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Chapter Text

Natori Shuuichi ✔️ @natori_shuuichi

I’d walk through fire for my brother. Well, not FIRE because it’s dangerous. But a super humid room. But not too humid, because my hair.

Shuuichi doesn’t actually pay attention to what happens on his social media—he has a whole PR team that does that for him—so he didn’t realize the Tweet had blown up until several days after he posted it. 

Lucky for him, Takashi is even less inclined to check Twitter than he is, or he would have definitely given Shuuichi shit for it by now. 

And then he’s sitting down for a quick interview on set, and the smiling young woman opposite him says, “There’s something everyone wants to know about your brother,” and Shuuichi has something like an out-of-body experience. 

Why are we talking about my brother? he almost asks, out loud, with his mouth, on camera. Takashi isn’t a forbidden topic, per se, but he’s also not something Shuuichi just flings around in conversation. 

Then the interviewer goes on, in a tone that says she’s clearly teasing, “Which is more important, for the record? Your brother or your hair?”

Oh. Oh. Shuuichi smiles, and leans back in his chair. He hopes it looks smooth and not at all panicked. His mind is racing cartoonishly, scrambling to piece together a response that draws as much focus away from the brother in question as possible. Takashi hates attention, and absolutely won’t forgive Shuuichi if his name starts Trending again. For a third time. 

“Well, let’s be realistic, here,” Shuuichi says charmingly. “One of us has to pay the bills, and he’s certainly not going to. Besides, Takashi is insured. It’s hard to find a premium for this, specifically.” 

He indicates his head with a twirl of his hand. The interviewer laughs, penning something down in her notebook and making a swift gesture at the cameraman behind her. She flips a page, moving onto her next topic or series of questions, and Shuuichi tentatively allows himself to feel some relief. 

It’s short-lived, because a second later, Sasago disappears from his line of sight with a flicker. There’s only one person she’s willing to abandon him for at a moment’s notice. Shuuichi’s heart plunges through ice, and he lurches to his feet.

There’s a jarring crash from the other side of the studio. A few voices cry out in alarm. 

“He’s okay!” one of the technicians calls to the room at large. And then, quieter, “Damn, that was a close call, kid.”

Someone mumbles in reply, a mumble Shuuichi would recognize anywhere, and he’s across the set before he’s conscious of moving in the first place. Everyone moves out of the way, and he finally lays eyes on Takashi, who’s sitting on his knees next to a fallen lighting rig that looks like it weighs at least twice as much as he does. There’s broken glass scattered around him and tiny crystals of it stuck to his jeans, as if to emphasize how close it came. Sasago is standing over him, her edges flickering with agitation. 

Takashi is clearly fine, not even as shaken as the pale-faced film crew around him seem to be, but that doesn’t stop Shuuichi from crouching down in front of him. He takes Takashi’s chin in hand and steers his face up until they’re eye-to-eye and says, in a tone that brooks no argument, “Are you hurt?”

I will sue everyone in this room if you’re hurt, he doesn’t say, but not because he won’t actually do it.

“No, it missed me,” Takashi says. “Sorry for scaring you, nii-san.”

Someone behind Shuuichi coos. And he gets it, the kid is adorable, but there’s a time and a place for being cute. He stands up, the shattered lenses crunching beneath his shoes, and then reaches down and bodily lifts Takashi up and over the mess to a clear part of the floor. 

Takashi starts to pat himself free of the clinging glass particles but Shuuichi stops him, laying a gentle hand on the crown of his head. 

“Don’t, you’ll get cut. Can we get a brush over here?” he adds, raising his voice in the direction of the wardrobe department. A stylist leaps to her feet and starts rummaging through a case the size of a steamer trunk. 

One of the writers makes his way over, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“I have no idea how that happened.” He frowns apologetically at Takashi, genuinely rueful, as far as Shuuichi can tell, and adds, “Takashi here was quiet as a mouse, as well-behaved as you promised he would be. The rig just came crashing down out of nowhere. I’m sorry, Natori.”

Shuuichi is the type to hold grudges. It is the easiest thing in the world for him to nurse resentment for even the pettiest of slights. But Takashi, his polar opposite in many ways, has an endless capacity when it comes to forgiveness and compassion and generally just being a better person than everyone around him.

Shuuichi doesn’t know who he gets it from. He’s hesitant to take any of the credit for raising this kid right.

Takashi says, “It wasn’t your fault, Haruta-san. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” 

He gazes up at Shuuichi with those big brown eyes, wide and imploring beneath an untidy fringe—something that has worked on Shuuichi for the last six years, and will probably continue to work on him for the next sixty. 

Ugh. 

“He’s right, Haruta-san,” Shuuichi says, playfully mimicking Takashi’s inflection of the man’s name. “No harm done. I think we’re going to head home for the day, though. A bit too much excitement for an old man like me.”

Haruta is less than one year younger than Shuuichi, and he rolls his eyes to show what he thinks of that sentiment. They’ve almost wrapped anyway, and Shuuichi isn’t needed on set for the rest of the weekend. The stylist finally makes her way over with a big clothes brush that she uses on Takashi’s shirt and jeans with quick, deft sweeps. Five minutes later, they’re collecting jackets and bags from Shuuichi’s trailer and making a quick, unnecessarily-sneaky escape through a side door. 

Halfway through the lot, Takashi perks up and runs ahead. “Sensei!” 

Sure enough, the ugly cat is waiting to greet him, already making loud noises about how annoying it was to sit around all day with nothing to do, nosing through Takashi’s pockets for treats and making demands for dinner. Through it all, Takashi’s little face shines with affection. It’s the only reason Shuuichi hasn’t tried inventing a ward that will keep that demon far away. 

When the boy is suitably distracted, Shuuichi tilts his head toward his shiki.

“Was it a yokai?” 

Sasago nods. “I took care of it,” she adds, as if there could be any doubt. She takes her babysitting duties seriously. Frankly, that’s the closest Takashi has ever come to real harm. 

Still. It was too close for comfort. 

Ahead of him, Takashi announces, “Sensei wants barbeque for dinner.”

“Sensei will be lucky to sleep inside tonight,” Shuuichi replies brightly. 

The cat squawks in outrage, and Takashi rushes to reassure him that even if he did get locked outside Takashi would just leave a window open for him, and Sasago sighs at all three of them collectively. They probably look ridiculous to whoever might be watching them make their noisy way down the street, but Shuuichi has more important things to worry about these days than his image. 

When he puts an arm around Takashi’s shoulders, the kid leans into his side, wholly trusting. It took years to nurture that trust, and Shuuichi doesn’t take a moment of it for granted. 

Not even the really annoying moments. 

Like the next morning, when Takashi’s best friend e-mails him a link (the subject line a glaring DUDE IT’S YOU!!!) and Takashi bursts into Shuuichi’s bedroom at seven AM, a towering storm of righteous fury contained in a scrawny eleven-year-old’s body. That opportunistic interviewer kept rolling yesterday after the lighting rig fell. The video of a frantic Shuuichi rushing to his little brother’s side, immediately after joking that he cared less about him than he did about his own hair, went viral overnight, and now Takashi’s name is Trending, again.

And because Shuuichi, as a general rule, does not learn from his mistakes, he Tweets about it. 

Natori Shuuichi ✔️ @natori_shuuichi

Teaching my brother how to read was a mistake.

Chapter Text

The year that Shuuichi turns fourteen, he meets a baby who can see ghosts. 

Okay, well, Takashi isn’t really a baby. He’s four years old, give or take. But he’s the tiniest person Shuuichi has ever encountered. And he’s sitting tucked away in a quiet corner of a quiet street, knees folded against his chest, face hidden in his hands, shoulders shaking as he does his best not to cry, because there’s a big ugly yokai screaming at him. 

Shuuichi jerks forward a few steps, impulsively, and then falters. The yokai is huge, twice as tall as Shuuichi and three times as wide. He’s never seen one this big before. 

For a brief moment, he panics. He doesn’t know what to do.

“Natori-dono,” a familiar voice says from just behind him, and Shuuichi’s panic floats away. 

He doesn’t have any shiki of his own. How could he? But there are a few that lurk around the Natori estate, leftover from a time when his clan was full of renowned exorcists. It’s nostalgia or some sense of lingering loyalty that makes them stay, even when no one in the family could see them anymore. They mostly keep to themselves. They’re kind of like very quiet neighbors. 

One of them took a liking to Shuuichi. When he was small, and his parents and cousins and distant relatives were all avoiding him—avoiding the bad luck he purportedly plagued them with—sometimes she would come down from the rafters and talk to him. Sometimes she was the only one who would talk to him for days. 

As he got older and started going places on his own, the shiki would follow him from faraway, like a sentry. She keeps the dangerous yokai from causing him trouble.

When Shuuichi looks over his shoulder, she’s hovering there watchfully. He’s never given her an order before, but he knows her contract name. She told him years ago. Maybe she’s been waiting for this all along. 

