Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Summers always made the nights more bearable.

Perhaps it was a bias towards his name — bias was a word he learnt earlier this week: ba-i-a-su, he had enunciated quietly to himself — but he liked it all the same. In the months where everything began to die, the thin, ragged jackets tossed in his direction never did much, leaving him with his own thin arms to stave off the cold. Summer was hot, and unpleasantly damp, and all too loud, but it always comforted him with the knowledge that his fingers wouldn't freeze off… that was his new fear since last winter.

Despite the warm air hitting his face, he still shuddered at the thought. Uncle — was he allowed to call him uncle? He forgot — decided he was too much of a waste (”Nothing but a waste of space!”, he had shouted) to be allowed into the house for the night. That was the worst. He'd endure the yelling, the hitting, the three-eyed woman watching from the guest room, as long as he could be safe in the dusty shield of the attic. He hated being left outside.

Yet, outside he was. Outside is better than inside when uncle was drinking, he repeated like a mantra as he wandered the blue-tinted streets, the final threads of light clinging, clinging like a child desperate for something they know they can't have. He had tried to stay in the yard, tucked into the smallest corner he could find, but an angry bug had kicked him out. “This is my property! Get your own corner!”, it had shouted in its little voice. It made him giggle to remember. The little ones were always kind of cute.

But now, it was just him in the empty roads winding forever, there were no bugs to entertain himself with. He walked in the space between the parallel yellow lines below him, one foot in front of the other: right, left, right, left, careful to not touch either side. His shoes were still too big, he noted, and it made it harder to balance... What were the lines even there for? And why two of them? Everything seemed to have a purpose all the time, that's something he learnt early on. There was still too much he didn't know about such simple things. How would he be able to have a purpose without knowing? A stray shoelace tripped him from his thoughts, and through some frantic wobbling, he managed to stay upright. It would have been easier to choose one of the two lines to walk on, but he could never decide. Maybe if he could find somebody else to choose for him? Though, it wasn't like he had anybody to ask now, in this dark all by himself.

Well... He never really was by himself, was he? Head never turning up from the ground, he took the chance to glance at the eyes peeking out from the trees around him.

This was one more thing he didn't like about the night.

He could hear them whispering.

“Human?”

“Child.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

Nobody ever taught him the difference between these voices and real people. All he knew is that it's bad to acknowledge them, just like it's bad not to acknowledge real people. He thought he usually did a good job at telling them apart, but nobody else seemed to agree. His screaming when they snuck up on him probably didn't help. Stupid scaredy-cat.

It was all he could do to pretend they weren't there.

He clutched his green book tighter to his chest.

“Cannot see? Cannot hear?”

“Cannot hear. Cannot see.”

“Book?”

“Book of Friends?”

“Is that the-”

“Oh, dear. What are you doing out so late?”

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Was it one of them? Or had done something wrong again? What did he do? He braced himself-

The hand retracted. Looking up, he saw the face of a woman, lines of age accentuated by her furrowed brow, dimly highlighted from behind.

“Are you alright? It's far too late for a child to be wandering around.”

“A-ah… Uh…”

When was the last time he had talked?

It didn't seem to deter the woman, as she knelt to his face and smiled.

“Can you tell me your name?”

Names. Names were something special, right? It was hard to tell anymore. He still had vague memories of a time when his name was used kindly, and not with the venom that always seemed to drip from it nowadays. A man, smiling much like this woman. What had he said?

“Ta-Takashi.”

Her smile somehow brightened further.

“My name is Touko. It's nice to meet you, Takashi-kun.”

Suddenly, Takashi was dizzy. Takashi-kun. That was him in this woman's eyes. It was such a small thing, but his head was flooded with that last sentence. Had the air always been this warm?

His eyes filled with static. Touko’s face was blurred, but her growing concern bled through regardless. No, something was wrong.

Slowly, slowly, he turned his gaze up, past her shoulder. The static grew heavier, until…

A shape. Standing under a flickering street lamp, a few metres behind the pair. A figure, black and heavy and solid, too solid to not be casting a shadow under the yellow glare. It hurt his head to look at. A high keen pierced through his ears the more he tried to focus on it. Ringing, ringing.

Two white eyes opened in the cavity of its head, and beneath them, split open a smile.

The lamps blacked out.

The smell of burning incandescence.

The sound of footsteps, closer and closer and closer.

He ran.

