden staircase leading to the second floor of the Tsukiyomi house.

To Amu, the setup of the house was rather peculiar; whilst the house appeared like a standard Japanese modern build, the inside was minimal in decor. In truth, the house did not give off the warm, loving vibes a family home would usually provide (at least that's what Amu thought). The setup of the house, the interior didn't seem to belong to a family but rather incited the belief that anyone who occupied the modern build were strangers amongst each other.

As Amu approached the second floor, she came across a small, vertical hallway dimly lit by the morning sun peeking through the closed curtains of a set of windows to the left. To her right, there were two doors, both closed with the opposite side also proceeding to occupy two doors in the exact same fashion.

As she wasn't sure which of these doors made it's way to Ikuto's bedroom, Amu opened the first door to the right and did a quick peek; it was a small standard bathroom, both with shower and bathtub.

The second door on the right was what Amu determined to be Ikuto's room as she heard a set of quiet snores from behind the door; as Souko had previously informed Amu that Ikuto had been sleeping before she departed, Amu quietly opened the door to the bedroom, making sure to avoid having the door SQUEAK unexpectedly from possible carelessness.

The door successfully opened with minimal disturbance; Amu walked slowly into the room.

The room was nearly dark, as the curtains of how many windows in the room covered the sun's light from entering and disturbing its occupant. The room wasn't big but the lack of furniture (similar to the living room) made the room seem more spacious, as there was only a small desk with a chair, a horizontal wooden drawer and a bed that made up the majority of the decoration to the bedroom.

However, as Amu took a better look at the bed, not only did she notice Ikuto sleeping peacefully under his blanket but that the actual bed had wooden frames surrounding the open space, as though the frames were placed to avoid Ikuto from falling out of his bed; the setup closely resembled a baby crib at most.

A small, bright light was positioned next to the bed frame where Ikuto's head was at, a little night light in the shape of a black cat.

Amu went to the edge of the make-shift crib and looked down at Ikuto, who was sleeping so soundly that there was a small trace of drool pooling out the side of his lip. He was cuddling the same cat toy the nurses gave him from his hospital visit and was currently sucking on a blue pacifier with tiny golden star emblems attached.

Amu carefully reached down to push some of the blue hair out of Ikuto's face, brushing her fingers gently across his forehead. He stirred suddenly, scrunching his face in sudden agitation before his facial muscles relaxed once more, and Ikuto drifted back into a restful slumber.

Resting her arms on top of the crib, chin underneath, Amu smiled down at Ikuto; for how cute he was now she wouldn't have ever expected a situation like this to befall upon the once mischievous, slightly- perverted teenager she once knew and grown to love.

Yet, she still couldn't imagine that Ikuto would have ever wanted this for himself, if given the choice to choose.

--

About two hours had passed of dismal silence for Amu until she heard a stirring, rustling sound coming from the nearby baby monitor resting on the glass-top coffee table in the living room. She had noticed another monitor in Ikuto's room resting atop his unused desk.

Whilst she had been working on her homework for school, which was coming up in a couple of days, Amu was keeping track of any strange sounds that would come from the baby monitor, thus prompting her to check on Ikuto once more.

The stirring soon increased to a quiet sobbing noise as Amu had placed her notebook on the coffee table and got up from the couch to head back to the bedroom Ikuto was in.

...

Entering into the room, Amu walked in to find Ikuto lying down in his crib but crying quietly, pacifier haven fallen out of his mouth at some point. He was clutching his cat toy, crying up at the ceiling with a low, muffled sort of wail.

Amu approached the bed and offered her hand to Ikuto to hold onto; he immediately turned his head in her direction and squeezed her fingers with his longer ones. His hiccups went on and off as Amu attempted to soothe him.

"Hi Ikuto, it's me- Amu. Are you ok? Why are you crying, huh?" Amu softly asked the boy as she tried to wipe some of his tears away. Ikuto didn't respond- an unfortunate but expected effect from the accident; loss of communication amongst many other issues that were becoming present to Amu now.

As she adjusted the height of the crib's wooden bars, Amu had gotten Ikuto to sit up (though with her assistance as informed by the doctor too). Once the bars came down, Amu swung Ikuto's long legs towards her and wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him up from the crib. Souko had shared that Ikuto wasn't walking on his own yet and would need to be carried room-to-room.

As was to be expected, Amu couldn't physically stand to hold the much heavier teen in her arms for more than a minute and thus had to resort to putting him gently down on an alphabet-style blanket on the ground of Ikuto's room.

It was, at this point in time that Amu started asking herself many questions mentally; what was causing Ikuto to cry?

Having created an imaginary list, she went through each to decipher the cause of Ikuto's crying.

1.) Is he hungry?

- whilst she didn't want to leave Ikuto unsupervised, Amu had grabbed a cold bottle of milk from the refrigerator and had brought it upstairs beforehand. Though he may had preferred a warm bottle, Ikuto turned his nose up at the bottle and continued to sob.

2.) Does he need a change?

- this task was preferably supposed to have been left for Tsukasa, who was unfortunately running late getting to the house to perform this necessary task.

Amu laid Ikuto flat on his back onto the blanket and attempted to check his diaper through his black jean pants he was sporting. With absolutely no shame of her blush appearing in sight, Amu quickly felt the diaper as best she could and unfortunately determined that a change needed to occur to hopefully make Ikuto feel better.

...

If a timer has been set at the moment Amu gathered the diapering supplies, she would have estimated that her first time changing Ikuto's diaper (or any for that matter- she was thankfully never tasked to do that in Ami's upbringing), it would have been roughly a whole 15 minute s of Amu trying to get Ikuto to stop squirming as she pulled his clothes off, threw the diaper away as quickly as possible, attempted the best she could with cleaning him (lots of this was done eyes closed and accidental touchings), and successfully putting a clean diaper on him.

It wasn't a fun experience for the both of them, as Amu wiped her forehead sweat away while putting the supplies away in their respective storage compartments and Ikuto laid on the blanket sucking on a small red teething ring for comfort.

Finding a spot next to Ikuto's head, Amu sat down and rubbed small circles on Ikuto's face; it was red and puffy from the tremendous amount of crying he had been able to produce (something that Amu didn't even know was possible coming from Ikuto!).

"I'm sorry, Ikuto. I know this experience wasn't fun but I just wanted to make sure that you would feel better."

Ikuto looked over at Amu, still continuing to suckle the teething ring calmly. Amu twirled Ikuto's hair in her fingers whilst rubbing the remaining tears away from his cheeks.

As she continued to soothe Ikuto, Amu thought to herself;

"What am I going to do? I don't know if I can handle this job! I love Ikuto; I want to help him as much as I can, but what if he never gets better?"

That, in the foreseeable future of the pink-hair heroine would be a continual question she would end of facing in multiple scenarios as she started to recognize the trouble with babysitting, or rather cat-sitting her teenage friend/lover.

--

Thanks for reading and come back for more as I continue to rewrite these chapters to the story!