“Sasago, take care of this asshole,” he says, and she flies forward with a vengeance, her dark haori snapping around her body like wings. 

As she knocks the creature away and drives it back, Shuuichi is free to hurry forward and drop to his knees beside the child. 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he says lamely. 

When that doesn’t get an immediate reaction, beyond the kid curling up even tighter like a miserable little shellfish, Shuuichi tries to unwind his arms from around his head. 

He freezes when he sees the state of them, hissing between his teeth.

There are faint, fresh scratches on the flats of the kid’s forearms, as if he took a few tumbles over some asphalt. That much, at least, can be blamed on the yokai. But beneath those, there are also mottled bruises shaped like human hands, faint yellow and green and much too old to have happened today, crawling up and down his skinny arms. Those tell another story. 

Immediately, Shuuichi softens his touch. He stops tugging and instead lets his hands rest on top of the kid’s tense shoulders. 

“It’s gone,” Shuuichi says, aiming for a less frantic tone. Trying to remember the things he wished someone had told him when he was little and it was dark and there were monsters in his room. “You’re safe.”

After what feels like years, the little guy dares to lift his head. Behind an unruly mop of hair, his eyes are wide and dark. He’s got the look of someone who wouldn’t know what safe was even if it shook his hand and introduced itself. 

“I ran that ugly creep off for you,” Shuuichi tells him. “He won’t bother you anymore, okay?”

“You can see them, too?” the boy asks. Somehow, his eyes look even bigger. “No one else does. When things get broken, they think I did it. No one believes me when I try to tell them what really happened.”

Aw, this kid, Shuuichi finds himself thinking, pity sinking through his stomach like a stone. He doesn’t know how to lie. 

That explains the bruises. There are days when Shuuichi’s dad looks like he wants to hit him, too—and his dad has insider knowledge that ghosts are real. 

He sinks from his knees to sit cross-legged in front of the boy instead, even though the ground is kind of gross and damp. The boy blinks at him, and then mirrors his posture, and that’s…okay, that’s pretty cute. 

“I’m Natori Shuuichi,” he says, offering a smile. He’s out of practice, he doesn’t have a lot of people to smile at. But it must be alright, because even though he was clearly just scared out of his mind, the kid smiles back. 

He’s dirty and there are tear-tracks on his face, but he still says, as polite as you please, “I’m Natsume Takashi. Thank you for helping me.”

“No problem. My family used to be full of exorcists, you know, and that’s what exorcists do is help people.” More or less.

Shuuichi thinks of Amasaki, who comes back to the Natori estate again and again, even though he’s turned away every time, because he just wants to be helpful. Just wants to put his gift to good use. 

For the first time, Shuuichi thinks he gets it. Looking at Takashi and his little upturned face, Shuuichi wants to help. 

“Do you go to school around here?” he asks, eyes falling to the dirtied bookbag at Takashi’s side. “Were you on your way home?” When Takashi nods, Shuuichi says, “My middle school is a few blocks away. How about you wait for me by your gate after class and I’ll walk home with you from now on? That way the monsters leave you alone.”

He might as well have offered him the key to the city. Takashi’s whole face lights up, like it’s New Years come early, because somehow all the monsters that he lives with haven’t managed to snuff that light out yet. 

Shuuichi can’t do much. He isn’t an exorcist and he isn’t a grown-up. He’s not even in high school yet. But maybe he can do something. This one little thing. 

He offers Takashi his hand, and Takashi takes it. Together, they climb to their feet, and Takashi keeps holding Shuuichi’s hand like he forgot to let it go. Shuuichi doesn’t mind. Something tells him the kid doesn’t have a lot of people to hold onto. 

Sasago is waiting for them at the mouth of the alley, her blindfolded face giving nothing that she’s feeling away. Takashi shuffles a little closer to Shuuichi when he sees her.

Shuuichi doesn’t want to give him the wrong idea about yokai—doesn’t want to encourage him to cozy up with them when they’re clearly dangerous, evil enough to terrorize a child just for kicks—but he has to say something. Just so Takashi isn’t afraid. 

So he gives the kid’s shoulder a nudge and says, “That one’s okay. She works for my family.”

That concept goes over Takashi’s head completely, but he studies her with a little less fear. She studies him right back.

“She’s your friend?” he asks after a moment. 

“Sure,” Shuuichi says dryly, scooping up Takashi’s bookbag with his free hand and slinging it over his own shoulder. “That works.”

“Is he your friend, too?” Takashi asks next, and when Shuuichi glances down to see what he’s talking about, he realizes his living lizard tattoo is moving out from under his sleeve, down the length of his bare arm. 

Shuuichi almost snatches his hand back. His heart is pounding. Everyone who has ever seen the mark has looked at it with disgust and fear. All those experts his grandfather called in when Shuuichi was born called it a curse. 

But Takashi’s expression is bright and curious, and when the lizard circles Shuuichi’s wrist, head to tail, he laughs. 

“It looks like a bracelet,” he says, and gazes up at Shuuichi as though he’s the most amazing thing Takashi has ever seen. For a kid who can see a whole lot more than most others ever will, that’s a pretty high bar. 

And it’s that exact moment that makes up his mind, though Shuuichi won’t admit it, even to himself, for years.  

One way or another, he’s keeping this kid.

Chapter Text

It will take almost a full year to convince his father. 

Shuuichi has to throw around words like “recruitment” and “investment” and “contingency” that taste like ash in his mouth, feeling like some kind of sleazy salesman. 

But that’s what it takes to get the man’s flat refusal to move into reluctant consideration instead. 

Explaining Takashi’s situation at home—describing his bruises and the way he flinches when someone raises their voice—isn’t enough to make his dad think it over, but his own family’s health and safety certainly is.

Shuuichi paints him a picture of a potentially powerful protector, should those vengeful spirits they’re all so afraid of come knocking someday; and, if that fails, a fall guy. A patsy. Someone to take the blame.

This is as much as Shuuichi can do for now. 

In the meantime, he picks Takashi up from school, as promised. 

Sometimes they end up in the park where Shuuichi will help him with his homework, and sometimes they end up at a combini where Shuuichi will cajole him into spoiling his dinner with expensive ice cream. Sometimes Takashi will have marks on his arms from human hands, but at least there are none left there from random yokai anymore. 

He comes out of his shell more and more every day, like a brave little hermit crab. It’s amazing the difference it makes just having someone around who sees the same world he sees. It makes a difference to Shuuichi, too. It peels him out of his bitter, angry armor, piece by piece.

Now and then, they encounter some of Shuuichi’s classmates around town. He doesn’t talk to much of anyone at school—and no one goes out of their way to talk to him, either—but apparently he’s much more approachable when there’s a little kid clinging to his hand. 

“Is this your brother, Natori?” Hinata, a girl from his homeroom, asks one day. They ran into her outside the convenience store and her eyes lit up when she saw them. Crouching in front of Takashi with bright eyes, she coos, “Oh, he looks just like you! You both have such fair hair.”

Takashi glances up as if to gauge Shuuichi’s reaction to this assessment, but at that moment, apparently, the lizard chooses to slink across the bridge of Shuuichi’s nose. Takashi dissolves into giggles, and Hinata clearly thinks he’s the cutest thing since Cinnamoroll. She refuses to let them leave until she’s bought Takashi some candy. 

After that she seeks Shuuichi out in class to ask about his brother—and then somehow that evolves into heated discussions about a TV drama they both follow religiously—and within a month Shuuichi ends up with her cellphone number and a standing invitation to watch new episodes with her and her boyfriend every Sunday. 

“My life has gotten a lot weirder with you in it, kid,” Shuuichi tells Takashi one day, only half-joking. 

He’s sitting in the grass with his arms spread out in front of him while Takashi conducts an experiment with the lizard tattoo, asking yes or no questions for it to respond to—right arm being ‘yes’ and left arm being ‘no.’ So far nothing much has come of it, the lizard curled up in the hollow of Shuuichi’s throat instead, but it seems to like the attention. It keeps wagging its head or tail when Takashi talks to it. At one point it appears to roll over. This is a magical development as far as the kid is concerned. 

“Good-weird?” Takashi asks hopefully. 

Rolling his eyes, Shuuichi says, “Obviously. You don’t have a bad bone in your body, Takashi.”

Takashi beams, as delighted by that as he is by the stupid tattoo. 

“You should give the lizard a name,” Takashi adds a beat later. 

“Absolutely not.”

Then one day in late September, Shuuichi stops by Takashi’s school only to find out he never showed up that morning. Takashi’s homeroom teacher recognizes him and seems to have made the same assumption everyone else has made. 

“Your parents called him in sick today,” she says, looking faintly worried. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

Shuuichi doesn’t even remember to say goodbye. He just spins around and starts running. Sasago appears beside him, and he says, “Find him!”

For a shiki that doesn’t truly belong to him, she obeys swiftly. Takashi just has that effect on people.

Sasago has never had any trouble finding Shuuichi no matter where he goes. It’s not something he’s ever thought to test, it’s just something he counts on. He doesn’t know how he knows that she’ll be able to locate one little human in a city of about one million humans, but he knows she will. 

