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Kyo stares at the pumpkin on the porch. Its sunken, hollowed eyes are lit with candles, the wax melting and sticking down into the bottom of the shell. He cocks his head, trying to get a different angle for it. Anything to make him understand why it's here --
Ah. Right. October is coming to a close.
Halloween.
Call him a killjoy but Kyo doesn’t get Halloween. Doesn’t understand why anyone would want to run around with weird costumes and weird masks and get candy. Okay, the candy he gets, but the rest of it he does not. It all just seems - overwhelmingly American.
That clearly doesn’t stop Shigure from going balls-to-the-walls on decorations.
As he walks into the main entrance, there are fake cobwebs hung up in the corners, dark candles lit on the table by the phone, small, fake pumpkins littering the floor. A small wooden figurine in the shape of a witch on a broom is propped up against the bannister, as though she’s really flying. There’s a small laser poking out from the entryway to the kitchen, and Kyo can’t figure out what it’s for until he sees the animatronic spider next to the closet.
Sure enough, Tohru comes walking from the kitchen to the hall and steps right through the laser. As she does, the motion sensor gets triggered, and the animatronic spider comes to life. It waves a leg menacingly and hisses as spooky, Western Halloween music pipes through some tinny speakers in its abdomen. Tohru screams, holding a hand to her chest in shock.
Kyo refuses to be endeared.
“Oh, gosh! I totally forgot I helped Shigure put that there.” She says, face bright red. “Welcome home Kyo! How was training tonight?”
“Thanks,” He responds, putting his back up on the rack by the door as he toes his shoes off. He can see Yuki’s shoes tucked carefully in place and is tempted to kick them sideways. “It was good. I’m tired, though.”
“Oh, good. Not that you’re tired, I mean! Uh…just that it was a good session, I guess.” She chuckles to herself. “Well, Shigure and I decorated for the holiday,” Tohru starts off, walking down the hall towards him. She’s wearing mostly black with pops of orange today, but in a generic, Fall kind of way, not necessarily for Halloween. “Kisa, Hiro, and Momiji are all coming over tomorrow! We’re going to carve pumpkins and watch scary movies.”
He keeps his exhausted sigh to himself. Kisa is always a treat, and Tohru is always so happy to have her over that Kyo can never begrudge her their time together. Hiro is a pain in his ass but it makes Kisa happy which makes Tohru happy so he puts up with it.
Momiji on the other hand...that kid is off the wall hyper.
“You really think Momiji and candy is a good idea?” He says, heading off towards the kitchen. He can smell something delicious coming from there, doesn’t even care what it is, just knows that he’s hungry.
Tohru giggles. “Yeah, I did think about that...but I think it’ll be fun anyways.”
There’s a brief pause, and then,
“Did you want to join us tomorrow? I’d love it if you were there.”
Kyo carefully doesn’t look at her. He’s got to keep it cool. He is calm. Collected.
“Yeah, sure.” He grabs his carton of milk (Yuki insisted he get his own since Kyo drinks straight out of the container) and takes a swig.
“Great,” She says. She sounds so happy.
And, really, he’d put up with just about anything to make her happy.
Luckily for all the children of the world observing Halloween, it came over the weekend this year. A glorious Saturday with delightfully crisp air, the scent of cinnamon on the breeze, and laughter. So much laughter.
Why is there so much laughter?
Kyo blinks, groggy, trying to wake up. His clock slowly comes into focus, the numbers swimming and then, mockingly, showing clearly as 11:24. God, he really slept in. Training must have kicked his ass yesterday.
The kids and Momiji must have arrived, then, if the noise is any indication. Tohru didn’t give a timeframe for their little party but it must involve some kind of long movie marathon if they’re arriving this early in the day.
He flops over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling, wondering if he’s really emotionally up to being around those three all day.
Then he thinks of Tohru’s smile. He could never miss that.
Kyo slowly gets dressed, the voices downstairs swelling and ebbing with the flow of conversation.
When he opens his door, he jumps back - there’s a poster of a werewolf on the wall and it takes him off guard. Christ, this fucking day is going to kill him. He makes his way downstairs, careful to step over the motion sensor so as not to set off the spider.
“Hi Kyo!” Kisa is the first one to spot him when he walks into the kitchen.
Everyone is out on the porch, spread out in their own little area, pumpkins in their laps.
“We’re carving pumpkins,” Momiji laughs, “look! Mine is going to be a bunny! It looks so good already.”
Typical.
“You don’t need to brag, Momiji. Just because you’re older doesn’t automatically mean you’re the superior pumpkin carver,” Hiro starts. “Kids can be good, too, y’know. Or you don’t think kids can do anything?”
