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A series of Fruits Basket vignettes by Sakura.
Standard disclaimers apply.
The following are
[1] occasionally Yuki-centric, occasionally Tohru-centric,
but hopefully more Yukiru-centric than anything else;
[2] written without canon in mind;
[3] maybe not for the glucose intolerant.
Notes to follow.
For Mona-san.
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01. Train
It was a little past midnight,
and the last train of the day was a yellow streak in the dark, merrily making
its way through town. Its cars were
nearly empty save for some couples snuggled in window seats, weary salarymen
snoring away under their hats --- and in one particular car, a girl and a boy
standing rather stiffly by the window.
There was nothing extraordinary
about the two. But if one looked
closely, the boy appeared to be studying the scenery outside the window with
unusually intense fascination, while the girl sighed from time to time and
occasionally stared down at her feet.
The boy, you see, was not
supposed to be on the train in the first place.
“Shigure-san will kill me,” the
girl moaned. In her distress she would
have raised hands to cover her face, but she was holding on to the pole to keep
her balance and would rather die than let go.
“Shigure-san told me he didn’t mind us arriving late, just as long as we
stayed away from the train---”
The boy was staring at the sky.
“A real crowded,
packed-with-females-of-all-ages-and-sizes train.” The girl sighed again. “And I said yes, of course, and now here we
are, on a train, at my suggestion---”
The boy’s eyes softened as he
spoke. “Don’t worry about it too much,
Honda-san. It’ll take us too long to
get home if we walked.”
“B-But…”
“Shigure won’t know if we don’t
tell him anything, right?”
“Yuki-kun,” the girl’s brown
eyes were wide with worry, “Shigure-san sniffs things out!”
The boy grinned, but the girl
was too distraught to share his amusement.
“One time he asked me where you kept sneaking off to before dinner, and
I did my best to not tell him you were at the secret base taking care of the
vegetables, but somehow he managed to get that out of me and now your secret
base isn’t secret anymore!”
“I told you, that’s all right.”
“And another time he managed to
make me tell him what his birthday present was before we were even about to go
out and buy it!”
“Honda-san…”
“And what about the time he---”
“Honda-san.” The boy reached out to close fingers around
the girl’s slender wrist to calm her down, and she instantly colored and
sputtered into silence.
The train entered a tunnel,
engulfing them in shadow. The
fluorescent lights on the ceiling flickered as the boy finally sighed and
shifted his hold on the girl’s wrist, letting it fall a little so his thumb now
grazed the inside of her palm. “I like
the train, I think.”
The girl blinked.
In their reflection in the train
window, the boy’s gaze met the girl’s own.
“I’ve never been on one before.”
The girl’s eyes widened.
“And I probably won’t be able to
ride again for a while. Maybe
never.” His tone turned a bit
wistful. “But I’m glad I was able to
find out what it’s like, just this once.”
Whoosh, went the train, emerging
from the dusky tunnel. The pale slip of
a moon finally appeared in the sky, but neither the boy nor the girl looked up
at it. They were staring at each other
in the window --- he slightly red-faced after his confession, and she looking
surprised, then thoughtful, then determined.
“Let’s ride again, then.”
“…Eh?”
“We’ll take the train
again.” Slowly, her fingers laced with
his. “We’ll take the train as often as
you want, Yuki-kun.”
The boy watched her for a while,
then finally bowed his head in shy acquiescence.
“However,” the worried look
returned to the girl’s face, “if Shigure-san finds out, he’ll be really really
really angry with me, so we’ll have to be very careful.”
The boy’s eyes shone with
gratitude, even though she had given him nothing but the prospect of future
train rides --- something trivial, something most people would not look forward
to, but something real. A step closer
to that world of normal, everyday people.
His family would probably think him reckless --- and he was probably
being very foolish about it, but she made him a promise.
And it was everything.
He gave her hand a little
squeeze and she returned the favor, and they both smiled at their reflection in
the glass.
[ end act
01 ]