And she does. 

She returns to Shuuichi not even five minutes later and guides him to a nearby hospital.

He’s almost fifteen years old and entirely frantic, and if everyone is going to take one look at them and decide they’re family, then Shuuichi is going to make that work for him. 

“My little brother is here,” he says, his words coming out in unsteady lurches as he gulps for air. He doesn’t even have to fake the plea in his tone. He really doesn’t have to act at all. “Natsume Takashi, where is he?” 

Later on, he’ll scoff about the thin veneer of patient confidentiality, but he’s hardly going to complain about it now, as he’s almost immediately ushered down the hall. He outpaces the nurse when he sees Takashi’s name on a temporary door placard, and lets himself into the room without waiting for permission or approval. 

Some adults are lingering in the corner, talking in low voices, and they barely glance at Shuuichi when he barges in. Whatever, Shuuichi doesn’t care about them either. His eyes fly straight to his shiki, where she hovers protectively over a tiny figure huddled in the chair next to the window. 

Takashi has two black eyes and his arm is in a short cast. He doesn’t even lift his head when Shuuichi stumbles over to him.

“Oh my god, kid,” Shuuichi whispers. “Hey, look at me. Takashi?”

It takes a minute, but Takashi finally glances up at him through his fringe. Shuuichi sinks to his knees in front of the chair. It almost feels like the moment they first met, except it’s a different manner of monster that hurt him this time. And it’s not just cuts and bruises.

There are shadows in his face that have never been there before, ones that look as though they’ll cling to him permanently if no one does something about them. He seems so vacant and forgotten. None of the adults are even looking at him. It’s like no one sees him. He might as well be another ghost. 

“There’s nowhere else to send him,” one of the strangers by the door is saying grimly. “We might have to look into an institution.”

“Actually,” Shuuichi blurts loudly, “he’s coming with me.”

It turns out they have a lot of opinions about that but he doesn’t care. He scoops Takashi up and sits down in the chair Takashi was sitting in and holds him in both arms. Just refuses to get up or let go. His heart is rattling in his chest the whole time, but this is important. 

And Sasago is right beside them, where she always is. She’s ready to attack in whatever direction Shuuichi points her in. He won’t let it come to that, but it’s reassuring to have the option. 

Eventually, when it’s clear he won’t be reasoned with, someone calls his father. 

His father takes one look at Shuuichi and sighs. Shuuichi lifts his chin. His father calls the family attorney. 

Afternoon passes into evening. All the adults are having a heated, complicated-sounding conversation behind a closed door. When it becomes clear no one will be home in time for dinner, a receptionist stops by with sandwiches and sports drinks for Shuuichi and Takashi. Her eyes look ancient with sadness when she takes in Takashi’s battered little face. 

Takashi’s guardians finally show up when the supervising doctor and the Natori attorney start making noises about getting the police involved. By now, Takashi is asleep, but Shuuichi is still wide-awake. He glares at them with all the hate he keeps saved up in his heart for monsters. They don’t even glance at the boys on their way past.

“He’s a clumsy kid,” Shuuichi overhears the woman saying frantically, through the door she and her husband left cracked open behind them. “He fell down the stairs.”

Bullshit, Shuuichi thinks, and is surprised to hear his father say it at the same time. 

“Apparently the child has made quite the impression on the staff here,” their attorney says amiably. You’d never guess how blood-thirsty he actually was from his tone. There’s a reason the Natori family keeps him on retainer. “We’ve got quite a few people willing to come forward if this situation goes to court. Maybe there’s a way we could settle this peacefully.”

By midnight, all the papers are in order. Bureaucracy moves quickly when you have enough money to throw at the right people. Takashi’s guardians sign him away like he’s a used car they don’t want anymore and arrange a time to drop off all of his possessions, and that’s it. 

Shuuichi is no longer an only child. 

It might not stand up if a long-lost relative comes along and presses for custody, but relatives like that seem to be in short supply in Takashi’s family. 

“He’ll be your responsibility,” his father says on the ride home, as if he’s not talking to a teenager who shouldn’t even be responsible for himself, let alone a five-year-old. 

Shuuichi nods anyway. Takashi is asleep against his side again, a heavy reminder. Shuuichi will do whatever he has to. He’ll be whatever he needs to be. 

He promised Takashi he would keep the monsters away, and that’s what he’s going to do.

Chapter Text

Yousuke Takuma looks like he regrets inviting the Natori brothers into his house. They tend to have that effect on people.

“I shouldn’t be reading these,” he says in a very calm tone. “These are the sacred property of your clan. They shouldn’t even have left your property.”

“It’s not like anyone is going to miss them,” Shuuichi replies plainly. “My grandfather still thinks I can’t get past the locks on the storehouse door. Even Takashi can get past those, and he’s eight.”

“Sometimes I just ask Urihime to get me the keys,” Takashi admits. “She doesn’t get along with grandfather so she likes having an excuse to take stuff from him.”

It’s a nice way of saying ‘she fucking hates him’ but Takashi is a nice person. 

The kid is chronically honest. Always has been. He’ll strive to frame it kindly, but the truth is all you’re getting from him. It can be annoying, but mostly it’s pretty funny, and at the end of the day Shuuichi is glad that Takashi doesn’t feel the need to lie or make up stories. Even about the really unbelievable things. He just says what he’s thinking, because he knows it’s the truth, and his big brother will back him up if anyone gives him any trouble.

Shuuichi doesn’t have a lot in his life to be proud of, but he’s proud of that. 

The right people don’t care if a little kid tells ghost stories, anyway. Hinata thinks they’re great. She keeps threatening to write them all down and adapt them into her first screenplay.

Takuma puts his face in his hands. Across the room, Tsukiko giggles, clearly not as focused on her homework as she would like for the rest of them to believe she is. Ginro sets a tray of tea down on the table and gives Shuuichi a stern look for having the audacity to stress her master out so soon after his injury. Chastened, Shuuichi lifts his hands in apology. 

“If you really don’t want to look at them, I’ll put them away,” he says. “But I trust you not to—run off with them and patent them under your name, or whatever it is you think I should think you’re going to do.”

That works a huff of wry laughter out of the man, and he looks up at Shuuichi with a warm expression. It’s the way Shuuichi thinks his dad might have looked at him if he’d been born a proper son.

“Lunch first,” Takuma says, “then we’ll take a look at this paper magic of yours. Though if a couple of little geniuses like yourselves can’t figure it out, I don’t know what you think this old man will be able to do.” 

He adds the last bit with a smile for Takashi, who beams up at him from where he’s been not-so-subtly sneaking Jinbe rice crackers. Jinbe is the most unsettling of Takuma’s three familiars, but he’s also—to Shuuichi’s resignation—Takashi’s complete favorite. It appears to be mutual.

“You’ve kept your promise, haven’t you?” Takuma asks after a moment. “About staying away from those meetings?” 

Shuuichi sighs performatively. “Of course I have. It’s not like I could bring my brother with me, and he’d hardly just stay home. He’s very disobedient.”

Takashi scoffs. “Hinata-neesan says I’m your most redeeming quality.”

“Nowhere in there does she mention ‘obedient,’” Shuuichi replies without missing a beat, and grins when Takashi makes a face at him. 

“Alright, alright,” Takuma says, laughing properly now. “As long as you’re keeping your word, I don’t care about why.” He pushes himself up to his feet, moving a little stiffly, and smiles at his daughter when Tsukiko hurries over to take his arm. “There should be some margherita pizzas in the chest freezer. I bought them on a whim the last time I was at the supermarket. Should we try them?”

Of course they should. Takashi scoops the last of the cookies off the table and piles them neatly in Jinbe’s greedy hands, even though Takuma sighs and makes noises about spoiled shiki. Tsukiko gives the disappearing treats a bit of an odd look, but she seems more fascinated to be in the company of spirits than unnerved.

Shuuichi is beginning to think that his relatives are just bad people. 

“By the way, have you made any progress on,” Takuma starts, and finishes with a nod towards Shuuichi’s arm. 

The lizard is scurrying around in busy little circles, as if it’s feeling restless. Shuuichi covers it with his hand, something that sometimes works in calming it down, like putting a blanket over a bird cage. In this case, it crawls onto his hand instead and resumes scurrying there. Weird little thing.

“I still have no idea what it is,” Shuuichi says ruefully, “but Takashi is trying to teach it tricks.”

Takuma stares at him, and then at his brother. Takashi offers, “It knows ‘roll over’!”

“Go,” Shuuichi’s mentor says firmly, pointing them down the hall. “Kitchen. Lunch. We’ll discuss this later.”

A knock on the door interrupts their noisy exodus, and Takuma frowns. Clearly, he isn’t expecting company. The amiable man’s posture tenses as he gestures for Tsukiko, Shuuichi and Takashi to stay put. Ginro and Benihimo flank him on his way to the front door. 

Exorcists tend to be a paranoid bunch.