Kyo just barely stops himself from breaking the plate in his hands. This insufferable little-
“Hi, Kisa,” Kyo returns, because he at least has manners. He locks eyes with Tohru and he swallows, mouth dry. She’s got some orange bows in her hair, along with a subtle brown, long sleeve shirt on, and a skirt and leggings. She looks so…
Kyo has to look away.
“Kyo, you’re just in time,” Shigure says from his spot. “Come over here and pick out a pumpkin to carve with the rest of us! We’re all carving our zodiac spirits.”
When Kyo looks back over his shoulder at the group, Tohru is blushing. Hard.
“Ah, right,” Shigure’s voice is almost like a song, teasing. He has a gigantic pumpkin on his lap, almost covering his front up to his shoulders. It’s comical. “Tohru’s already carving the cat. Guess you’ll have to pick something else, Kyo.”
“I -- I just wasn’t sure if Kyo would wake up in time!” Tohru protests, refusing to look up from her pumpkin. “I didn’t want Kyo to miss out on having a pumpkin!”
Shigure hums. His gaze hasn’t moved from his own carving this entire time.
“S’alright,” Kyo says after a moment. “I don’t really want to make one, anyway. Thanks.”
He sets about making a (late) breakfast, refusing Tohru’s offers to cook him something. He fed himself and Master when they lived in the mountains, he can handle his own breakfast. Kyo doesn’t really partake in the conversation, something about a new Mogeta episode from last week, still a bit groggy from oversleeping so much.
He can feel how sore his legs are now; Master had been pretty tough on him yesterday. He loves those kinds of days, though, when he feels his entire body pulling and stretching after. It makes him feel centered, focused, like he’s here and now. Especially when he won’t get it for too much longer.
Instead of conversing, he looks at Tohru from his spot at the table. Sees her interacting with Kisa, so much like an older sister, or...a mother. Tohru gently walks Kisa through poking patterns into the shell of the pumpkin and guiding her hand with the knife until Kisa is comfortable using it on her own.
He can barely help himself when he sees Tohru smile so widely. He gets up, meal unfinished, and walks over to Tohru and Kisa’s little area. There’s a big bowl of pumpkin seeds next to them, pulp and all, so he knows they’re not really ready to eat.
“D’you need a hand?” Kyo asks, squatting down next to them.
“Oh, Kyo, hi!” Tohru says, surprised. “Um...I think we’re good on the actual carving part...oh! Do you want to clean off all the seeds? I wanted to roast them so we could use them as a snack during the movies later.”
Kyo was kind of hoping for something...closer. But that’s selfish anyways. Serves him right.
“Yeah.” Kyo grabs the bowl next to them and takes it over to the sink. Shigure, Hiro, and Momiji each have a bowl as well that he gathers. At the sink, he begins the process of removing the seeds from the pulp, transferring them to the colander in the sink. When he’s got enough in the colander, he rinses them out, and places them all in a new bowl, and begins again. It surprisingly takes him a long time to separate the seeds out from the pulp.
“Wow, there sure are a lot of seeds…” Tohru says softly at his elbow.
Kyo startles, not expecting Tohru to be right next to him so suddenly.
“Uh. Yeah.”
She bends over, looking at them closer. “What do you think we should roast them with?”
The way her hair falls over her shoulder is distracting him. There’s something on her cheek, too….some….
“Are you wearing makeup?”
She stands up straight quickly, blushing heavily.
“Um. Yes. Well. No. I was playing around with some earlier this morning...y’know...because it’s Halloween and I don’t have a costume but I wanted to do something ...it didn’t turn out well so I took it off...I guess I didn’t get it all off…” She’s babbling, hands waving in front of herself nervously.
Something comes over him. His hands are a bit wet from washing the seeds, so he leans over, and presses a thumb to her cheek, rubbing gently at the small spot of dark makeup. Tohru stills under his touch. Her cheek is hot to the touch, and he’s sure his is the same.
“Got it.” Kyo is reluctant to remove his hand from her, but he does anyway.
“Thanks.”
Hours later, there are five jack-o-lanterns on the porch, glowing in the sunset, and the kitchen smells strongly of roasted pumpkin seeds. Tohru had taken the extra two pumpkins meant for Yuki and Kyo (Yuki apparently had been dragged off to a Halloween-themed party by Manabe) and carved them up and made pie while the kids played in the backyard.
Kyo was having a very hard time not imagining this same scenario ten, fifteen years in the future. A little boy running around Tohru’s legs as she cooks, and in his mind’s eye, she shoos the son off to go bother his father instead. He knows who the father in this dream is, of course, but doesn’t dare envision the scene any further. Going that far into his fantasies is forbidden. DANGER ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE, blah blah.
It wouldn’t be good for him, so he avoids it.
Kyo helps Tohru set the table with various sweets. The pumpkin pie, of course, and the seeds. Shigure had splurged on fancy American candies, which makes Kyo want to tear his hair out. Momiji should not be allowed near that much sugar.
