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The dead man is the half brother of one of Shuuichi's cousins. Shuuichi hardly knows why he is at the funeral, other than for the morbid fascination he is starting to develop with turning up to family gatherings that he is not welcome at. Death comes to the Natori clan not through accident or malice, after all, but through cursed boys who taint the bloodline with each breath they selfishly dare take.
Funerals, then, are always such a precious time when you are that cursed boy. Shuuichi has occasionally turned up at a funeral simply because he has fond memories of the relative, but there have been one or two (or six or seven) funerals he has gone to purely out of spite.
Remember me? His presence always seem to suggest at those funerals, the ones for those who turned him away in revulsion and fear. Still here, still possibly planning on cursing you into damnation simply because I'm having a bad hair day.
This is the first time Shuuichi has actually received an invitation to a funeral, however. Natsume Kazuma. Shuuichi doesn't think he ever met the man, however there are blanks in Shuuichi's memory that he doesn't like to think too much about.
Shuuichi passes into the lounge where the guests are mingling with each other. They barely count as relatives, but then Shuuichi has so few left that acknowledge him that even half cousins and aunts by marriage are collected up and put into a special, keepsake box. In a world where youkai own the last shards of your goodwill and only allow for rare moments of normality, relatives have a habit of … self editing.
Sanity is easier to maintain through monotony. Too many exorcists that share his name have fallen to fallacies introduced by others. Of course, there are other reasons why members of his clan choose not to work with Shuuichi, and that thought brings with it memories that he is not prepared to mourn with. Self pity is far too indulgent for a night like this, where smiles and success are far more potent weapons.
Shuuichi has both. His first movie debuted last week, and it is not simply chance that has Shuuichi in the sleek suit he is wearing, but a slew of stylists who see even a funeral as a marketing opportunity. The guests see the suit today almost as much as they see him, and for once the rumours are equally the bad luck he brings and the money he suddenly earns.
A smirk flickers at the corner of his mouth as Shuuichi takes a sip of his wine. He is underage, but no-one dares challenge the bringer of misfortune, not when all it takes is a simple look to destroy your financial assets or snap your favourite DVD in half.
His smirk sours when a shadow flits around his ankles, tugging at his shoe laces before sliding away along the grooves in the tired, wooden floorboards. Of course there are youkai here, they are everywhere Shuuichi ventures.
If he was really as cold as they all think he is, he would let the small youkai reek havoc on the grieving relatives. However, the invitation is still folded protectively in his breast pocket, making Natsume Kazuma the closest any one person has come to his heart in years. He puts his glass down and excuses himself with a smile (no-one meets his eyes), and follows after it onto the outside veranda. Such an insignificant blight requires the most simple of seals, and all it takes is a few words and a slip of paper to cause the youkai to evaporate into dust.
“You can see them?” The voice is thin, less an echo and more an afterthought meant only for Shuuichi's ears. And yet, as quiet (as thin) as the voice is, Shuuichi still feels as though he has been shot through with ice. He turns quickly on his heels and finds before him a small boy. Dusty blond hair falls over quiet eyes, and tiny hands are fisted in the black material of his mourning trousers. With a start, Shuuichi realises that the boy is the dead man's son, although he's been paid less thought than the expensive flowers that dress up the run down cottage. “You … you know how to make them go away?”
There is wonder in the boy's voice. Not hate, not fear, not barely concealed horror. That wonder is intoxicating, and what Shuuichi does next is perhaps the most selfish thing he has ever done.
He smiles.
And the future, so brittle in the first place, starts to unravel.
“Hello, my name is Shuuichi. What's yours?”
The cat, strange and misshaped, is somehow a god. More than a youkai, more than a teacher, he is all the warmth and belief Natsume has ever known-
“Natsume Takashi,” the small boy says, smaller now than moments before. Amazement has faded back into grief, rounding his shoulders and losing his thin frame in his already too large clothes.
The words are mere scratches on his consciousness, luring him back into a world he's not entirely sure he wishes to wake up to. Natsume is bruised and sore and so tired that that somehow hurts even more, but HER voice is the one he fought so hard to hear just one more time.
Natsume bows, respectfully, and Shuuichi cannot remember the last time the act didn't hold either reverence or fear.
“It's nice to meet you,” Shuuichi states, with his most genuine smile of the evening. The boy can barely be four, and yet even in his grief he has more poise than the relatives who are mourning a man that is shaped only by vague, frankensteined memories.
Shuuichi's eyes narrow as Natsume's fragile mask of politeness wavers, although only slightly.
Perhaps too much poise.
“It's all right to cry,” Shuuichi says as he kneels down in front of Natsume. “I promise I won't tell anyone.”
You always have the best lunches, you can tell they're made with love,” Nishimura says, although Natsume misses the envy that colours his words green. “The Fujiwaras must care for you a lot.”
Natsume doesn't cry like a child, all sniffles and snot. Instead, the tears are subtle, slow, and Shuuichi wonders how this boy remains so isolated that even his tears seem to belong to someone else. Even as they fall, Natsume's polite expression remains frozen in place, and there is something in its threatened permanency that frightens him.
“It's all right,” Shuuichi says, smearing his fingers through Natsume's strange tears, wondering briefly what they tasted like.
The clitter-clatter of stones against his window.
“I've never met anyone who can see them,” Natsume says, instead of the thousand of others things he should have. Shuuichi remembers what this is like, losing the last link that ties you to something normal, and there is a part of him that wants to scream that the last things that should be on Natsume's mind are those dirty shadows.
Instead, he does what he wishes someone else – anyone else – had done when his own mother had died, and pulls Natsume experimentally into his arms.
Huh. Hugs actually did feel pretty good. Who knew?
Pretty good.
Yeah.
A thank you whispered on a dying breath.
“Why don't you come stay with me for a while?” Shuuichi murmurs against the child's soft hair, possessively claiming it (the boy's warmth, his gentleness, his every breath) as his own. “I don't want you to be lonely.”
Friends who will sacrifice everything just to see him smile.
And Shuuichi has nothing but emptiness, a hollow hurt that swallows everything else and leaves him so alone it keeps him awake late at night with nothing but a single, jagged thought. There is no way he can know that he is trading away one future for another, one that is built on trick lighting and stage makeup. Shuuichi is insightful enough to see how the road starts for the small boy – he knows more than most how this world treats those who are different – but that is where Shuuichi's foresight ends, with himself.
“Can I?” Natsume asks, and something new sparks briefly in eyes that have until now drowned with so much else.
The Book of Friends.
And Shuuichi doesn't know, can't know.
He is only 15, and has already been living in his own head for far too many years.
“Of course,” Shuuichi says, and welcomes Natsume into his world.