But with a dangerous ayakashi on the loose, Shuuichi thinks, with a prickle of unease all his own, maybe it’s better safe than sorry. 

“Urihime, go collect all our scrolls and put them in my bag,” Shuuichi says swiftly. “Sasago, stay right here.”

His shiki both nod, and Urihime disappears. 

Tsukiko is picking up on the atmosphere, even if her eyes aren’t the same as theirs. Even normal humans have a sixth-sense sense for certain things and it’s not to be taken lightly. She shifts nervously, and something in Shuuichi’s chest goes warm when he realizes she’s put her arm around Takashi’s shoulders protectively. 

“Seiji?” Takuma asks. His voice is raised in surprise, carrying from the genkan. “What on earth are you doing here?” 

Relief and dread fight each other in the pit of Shuuichi’s stomach. Dread wins. He’s only encountered Matoba Seiji twice, once at the summit he inadvertently followed Amasaki to, and then again in passing for a few minutes in the woods, but those brief meetings were enough. 

Even normal humans have a sixth-sense for certain things. Usually danger. 

“Tsukiko,” he says casually, “can you and Takashi go get lunch started?” 

To Tsukiko’s eternal credit, she doesn’t hesitate. “Of course. Takashi, will you help me? Dad buys so much weird stuff when he goes shopping that it might be hard to find the pizzas.”

Takashi gives Shuuichi a look that says, very clearly, that he knows when he’s being fobbed off. Shuuichi ruffles his hair in a way that ruins the careful work Sumi-san (the only member of the Natori house staff who will still talk to either of them) put in that morning with half a dozen bobby pins. Now it flops into Takashi’s eyes and he makes an outraged sound, reaching up to shove Shuuichi’s hand away. 

“I’ll fill you in later,” Shuuichi says. “Promise.”

That’s enough for Takashi. Mollified, he trails after Tsukiko without argument, and with only one curious look over his shoulder. Jinbe drifts after them watchfully, and probably only partly in hopes of more snacks. Sasago remains at Shuuichi’s side, a stalwart presence that he’s come to depend on. 

It’s Shuuichi’s job to keep the monsters away. Whatever form they might take. 

Takuma looks irritated as he leads Seiji into the sitting room. With a nod of his head, he invites Shuuichi inside, too. The tea tray from before has vanished, a new one sitting in its stead, and Shuuichi notes with some inward amusement that Ginro didn’t lay out any snacks this time. 

“Well, what do you know,” Seiji says, as enigmatic as ever. “Shuuichi-san, I never would have expected to find you here.”

It’s impossible to tell what this guy is actually thinking. 

“Did you come by to check on Takuma-san, too?” Shuuichi asks. He has to work to keep his tone from biting, but he manages it.

“In a sense,” Seiji replies politely. “I was hoping to find out more about the ayakashi that attacked him. Going after it before it hurts anyone else is an exorcist’s job, don’t you think?” 

It’s bait, as clear and obvious as a cricket dangling from some fishing line. If he were still the bitter brat he used to be, maybe Shuuichi would have risen to it fiercely, like a tide, surging and crashing against Seiji’s unchanging stone facade. He would have said, ‘You don’t care about helping people. You called Takuma-san weak. You’re just looking for someone to use.’

Which is all perfectly true, and perfectly justifiable reasons to not want to drink tea with this guy and discuss the differences in their conventions, but it’s not like calling Seiji out would do any good. It probably wouldn’t even be satisfying. He would just gaze at Shuuichi with that stupid cat-that-caught-the-canary expression and make him feel like an idiot for existing.

He gets enough of that at home, thanks. 

“You’re right,” Shuuichi says mildly, with a smile of his own, “that is an exorcist’s job.”

Takuma eventually tells Seiji what he wants to know, clearly having given up on keeping the teenager away from exorcist summits and dangerous ayakashi, but he does afterword his information with warnings to be careful. 

Urihime sets Shuuichi’s bookbag beside him and he nods his thanks. Seiji clocks the two-second interaction with sharp eyes. 

“Look at that! You have a servant?” His eyes follow her when she moves to stand next to Sasago, next to both of Takuma’s shiki along the side of the room, and he whistles. “Two servants. Pretending to be an exorcist on the sly, are we, Shuuichi-san?”

More bait. Another cricket. Shuuichi sips from his teacup. “They belong to my family. I don’t know why they follow me around. They must be bored.”

All of which is true, technically. Takuma’s eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline, but he doesn’t comment. Sasago turns her head very slowly, and her eyes, hidden beneath their blindfold, seem to bore into the side of his head. Urihime is less subtle and outright hisses at him. 

“Hmm, jury seems to be out on that,” Seiji says, and laughs. 

The sitting room door rattles open and Tsukiko peers through. Shuuichi’s fists clench in his lap, because sure enough, Takashi is right behind her, his brown eyes peeking curiously into the room. 

“Sorry, papa, but is your guest staying for lunch, too? Only, I don’t know how many pizzas to put in.”

“No, no, I couldn’t impose,” Seiji says. “I’ll get going and leave you guys to enjoy the rest of your afternoon. It looks as though you were having a pleasant time before I barged in.”

We were, Shuuichi thinks, but he keeps it to himself. He and Takuma stand up to see Seiji out. Seiji pauses when he spots Takashi behind Tsukiko, and his amicable expression takes on an edge that Shuuichi can’t define. He looks more engaged now than he did during the entire conversation with Takuma. 

“Hello again,” Seiji says in a pleasant tone. 

“Excuse me?” Shuuichi interjects loudly. “‘Again’?”

“Hi,” Takashi replies at length. His gaze is fixed on Seiji’s face as though there’s something interesting happening there. Jinbe drifts like a shark behind him, mask pointed towards Seiji suspiciously.

“As I thought, you have good eyes,” Seiji remarks, whatever that’s supposed to mean. He looks across the room at Urihime and Sasago, down at the bag by Shuuichi’s feet, at the lizard mark curled up on his arm, and then finally up at Shuuichi himself. Smiling widely, he adds, “I look forward to seeing what becomes of the Natori clan.”

Takuma escorts him out properly, and Tsukiko goes back to deal with the pizzas. Alone save for a scattering of trusted ayakashi, Shuuichi kneels and beckons his brother over. 

“C’mere, squirt.”

Takashi crosses the room to him. Standing in front of Shuuichi like this, they’re almost eye-to-eye. 

“Have you met that guy before?” Shuuichi asks. 

“Only once. It was when you had classroom duties and Hinata-neesan took me to the 7-Eleven to get chicken nuggets,” Takashi explains. “We met Matoba-san while we were walking. He said he was your friend.”

“I don’t have any friends.” 

Takashi nods very seriously.

“That’s what Hinata-neesan said. She took out her pepper spray and waved it at him. I think Matoba-san thought that was funny, but he said he didn’t mean to upset her, and he left. It was the right thing to do, probably, because he didn’t have any spirits with him, and Urihime was getting annoyed that he was talking to me.”

Shuuichi feels like he’s aged thirty years in the past three minutes. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes hard enough that there are spots in his vision when he looks up again. 

“Takashi, listen,” he says, “stay away from him. If he ever approaches you for any reason, tell me about it, okay? Promise?”

He holds out his pinky. Takashi rolls his eyes, much too grown up at eight years old for things like this, but he hooks his finger around Shuuichi’s gamely. 

“Whoever lies has to swallow a thousand needles,” they recite together, and then Shuuichi ruffles Takashi’s hair again just to make him squawk. 

“Sorry about that, boys,” Takuma says when he comes back. 

He pauses in the doorway and his bandaged face creases in a smile to see them rough-housing playfully, Takashi struggling to free himself from Shuuichi’s headlock, the tense atmosphere from before banished like an errant spirit.

“Bring those scrolls with you to the kitchen,” Takuma says warmly, “and I’ll help however I can.”

Seiji can think whatever he wants about Takuma, but the man is clever. By the time Shuuichi and Takashi are ready to leave, packed up with a leftover pizza and some cookies for the road, they’ve puzzled out the array that they were stuck on and Shuuichi managed to make a paperman fly. 

Takuma had looked over the notes he’d taken ruefully. He couldn’t help but absorb some of the practices for himself as he helped the boys study them, and clearly he felt guilty about that. Shuuichi leaned forward across the table and caught his eye. 

I trust you, he wanted to say. You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father. But there was absolutely no way Shuuichi could say something like that. Not out loud, with his mouth, where someone might hear him. 

“Clan trade or not, if you’re ever in danger and any of this paper magic could help you, I want you to use it,” he said instead. “No secret is worth keeping if it means you get hurt. Right, Takashi?” 

“Right,” Takashi piped up, his little voice clear and bright in that sunny kitchen. He was watching intently as his paperman wobbled precariously across the table, trying to carry a note to a delighted Tsukiko, and didn’t bother looking up even as he added, “It’s just paper, ojisan.”

“Yeah, ojisan,” Shuuichi teased laughingly. 