There are a couple channels running Halloween themed movies and specials this year, a testament to how popular the holiday has gotten in recent years. Kyo doesn’t remember anything on the TV when he was little.
Tohru finds a kid-appropriate movie; American, of course, but it’s got subtitles. The kids come rolling in from the backyard, plopping down, tired from playing.
“Should we do our costumes now?” Tohru asks, sitting down herself. Even though the three of them are tired, they all nod excitedly, and run off again. They each come back in a new outfit with a little bag of accessories. Tohru gets them all set with some simple makeup - a bit of fake blood for Momiji, who even has a cape to complete his vampire look. Kisa has a lot of sparkles and a headband with some springs attached for her butterfly costume, and Hiro has a tophat and a monocle and a fake tobacco pipe for a more vague, rich Englishman costume. Tohru puts a fake moustache above his mouth, and he insists on speaking in an accent while he has the hat on.
The movies are cute, and Tohru passes them all out candy. They don’t go trick-or-treating - it’s not really much of a thing in Japan, and if they went somewhere popular that does do it, there’s the risk of transforming. So Tohru does the best she can for them. It’s so sweet.
“Tohru, you were planning on doing some makeup, too, weren’t you?” Shigure asks, coming back in from his room. He’s been holed up for a while, writing.
“Um...yes, but I couldn’t really get it right. It’s fine, I don’t need to do any.”
“Oh, but you looked so cute!” Shigure whines, like a child. “You should join in! Don’t be a stick in the mud like our Kyo here.”
“Hey, I’m not a stick in the mud!” Kyo protests, folding his arms over his chest. “I’m here. I’m participating.”
He and Shigure go back and forth for a minute, and in that time, Tohru disappears.
“Where’d she go?”
“I wanted to see her makeup...she’d taken it off by the time we got here.” Kisa explains. Ah, of course when she asks, Tohru does it right away.
The movie ends on the screen, and a news anchor comes on as the credits shrink out of sight.
“Good evening everyone, thank you for joining in on such a fun night. Halloween! A night of magic and mystery. Coming up next, we have some authors read off their original, short stories themed after this frightening night, accompanied by a live enactment. We hope you enjoy it, right after this break.”
Even by the time the commercials end and one of the stories begins, Momiji practically bouncing off the walls from sugar, Tohru is still not down. When it ends and a new one begins, Kyo is concerned.
“I’m going to find her,” He says, standing up and leaving to go upstairs. He forgets about the stupid spider and sets it off, and almost screams when he sees the outline of the witch on the bannister. It’s dark in the hallway, okay?
He goes up the stairs and sees the light on in her room. Her door is open all the way, which is surprising, but he looks in. She’s sitting at her window, looking out, cell phone clutched to her hand and pressed to her face.
“Hana-chan, don’t say that…” She’s saying. Ah. She’s on the phone. “I really don’t think...I don’t think he…” She’s blushing so hard the back of her neck is turning red.
Kyo gets the feeling he shouldn’t be hearing this conversation, and knocks on her door to let her know he’s here. She turns around, and his stomach just...drops.
She’s got little whiskers on her face. A little triangle over her nose.
“Hana-chan, I have to go, okay? ...Okay...Yes...Good night. I’ll see you on Monday.” And when she closes her phone, she sets it down on her dresser. “Sorry, she called right when I…”
Kyo can’t stop s taring . He is absolutely dumbstruck. Surely this is some kind of...complex. Seeing her dressed like a cat and he just gets...so...
God, now he knows why Shigure was so insistent on her dressing up. That fucking bastard.
“Kyo! Tohru!” Momiji yells, bounding up the stairs, loudly. Kyo can hear the clatter of the witch figurine falling to the floor, and he jerks his gaze away. “The next one’s starting soon, come on!”
“We’ll be down in a second,” Kyo calls back, heading away towards the stairs. “Tohru was on the phone.”
“Were you just in her room alone? Disgusting,” Momiji mocks, laughing as he goes back down the stairs. The poor witch is laid out on one of the steps so Kyo picks her up and places her back on the bannister.
“I wasn’t! Her door was already open you stupid little - ugh, forget it.” Kyo sits back down into place as the next story begins on the TV.
“And now presenting...A Tale of Caution.” The author is sat off to the side of a stage, illuminated at their stand as they read from their story. There’s a few actors scattered around the stage, and if the last performance was any indication, the actors won’t speak at all, just enact what the author dictates.
Tohru shuffles into the room quietly, taking her place next to Kisa, across from Kyo. No words are exchanged between any of them, although Kisa does compliment her makeup.
“This is the story of a beast that no one recognized as a beast, but a beast he remained.”
The actors on the stage are all in a circle, facing inward.
One actor comes through and stands in the center of the circle, a large, comical mask on his face. It’s a giant smile, uncanny, unsettling. He is dressed in a skin-tight body-suit, hinting that his character is meant to be undressed.