Takuma rolled his eyes, but gave in with a smile, as if he couldn’t help but be charmed by their noisy, obtrusive presence in his home. For a second, even though he was clearly the one who had gone out of his way to help them—wasting an entire day working with them on magic he didn’t fully approve of them studying in the first place, an entire day he should have spent recuperating—Takuma looked as though they were the ones who had done him a favor, just by being there. 

“What did Seiji mean when he said you had good eyes?” Shuuichi will remember to ask his brother a little later, when they’re walking home. 

“Oh, I guess because I noticed the weird mark on his face,” Takashi says. 

“Weird mark? What did it look like?”

Takashi hums thoughtfully, glancing around. He trots off the road a little bit to pick up a stick, then crouches in the dirt and starts drawing a strange, crooked symbol. Shuuichi leans over him to watch.

It’s not a symbol he’s ever seen before. Yokai writing, if he had to guess. 

“What does it mean?” he asks the shiki. 

Sasago drifts over and inspects the drawing, her face giving nothing away. 

“‘Something owed,’” she translates after a moment. “I think the closest human word would be ‘debt’.”

“Huh,” Shuuichi says. He offers Takashi a hand and hauls the kid back upright, frowning thoughtfully. “And you said it was on his face?” 

“Yup, above his right eye. Didn’t you see it?” A thread of anxiety works its way into Takashi’s voice that Shuuichi is quick to smother. 

“I didn’t have my glasses on,” he says smoothly, “so I must have missed it. You know your eyes are better than mine.”

Takashi grins up at him, appeased, and they spend the rest of the walk playing with bits of talisman paper. It’s habit by now to keep their pockets stuffed full of scraps. Shuuichi manages to make a couple of them fly, and Takashi claps his hands together in glee every time.

To anyone who might be watching, it probably looks like the wind is catching the scraps and lifting them out of their hands instead of the shaky first steps of magic it really is. There won’t be anything to question about the sight of two brothers, taking their time getting home to a place where no one is waiting for them, laughing and jumping as they try to catch those floating pieces of paper.

Chapter Text

Hinata takes one look at them and says, “Holy shit. Get in here, Natoris.”

So they must look pretty bad, then. 

Takashi is uncharacteristically quiet, going right to the sofa and gathering Hinata’s cat up in his arms. 

Hinata watches him for a moment, turns and stares directly into Shuuichi’s face, and then heads into the kitchen to snatch up a takeout menu that she keeps permanently stuck to the front of her fridge under a huge Cinnamoroll magnet.

“Sit,” Hinata says with a jerk of her chin towards the table. She tucks her cellphone between her shoulder and her ear and unfolds the paper menu with a business-like snap. “I’m ordering enough junk food for all three of us, and then you’re going to tell me why you look like that. ”

Shuuichi sits. 

Hinata lives with her single mother, who works thirds, and her aunt, who doesn’t work but often has somewhere else to be. It’s unlikely either of them are going to make an appearance tonight.

The TV is on in the living room, playing what sounds like Sailor Moon. Takashi is watching it just because it’s already on, but he’s slowly becoming more invested the longer he sits there—Shuichi can tell from the way his hand on the little cat in his lap slows its petting, the way his round brown eyes become fixed on the screen. The sounds of traffic and rain outside are muted, the outside world hardly existing past what little pieces of it make it through the open window in the kitchen. 

It’s peaceful here. It’s almost home, even.

Hinata puts the phone down, sits across from Shuuichi, and crosses her arms on top of the table. Her silence is expectant.

Shuuichi says, “I don’t think I’m going to university.”

His friend inclines her head, an invitation to go on. 

“The university my father wants me to go to is almost two hours away from here,” Shuuichi says, clenching his fists. “And it wouldn’t be possible for Takashi to transfer there, because someone in the school district administration is a cousin of his or something. Word got around about his behavior, and they don’t think he’d be a good addition to their student body.”

“Takashi’s relatives haven’t had anything to do with him since he was five,” Hinata says hotly. “What the hell do they know about his behavior? He’d be the best thing to happen to that school in the last hundred years.”

Shuuichi, who completely agrees with her, says, “You’re biased.”

“I’m right.” She taps her fingers anxiously against the table. “Let me guess, your dad—”

“Doesn’t see the problem. Told me I was going anyway.” Shuuichi barks a tense, humorless laugh, sitting back and pushing a hand through his hair. “Could you imagine? Me, leaving Takashi in that house, with those people? With no one but ghosts to talk to?”

It was inevitable that Hinata would find out about Shuuichi and his brother’s ‘gift,’ given how much time they spend together and all the odd things Takashi says on a daily basis. The most remarkable thing to come of the ultimate reveal was the solid three months she spent relentlessly trying to bribe, coerce and blackmail Shuuichi into using his paper magic to send her notes during school hours, because they were put in different classes in their third year. 

Now, she frowns deeply, and says, “No. That won’t do. So what’s the plan?” 

“I’m working on it,” Shuuichi replies. 

“I would be okay,” Takashi pipes up. Shuuichi looks up to find his little brother standing by the table with wide, grave eyes. He’s tugging anxiously at the cuffs of his sleeves. The worry on his face doesn’t belong there. It doesn’t fit someone his age. “If you had to go.”

Shuuichi pushes his chair back and lifts his arm. Takashi rounds the table and allows himself to be tucked against Shuuichi’s side snugly. 

“Maybe you would, but I wouldn’t,” Shuuichi says. “I’d miss bugging you too much.”

“I mean it,” Takashi says stubbornly. “I don’t want you to get yelled at anymore.”

“I mean it, too,” Shuuichi replies. “Dad can yell all he wants. You’re stuck with me, squirt.”

Saying it out loud settles something anxious that’s been rattling around in his chest. Knowing what he has to do makes it easier to focus on the steps that come next. For now, he tilts to the side so that he can rest enough of his weight on his little brother that he starts to sag underneath it.

“Nii-san! Stop, you’re heavy!”

“What was that?” Shuuichi says loudly, tilting farther, half out of his chair at this point. “I’m heavy? Is that what you said?”

The doorbell rings, and Hinata says, “No no, I’ll get it, don’t let me interrupt your intricate bonding rituals,” which is a cue that they should stop messing around and go help her carry in the frankly staggering amount of takeout bags a weary-looking delivery boy is wielding on the porch. 

“Munchkin, will you get some glasses and the iced tea?” Hinata asks. “Let’s eat in front of the TV like slobs.”

Takashi slides back into the kitchen, skidding a little too far in his socks and knocking the paper towels off the counter, and Shuuichi snorts. It feels like the first time he’s smiled in a year. 

Hinata touches his arm. “Hey,” she says seriously. “I’m going to visit Isamu on Thursday, and I’m staying for about a week. You two should come with. Stop thinking about all this stuff for a bit and give yourself a break.”

“I don’t want to bother you guys—”

“Try not to be an idiot for once in your life,” Hinata says with an exaggerated air of total exhaustion. “You know it wouldn’t be a bother. Besides, Isamu has a little sister Takashi’s age, and she’s into all kinds of weird stuff. They’d probably get along like a house on fire.”

Shuuichi thinks a week in the country sounds pretty good, actually. He’s mulling it over when Takashi comes running; with a stack of colorful plastic glasses in one hand, a pitcher of tea in the other, and a box of Koala March tucked into the crook of his elbow.

“Can I have these, nee-san?” he asks brightly. He looks nine years old again instead of ninety, all that worry from earlier finally unseated. 

“Oh, I guess,” Hinata says with deep reluctance, as if she didn’t buy them specifically for Takashi in the first place. She doesn’t even like chocolate. “Dinner first, though! Put those koalas where I can see them!”

She cares about Takashi like it’s effortless. Like it just makes sense to make space for him in her home and keep his favorite snacks in her kitchen. Considering the place they came here from, it disarms Shuuichi completely.

“We’ll go with you,” he says without thinking.

“Of course you will,” Hinata replies immediately. “I was only asking to be polite. Now eat your food.”

And that’s how they wind up in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto, of all places. It’s unmistakably beautiful but Shuuichi only gets a brief moment to appreciate the scenery before Hinata is dragging him—and by extension, Takashi—out of the station to the street outside, where a familiar face is waiting. 

She releases Shuuichi in order to fling herself bodily at Isamu, who doesn’t so much as bat an eye. Hinata is much taller than her boyfriend, which Shuuichi thinks is just typical of Hinata, but Isamu doesn’t care. She could be seventeen feet tall and weigh a thousand pounds and he would still find a way to hold her. 

“Hey,” he says over her shoulder, lifting one hand to wave at the Natoris. “Hug train is pulling out of the station, get yours before it’s gone.”

Laughing, Shuuichi says, “I’m good. Takashi?”

“No, thank you,” Takashi says politely.

“Your loss.” Hinata sniffs, and busies herself with picking up the bags she’d flung to the ground. “Is your sister at home?”

“Mhm,” Isamu says, taking one of Takashi’s bags and slinging it over his own shoulder. “She’s shy. I’m amazed she agreed to meet you guys at all. Bribery was involved.”

Takashi shuffles, glancing sideways at Shuuichi. 

“I’ll bet you two-thousand yen that you’re best friends by the end of the day,” Shuuichi says at once, to make the situation a win-win. That always works.

Sure enough, Takashi holds out his hand. “Deal.”

They shake on it solemnly. 

Isamu gives Shuuichi a deeply approving look and says, “I’ll have to remember that one.”

Tooru and Takashi are actually best friends within about an hour and a half. 

Once the Natoris have been settled into a large guest room and wandered around on a cheap tour of the estate, and Hinata has dumped all of her stuff in her boyfriend’s bedroom, Isamu drags Tooru out of hiding to eat a late lunch with them. 

Tooru shuffles into the chair across from Takashi and makes her polite introduction, and then mumbles that she only has a couple of friends so she isn’t sure what they ought to talk about. Takashi blithely replies that he doesn’t have any friends, because he can see yokai and people tend to think that’s strange. Shuuichi and Hinata are both frozen, holding their chopsticks halfway to their mouths as they wait to see which way this is going to go, but Isamu just takes an unhurried sip of tea.

And then Tooru lunges across the table to seize Takashi’s hands, shouting, “You can see yokai? You have to come meet my grandpa!” and all but drags him out of the kitchen, their lunches left untouched. 

“You might never get your brother back,” Isamu says mildly. “That’s okay, there’s enough space here for two little weirdos.”

“So you believe in ghosts now?” Hinata demands. 

“I don’t believe in things I can’t see for myself,” Isamu replies. He waits a beat, rolling a thought around in his head like a marble, and then adds reluctantly, “But if three people I trust can see them, maybe that’s just as good. I already apologized to gramps for thinking he was just a delusional old man.”

“You did not say that to your grandpa,” Shuuichi says, horrified. 

“I didn’t say it, I just said I was sorry for thinking it.” Isamu sits back in his chair, frowning at his plate. “Tooru never needed any proof. She believes him just because she loves him. I think there’s value in that. Figured I’d give it a try.”

When Shuuichi tracks the kids down later, they’ve multiplied. Sasago and Urihime are supervising as Tooru, Takashi, and two little boys of a similar age chase each other around the garden, a half-dozen little yokai running underfoot. 

Takashi spots him and brightens, breaking away from the game to jump up onto the porch and slam into Shuuichi’s side. Shuuichi ruffles his hair, because it’s already a windswept mess, and it makes Takashi wrinkle his nose in annoyance. 

“Taki-ojiisan wasn’t feeling well, so he’s taking a nap,” Takashi explains. He’s flushed from the sun and grass-stained. “We had fun, though. All of his yokai friends had lots of things they wanted to say to him so we played telephone. Mostly they were teasing him, which didn’t seem very nice, but it made ojiisan laugh a lot.”

“And who are those two?” Shuuichi asks, nodding at the unfamiliar boys. 

“Tooru’s friends from school. They were coming by to see if Tooru wanted to go to the river with them, and she introduced me.” Shyly, Takashi adds, “They’re nice.”

“Hey!” the russet-haired boy calls over. “Are we going swimming or what?” 

“Can we, please?” Tooru asks, folding her hands together.

His brother gazes up at him with eyes that are big and hopeful, a look that has worked for him for years. Shuuichi shakes his head ruefully. 

“As long as you stay with Tooru, and don’t let your phone get soaked,” he says sternly. “And you know to answer when I call, right?” 

“Right,” Takashi says, without attitude, because that’s one of their most important rules. “Can I take Urihime with me? She’ll throw Satoru in the water if I ask her to, Sasago won’t.”

“For that reason alone, you’re taking Sasago,” Shuuichi replies. 

It’s a noisy circus troupe of kids who finally leave, armed with towels and a bag of snacks pilfered from the kitchen and an entourage of rowdy spirits that only one of them can see. 

Shuuichi leans against the gate, watching them go. He’s wary of the unfamiliar yokai, but with his shiki nearby and clearly unbothered, he doesn’t see a reason to break up the strange congregation. Over the years, he’s had to get used to the way Takashi attracts these things. They come to him like moths to a flame. 

Most exorcists hate yokai, but Shuuichi doesn’t. How could he? His little brother is a medium, and some of the only people he can count on to babysit for him are his familiars. Yokai are so much a part of his life that to hate them would be to fill his heart with hatred, and he doesn’t have room in his heart for all that. It’s too full of other things. 

Hinata joins him by the door. 

“You know,” she says carefully, “I was going to bring this up later, but…the university that Isamu and I are going to is only a half-hour away from here. And the schools here are really good.”

Shuuichi stands in the sun, watches his little brother laugh with children his own age, and exhales.

Chapter Text

Isamu talks to his parents and secures the necessary permissions. He’s aiming to be a lawyer, and he’s already very good at winning impossible cases. Shuuichi packs up as much of his and his brother’s belongings as will fit in the back of Hinata’s aunt’s best friend’s truck. They move to Hitoyoshi in the middle of a hot, hazy summer, staying with the Takis for as long as it will take to scrounge up an apartment of their own.

A week later, Shuuichi realizes he forgot to give his mentor his new forwarding address, so he gives him a call.

Takuma seems bewildered to hear the brothers have moved out to the country, and asks a lot of questions. His tone grows more and more stern the longer they talk, until finally he says, “Shuuichi. You should have told me. The two of you are always welcome here.”

Baffled, Shuuichi says, “There’s no way, we couldn’t impose on you like that.”

“It would hardly be an imposition. Your friends don’t think so, either, do they?” 

That’s different, Shuuichi would explain, if he could figure out how to explain it in a way that would make any sense. Isamu and Hinata are his friends. They studied together and watched romcoms together and raised Takashi together. He doesn’t owe them anything, that’s not how it works. 

It’s hard to rely on adults for things. They have a history of failing him and his brother both at every turn. 

Takuma probably wouldn’t—he hasn’t yet—but it’s safer not to give him the chance to. 

Probably sensing that he isn’t going to get much farther, Takuma sighs. “We’ll discuss it later. And I’m going to come see you both soon to make sure you have everything you need.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I have an ulterior motive, I’m afraid,” the man admits. Something bittersweet enters his tone, something that makes Shuuichi sit upright, which in turn pulls Takashi’s attention from where he’s practicing paper magic in front of a mesmerized audience of Satoru and Hinata’s cat. “I was hoping I might leave Jinbe with you.”

“What? Why?” 

“Remember that I mentioned my ‘vision’ was going?” Takuma says quietly. “It’s getting worse day by day, and I worry that…well, I don’t want Jinbe to be lonely. I don’t think he understands.”

Shuuichi closes his eyes for just a moment. He has to grapple with a sense of loss he has no right to feel. He’s not losing anything. Takuma doesn’t need Shuuichi making it about himself. 

“It isn’t so bad,” the man adds gently. “Thanks to your paper magic, I can still talk to them, at least. I’m grateful for that.”

“Would Jinbe even want to stay with us?” Shuuichi asks when his voice is measured enough that he won’t embarrass himself. 

“I think so. He’s fond of you both.”

Takashi plucks at his sleeve, his eyes wide and shining. Little eavesdropper. Shuuichi bumps him with his elbow, and when that doesn’t work, he holds the phone away and whisper-shouts, “No! He’s not a stray!”

“He’s not not a stray,” Takashi insists stubbornly. 

Clearly having overheard them, Takuma’s voice is light and wry when he says, “Just promise you’ll consider it.”

For some reason, Shuuichi is carted against his will to a casting call happening just off campus. Hinata has wanted to be a screenwriter for as long as Shuuichi has known her and she gets excited about things like this. 

“You don’t even want to be an actor,” he tries to reason as they’re given audition numbers and shunted into a room with dozens of other hopefuls. 

“It’s still my foot in the door,” she declares. “Any credit is better than no credits. Come on, Shuu, this is basic stuff. Bulking up the resume.”

“But why am I here?” He holds up the script he’d been given, a few pages stapled together, a few lines on each high-lighted. “I can’t act.”

“Oh, please, you act every single day of your life.” She nudges his shoulder with hers, and gives him a much less effective version of Takashi’s liquid eyes. “Besides, you can’t be in here unless you’re auditioning, and you have to be in here to support me. Right?” 

Shuuichi sighs. “Right.”

He gets the part. Hinata is so ecstatic that he’s suspicious about her motives in dragging him along with her in the first place. 

Shuuichi gets a phone call on his way home from class. He’s walking out of the train station, resettling the weight of his bag on his shoulders, when his phone vibrates in his pocket. 

It’s an unfamiliar number, so he answers with some suspicion. 

“Hello?” 

“Hello,” a woman’s voice says warmly. “Is this Natori Shuuichi-san?”

“Yes, that’s me,” he says, bewildered. “Who is this?”

“Ah, my name is Fujiwara Touko, I live right on the edge of town! I got your number from Takashi-kun.”