“This beast knew what he was, but in the hopes of making friends, perhaps even finding love, he wore a mask to hide himself. If no one knew of his true self, his true form, then he would be accepted.”
Kyo swallows. The man in the center - the beast - reaches his arms out, and the others reach back, clasping his hand.
“He leaves his den in the forest and goes to a local town, intent on becoming one with the humans. As time goes on, the citizens of the town bring him into their fold. They house him, clothe him, feed him, thinking him nothing more than a poor, lost traveller. They pity him, and make sure he has everything he needs.” One citizen tosses a cloak over his shoulders, beautiful and long. Another feeds him bread.
“However, the citizens do not ever stay near him for long. They do not realize it, but they recognize him as Other. They trust their instincts, and keep him solely at arms length. After some time, a farmer’s daughter sees him, alone. She pities this lonely man, and decides to marry him, even against her better judgement.” A woman goes up to the man, and they clasp hands. She kisses his cheek. “The beast recognizes this pity and it enrages him - after all this time, he is still not one of them. Even after wearing a mask, wearing their clothes, eating their food, he is not one of them.
He is still a beast, after all, and not human. No matter how much he tries to go against his nature, he can never become human.”
The man - the beast - in the center reaches up, and tosses his mask to the ground, revealing a monstrous face underneath. The townspeople scream in horror, and it's jarring after silence from them for so long. They all start to run away. The farmer’s daughter is knocked down to the ground.
“The beast lashes out. He overturns carts, slashes at doors, terrorizes children. He gives in to his true nature, that which lies beneath.”
Kyo stands up and leaves. In his haste, he sets off the spider, knocks over the witch again, even bumps into the werewolf poster. He makes it up onto the roof, far, far away from the others. The air up here is cold, but anything feels better than that stifling environment.
The stars above him are so far away.
His bracelet has never felt heavier. God, he wishes he could banish this to the heavens, toss it amongst the stars, watch it incinerate in the heat of the cosmos.
“Why me?” He yells out to nothing. “Why did you pick me? I’m not strong enough!” He can’t help it. He begins to cry. “I’ll never be strong enough to overcome this…”
He falls to his knees.
There’s a clatter to his right as someone comes up the ladder, and he shrinks in on himself. He doesn’t want to be seen like this.
“Go away,” He says. “I don’t want you here.”
“Well, that sucks,” Tohru responds, grunting as she hauls herself over the roof. “Because I’m here.” Kyo has always admired her stubbornness, but of course it's come to bite him in the ass, hasn’t it? “I’m right here for you, Kyo. I’m not going anywhere.”
As she crawls over to him, he wants nothing more than to lash out, like the beast on the screen. Like his true form every time it’s been unleashed.
“No matter how angry you get, how pissed off you are about the way things are, I will be here.” She clasps his wrist, his beads clacking dully against each other. “I am here. I’m not going away.”
Kyo is still crying, like a baby. He feels so hurt, seeing his pain, his torment portrayed on that stage as though it’s nothing more than a scary story to tell children. Like his pain is irrelevant. His curse doesn’t matter.
“I’m disgusting.”
He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Tohru just grasps his wrist harder, clutching it to her chest.
“No, you’re not. You’re not disgusting. Look at your hands, your skin, your hair. You are not disgusting.” She doesn’t say the words his mother always repeated, you are human. Both he and Tohru know that he’s not human.
“That goes away when that bracelet goes, though. It’s just an illusion. A trick.” A mask.
“I don’t care!” Tohru yells.
Kyo looks at her for the first time since getting on the roof. He has never heard her so angry in his life. She’s got this intense fire in her eyes, and it’s almost funny compared to the sweet dot on her nose and her crooked little whiskers.
“I don’t care about the bracelet, Kyo. I don’t care about the stupid curse! You are not disgusting. Even with your true form, even when you turn into a cat. You are…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence, and Kyo doesn’t dare to hope about where she might be going with this.
“You don’t act like the beast does in the story, Kyo, you don’t.”
“I did exactly what he did when you followed me the first time, Tohru. I lashed out. I hurt you. You needed stitches!” Kyo rips his hand out of her grip, but she reaches out and takes it back. She refuses to let go of him.
“You lashed out because you were scared! You were lonely! You were hurt by others, you-”
“So was the monster in the story. Can’t you see? I am the same! Nobody gets near me because they know who I am, what is underneath this skin. It’s rotten!”
“Nobody else matters!” She’s shaking. “I am here with you. All of you. If this bracelet disappears and you turn into your true form, I am not running. I am not a coward. Anyone who thinks you’re disgusting is the true monster. You are not rotten, Kyo. You are...you are precious.”
And Kyo almost believes her.
Tonight, under the stars, Tohru shaking in anger against him, he almost feels like his curse can be overcome.