Dread invites itself inside Shuuichi’s stomach like an overly-familiar guest, making itself at home. He picks up his pace. “Is he alright? What happened?”

“Oh, he’s fine, it looks like he just had a bit of a tumble,” she’s quick to reassure. “I noticed his friends were helping him walk home, so I invited them to sit inside and have some snacks while I called his parents. Is your mother around?”

She sounds very kind, and Shuuichi is inclined to believe her, but he still shoots Sasago a sidelong look. 

“Urihime is with him,” she says without missing a beat. “This way.”

“We don’t have parents,” Shuuichi says without taking a second to conceptualize what that sounds like when put so bluntly. He takes off after Sasago as she leads him on a brisk pace down a dirt road. “Can I talk to him?”

Fujiwara’s voice is softer when she says, “Of course. He’s right here.”

There’s some brief fumbling on the other line as the phone changes hands. 

“Sorry, nii-san. It was an accident.”

Just hearing the kid’s voice does wonders for Shuuichi’s blood pressure. He sounds rueful but not frightened or hurt, which means that whatever happened, it’s something Shuuichi can deal with. 

“Was it a yokai?” he demands. 

“Um, only sort of. Well, there definitely was one, but I really did trip and fall. Tooru, Satoru and Atsushi were there, too.”

“Of course they were,” Shuuichi says, because the four of them have been inseparable since about five minutes after Takashi met them in the first place. He’s coming up on the house now; it’s at the end of the road, and Urihime is waiting in front of a low gate wall. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“‘Kay.”

But as Shuuichi shoves his phone in his pocket and nears his second shiki, he realizes something is wrong. Her hair is waving as if in a wind, her clothes prickling and crackling with energy. It’s a familiar look on her. It means she’s pissed. 

“I hate it,” she hisses the second Shuuichi nears her. 

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks blankly. 

At that moment, a woman steps through the gate into the road. She has smoky brown hair pulled into a neat bun and laugh lines on her face and she smiles when she spots Shuuichi approaching. 

“You must be Takashi’s brother,” the woman says kindly. “You got here quickly!”

“And you’re Fujiwara-san?” Shuuichi replies. His eyes flick past her, where Sasago and Urihime are having a discussion in tones too low for him to follow. Fujiwara notices and reads it wrong.

“I’m sure you’re worried! Please, come inside!”

When Shuuichi takes two steps into the yard, he’ll almost wish he hadn’t. 

The kids are a little ruffled and dirty, and Satoru and Tooru both have leaves in their hair. Takashi has his left shoe off and an ice pack laying across his bare ankle. All four of them smile sheepishly at Shuuichi, but this is not what draws him up short. 

It’s the cat in Takashi’s lap, staring back at him with slitted green eyes. 

Shuuichi can’t get a bead on it at all. The creature’s aura is completely tamped down. There’s absolutely no sense at all of how powerful it is, or what it’s true form might be. For that reason alone, Shuuichi is prepared to operate on the assumption that it’s dangerous.

“Hate,” Urihime hisses.

“His name is Nyanko-sensei,” Takashi says, with enough hope that Shuuichi can already tell which way this conversation is going. 

“There’s no way that’s his name,” he says shortly. And there’s no way he’s bringing that thing into their house.

“It is! Or, that’s what he said I could call him.”

Atsushi glances over his shoulder at Fujiwara, who is on the porch, pouring a new cup of iced tea from a sweating pitcher, and doesn’t seem to be eavesdropping. But it’s enough of a cue that Shuuichi pinches the bridge of his nose and drops it for now. 

He’s the only one who drops it.

“Niichan likes cats,” Tooru pipes up. “He won’t mind if sensei stays with us.”

“His name really is Nyanko-sensei,” Satoru adds. “He sounds like an old man.”

“We broke him out of jail accidentally,” Atsushi goes on blithely. He, at least, has the decency to look ashamed of himself. That’s why he’s Shuuichi’s favorite. 

Fujiwara makes a quiet sound that it takes Shuuichi a moment to translate as stifled laughter. She approaches him with a glass of tea in hand and another gentle smile. It disarms him completely, and he finds himself sitting next to her as the kids hold congress around the ugly cat in Takashi’s arms. 

“He’s a good boy,” Fujiwara says. “You’ve raised him well.”

It’s the first time anyone has ever said that to him. Shuuichi stares down at the cup in his hands, at the little lizard laying across his knuckles, and says, “He was good when I got him. He’s the best.”

On their walk home, Tooru holds the ugly cat, and Takashi, ankle wrapped securely, has grudgingly allowed himself to be carried piggy-back style. 

Satoru and Atsushi are just beginning the political maneuver of inviting themselves over for dinner while making it sound like Shuuichi’s idea when Takashi says, “Look.”

Shuuichi turns his head to see where his brother is looking, and then follows his gaze. There’s a trailing rope on the ground, rasping quietly against the asphalt as it’s dragged along. 

The cat jumps out of Tooru’s arms, eliciting a disappointed “aww” from the girl. At the same time, Takashi wriggles like a beached fish until Shuuichi relents and lets him slide to the ground, balanced carefully on his good foot. They wrapped his sprained ankle well enough that this should be okay for a few minutes.

“What?” Satoru asks, looking from the cat to the boy, and then says, “Ohh, wait, is it another yokai thing?”

“I think so, unless you can see the rope, too,” Takashi tells him. 

“Ghost rope? Sounds creepy. We’ll head home and wait for you there,” Atsushi decides, with a frankness that Shuuichi admires in a person his age, and begins shepherding his friends along. After a pointed look from her master, Urihime trails after them to make sure they actually get there.

“Sasago, stay back for now,” Shuuichi says. “And you,” he adds, pointing at the lucky cat, “give me one good reason and I’ll banish you to the other side of the earth.”

“You can try,” the cat replies. 

They follow the rope around the corner, where they find a person in a worn kimono walking away from them. Their hair is tousled, and their arm is wrapped in a loose bandage, the edge of which is trailing toward the ground, but most notably is the rope. It’s knotted around their neck.

“Excuse me,” Takashi calls over. “Your bandage is falling off. Can I fix it for you?”

“Don’t bother me, human,” the person replies. 

“That wasn’t very polite, spirit,” Shuuichi says with a smile, mimicking her tone meanly. It makes Takashi dig a bony elbow into his side, but it also makes the ayakashi turn around. 

She’s wearing a horned, one-eyed mask. Abruptly, Shuuichi feels as though he’s been thrust backwards into a river, the memories rushing over him like water. An evening on the steps of some old storehouse, wrapping a strange woman’s wounded arm, telling her that his family thought he was cursed and being told in turn that humans don’t have that ability.

The first person who ever called him kind was a yokai. Was this yokai.

“Wait,” he says quietly, “I know you.”

“I thought you had a rule against strays,” Takashi says smugly, leaning over his shoulder as he watches Shuuichi draft up a new contract for the masked ayakashi.

“Hey, this is still just one to your two,” Shuuichi replies, since he definitely lost the argument to eventually adopt Jinbe, and he has enough self-awareness to admit he’s going to lose the upcoming argument to keep the cat as well. 

“No, it’s two for you, too,” Takashi replies. When Shuuichi raises an eyebrow at him, encouraging him to elaborate, he smiles and points at himself. “I was first.”

Shuuichi puts his brush down. There’s a lump in his throat, and he has to swallow hard before he can say, “That’s different.”

“It’s not super different,” his brother replies. 

“It is super different. The shiki are obedient. You don’t listen to a word I say.”

Takashi sticks his tongue out at him and then bolts from the room when Shuuichi shoves his contract paper away and stands up. Isamu steps out of their way as they go barreling down the hall without so much as looking up from his book. 

Shin’ichiro is sitting on the porch. He has some papers beside him, rough sketches of a complicated-looking circle laid out in its beginning stages, but for now he seems to be enjoying the sun and the company of his friends. 

He’s in much better health these days. It’s amazing the difference it makes, just being believed in.

Shuuichi remembers to finish the contract in the morning, and Hiiragi wears her new name with pride. She settles in next to Sasago and Urihime as if she’s always been there. She guards Takashi as fervently as the rest of them do, which makes her part of the family. 

Shuuichi bumps into Fujiwara-san again, as well as a man who must be her husband, outside a convenience store. They have a few bags of shopping between them, and Shuuichi is looking at local listings on the bulletin board posted outside with a sinking heart. 

“Oh,” Fujiwara-san says brightly. “It’s Natori-kun!”

She bows, and Shuuichi bows back quickly, saying, “Please, call me Shuuichi. And thank you again for looking after my brother that time.”

“Then please call me Touko. And it was no problem at all!” She turns to her husband and says, “This is that boy I was telling you about.”

“I feel like I know you already,” the man says warmly. He introduces himself as Fujiwara Shigeru, and once the pleasantries are out of the way, his eyes stray past Shuuichi’s shoulder to the bulletin board. “If you don’t mind me asking, what is it you’re looking for?”

“Ah,” he says, glancing away for a split-second. “An apartment, actually. I mean, I’ve always sort of been looking for one, but now I’m coming up on needing one.”

Isamu’s parents are returning to Japan, with plans to stay through the rest of the year. Tooru is ecstatic, but that’s because she’s a sweetheart who misses her mom and dad. Isamu is considerably less enthusiastic, and Shuuichi is in that camp as well. 

The Takis aren’t cold, but they’re certainly not as warm as their children are. They never believed Shin’ichiro, and they’re constantly traveling and leaving Isamu in charge of the estate and his little sister, and Hinata talks of them returning with a sense of dread that is more than enough to educate Shuuichi’s opinion all on its own.

He and Takashi lived in one unhappy home already. He’ll be damned if they live in another. 

“Are you alright?” Touko asks, her brow creasing. 

“It’s not like that at all,” Shuuichi is quick to reassure her. Maybe it was like that once, but it’s not anymore. “Takashi and I have just been staying with some friends, and I’ve imposed upon them long enough.”

“Are you looking to stay in the area?” Shigeru asks amiably, stepping closer to study the listings with him. Shuuichi turns back to them, too. 

“Yeah, I am. We moved here from the city and Takashi’s really taken to the countryside. Plus, he has friends here, and he really likes his classes. He’s doing well in school for the first time. I’d drop out before I uprooted him from all this.”

“No, don’t do that,” Touko says quickly. “There’s another solution to be found, I’m sure of it.”

Her kindness and concern for a relative stranger would have warmed Shuuichi to her, if the way she looked after Takashi that time hadn’t warmed him to her already. He offers her a smile, one that Hinata calls his ‘annoyingly handsome, what’s wrong with you’ smile. 

“It’ll be okay either way,” Shuuichi says. “We just have to stick together.”

The Fujiwaras trade a speaking look, seeming to have an entire conversation with their eyes alone, and then Shigeru says, “Do you have plans this afternoon?”

Shuuichi blinks. “Not really. All the brats are at Kitamoto-san’s house until dinner.”

Smiling, Touko hefts one of her bags a little higher and says, “Why don’t you come over for some snacks? We can talk about what you’re looking for in a place to live.”

Somehow, he finds himself walking between them, carrying Touko’s shopping for her. They pass a field of lavender, waving the faint, clinging scent of purple all across the road. The mountain air is sweet, without a trace of city smog. 

It’s beautiful here. Shuuichi is determined to stay here.

“We’re not picky,” Shuuichi will say later, over tea and dango. “Just—you know, enough room that we won’t try to kill each other. A place where our friends can visit.”

“And it must be cat-friendly,” Touko adds playfully.

Shuuichi can’t help but laugh. Takashi and Nyanko-sensei have become a familiar sight around town. “Oh, yeah. That’s a must.”

“Well,” Touko says, clapping her hands together. “I think all that sounds perfectly reasonable. Don’t you, Shigeru-san?”

“Perfectly reasonable,” the man replies. He pushes himself up from the table and waves Shuuichi up, too. “Let me show you the rooms upstairs, and you can tell me what you think of them.”

Their friends throw a ridiculous and unnecessary party for them on their last night in the Taki house, considering that the place they’re moving to is a brisk six-minute walk away. 

He finds himself sitting on the porch with Nyanko-sensei, of all people. He and the cat have come to an unspoken agreement of mutual dislike, mostly because it’s not worth living with Takashi’s big sad eyes every time one of them picks a fight with the other. 

“I haven’t seen a salamander around these parts in years,” Nyanko-sensei says suddenly. “Very auspicious.”

Shuuichi isn’t sure what the cat is talking about at first, but then movement in the corner of his eye has him looking down at his arm. The lizard is crawling down his wrist to sit on the back of his hand, and the cat nods at it respectfully. 

Shuuichi watches the interaction with wide eyes. 

“You know what this is?” he blurts. 

“Of course I do. I just said it, didn’t I?” The cat flicks one ear at him derisively. “You’re fortunate this one attached itself to you. It will bring you luck.”

Shuuichi thinks of his mother dying from sickness when he was a child, his grandfather’s bad leg, his father’s string of lost jobs and failed investments. All those things his family blamed on him, those things they hate him for that just keep piling on year after year. 

It doesn’t seem very lucky at all. But it’s hardly worth arguing about. Shuuichi has had more than enough time to come to terms with the living mark on his skin. It’s creepy at times, and he doesn’t love the way the exorcists at the only summit he ever went to stared at it and mumbled behind their hands about it, but at least it’s never done Shuuichi any harm. 

And Takashi likes it. The first time he ever heard his brother laugh was because of this stupid lizard. 

So he rolls his eyes and leans back, letting his weight rest on his hands. 

“Must have been sleeping on the job my entire life, then,” he says without anger. 

“Don’t be more stupid than you can help,” Nyanko-sensei replies plainly. “You’ve never thought to question why misfortune befalls your family time and time again, and somehow always misses you?”

Shuuichi blinks. He’s never framed it that way before, even in his own head. 

The lizard runs up his arm and settles on his shoulder, right up against his neck. Shuuichi can feel it, almost; a faint, living warmth.

Natori Shuuichi ✔️ @natori_shuuichi

Happy birthday to my favorite person on the planet!
[picture attached; a selfie of the brothers, both of them grinning ear-to-ear]

takashi 🌱 @ghostrolodex
Replying to @natori_shuuichi

your birthdays not till november niisan :\

PLANNING A HEIST @nishi_ni_shi
Replying to @natori_shuuichi, @ghostrolodex

when shuuichi disowns u ask if he’ll adopt me instead

♥ Taki Isamu liked this

takashi 🌱 @ghostrolodex
Replying to @natori_shuuichi, @nishi_ni_shi

he wont, its way too much paperwork. besides our lawyer likes me better than him

Natori Shuuichi ✔️ @natori_shuuichi
Replying to @ghostrolodex, @nishi_ni_shi

Who doesn’t?

The year that Takashi starts high school, he gets a box in the mail. It’s a big, heavy cardboard number. Jinbe hauls it inside for him, and turns in pleased circles when Touko praises him (or the open air the box is floating in) warmly for his help. 

The box turns out to be from some of Takashi’s relatives. Apparently, a few of them did try to locate Takashi after the Natoris took him in, but didn’t have any luck. They heard about him from Shigeru, and seemed relieved to have a place to send the box that had been collecting dust in their attic all these years. 

Inside are things that used to belong to Takashi when he was a child, all that’s left of a life that used to be his, as well as some items that belonged to his late grandmother. He goes through it in the living room, friends and family on all sides. 

There’s an old stuffed lion, some clothes, a children’s book about insects—he lingers on the book. Flipping through the pages, he finds a bookmark, and pulls it out. It’s an old photograph of two smiling faces, people that must be Takashi’s mother and father. The resemblance is uncanny. They look like the kind of people who would have loved the chance to be Takashi’s parents. 

He looks at it for a long time, then looks up at Shuuichi, frowning. 

“I don’t remember them.”

Shuuichi slings an arm around his shoulders and squeezes. Takashi leans into his side, the way he’s done since he was five years old. “That’s okay. They remember you.”

Much later, when the rest of the house is asleep, and Satoru, Atsushi and Tooru are sprawled around Takashi’s bedroom in guest futons, Shuuichi will be going over a few potential scripts his agent sent him when Hiiragi will say, “Natori-sama,” and incline her head toward the door. 

When Jinbe sticks his head through the wall, Shuuichi sighs. He needs to explain to his brother’s shiki the concept of ‘subtlety’ but that’s a cause for another night. 

“Tell him he can come in,” Shuuichi says, and Jinbe disappears. A second later, the door slides open with a hush and Takashi steps inside, closing the door behind him again. Jinbe is with him, Nyanko-sensei is not. 

He’s probably getting drunk in the woods somewhere. And he wonders why Shuuichi doesn’t consider him a decent chaperone. 

There are night-time insects gossiping away in the garden outside, a warm breeze curling in through the open window. Takashi sits on the edge of the bed, looking wide-awake despite the late hour. 

“Are you still trying to decide?” he asks. “I already said, the mystery movie looks way better than the romance. Your character in that one is more compelling, too. You don’t want to get type-cast this early in your career.”

“You spend far too much time with Hinata,” Shuuichi says, smiling at him. He abandons the scripts and joins Takashi on the edge of the bed, bumping the boy’s shoulder with his own. “What’s up? Can’t sleep?” 

“Jinbe woke me,” Takashi replies. He’s holding something in his lap, worrying at the edge of it with the pad of his thumb. “He was messing around in my closet, like something was bugging him. We found this.”

He holds out a book. It’s long and flat, bound together with a string. On the front, written in strong brush-strokes, are the words ‘book of friends’. 

“What do you think it is?” Takashi asks. 

Uneasily, Shuuichi lets it fall open in his hands. Each page has a single word written on it and nothing else. The handwriting is different for each one. The characters themselves are the strange, crooked symbols Shuuichi has come to associate with yokai. 

“Trouble,” Shuuichi finally says.