As the leaves hit his face, as the branches scratched his arms, beneath the sound of his heart and the snapping of twigs behind him, he swore he heard a woman's voice call out.

“Takashi-kun!”

Date of Report: July 1st, 1994

Individual’s Name: Natsume Takashi

Age: Eight years old

Last Seen: Approx. 20:10, Yatsuhara

Suspected runaway case. The witness, Fujiwara Touko-san, claimed she met the boy by chance on her way home. By her account, he began displaying erratic behaviour, as if being pursued, raising her concerns about his fleeing not being of his own volition. However, there is little evidence of this being a possibility. Further investigation to be added at a later date.

File last updated: July 3rd, 1994. 19:47:33

Chapter Text

Takashi had gotten a late birthday present.

It was so late that it almost circled back to being for his next birthday, just short of it by two months. He didn't mind such things.

After all, he had gotten a present.

Coming down from the attic, he had seen auntie at the table.

“Ah… It's you. A box was dropped off for you just now.”

It was with all the nonchalance in the world that she turned back to the novel in her hand, as if his entire world had not just been uprooted and shaken.

A box? For him?

“Hurry up and look through it before it gets thrown out.”

His eyes lit up at the prospect. Auntie was always the nicer one, lending him books from her collection and mostly just ignoring him, rather than getting mad at him.

He scrambled for the genkan, and there it was: an old box, torn at the corners and slightly wet at the bottom, and already left open, a few articles strewn about around it. Uncle looking for money, he presumed. On a piece of tape stuck to its side, was a haphazardly scribbled name: Natsume… Reiko? Natsume, like him.

It wasn't his mother's name, so… An aunt? A long-lost sister?

An answer from auntie: “Your grandmother.”

His grandmother… His real grandmother. Not a grand-aunt, or a grandmother's friend, or an old neighbour. A grandmother. Was she from his father's or mother's side? Was she still alive? What was she like?

He imagined an old woman, wrinkles around her eyes when she smiled at him, her warm hands enveloping his own. What would he call her? Reiko-san? Or grandma?

What would she call him?

Sifting through the contents of the box showed most of them left untouched — a hopeful thought at first, but… Maybe that was the problem. The paper inside was torn, almost like it was eaten, and the little parts left intact were stained with dots of yellow and brown, splattered on the pages like a small galaxy. As much as he tried, he could no longer make out any of the words. If he was getting the box in this state, with no grandmother coming to meet him and take him back to a real home… It probably meant…

His heart sank.

Tears welled up in his eyes, but he stubbornly fought them back. Crying wasn't something unwanted children like him could do. He had never even met her! And yet… Why was that the most painful thing?

He turned away from the box, when something caught his eye. A little green shape, nestled under everything else.

Picking it up and examining it proved it to be a book, one of traditional make and binding. Flipping it open revealed pages upon pages of… Random scribbles? Or was it some form of calligraphy? He couldn't quite tell.

What was odd, however, was its pristine condition, if not a bit dusty. In the pile of stained, broken pages… Had it just been lucky?

On the front cover, were three characters. He mouthed them out carefully, like a spell.

“Book… Of… Friends?”

He quite liked that, actually.

Now, the same book remained clutched to Takashi’s chest, shielded from the reaching hands of the forest as he ran.

Was it even the same creature chasing him as the one behind Touko-san? He couldn't tell anymore, not in this enveloping darkness. The yellow lights of the town had long been lost, and he could barely see his own hand in front of him, let alone discern anything beyond. It was already taking him all the effort he could not to fal–

There it was. In the end, a buckle in his leg was all it took. His heart dropped, along with the rest of him, as all of his weight went tumbling to the ground. He couldn't hear anything past the blood rushing through his ears, but he knew. They were right behind him this whole time, weren't they? They were going to catch up now, find him defenseless, weak, alone, and… Did they eat people? If they did, he thought he probably wouldn't taste very good. His body tensed for the attack…

And it never came.

In fact, there was nothing. The whirring of insects was all that touched his straining ears, listening for the screaming, roaring, chattering, muttering of the creatures on his tail barely seconds ago. What…?

He felt around in the dark for an explanation, to have his fingers brush stone. The shape… It must've been an encasing of some sort with a small roof… A shrine!

Through all his years of experience with the ghosts, demons, creatures, Takashi found that they never liked holy places. Shrines, temples, sometimes he found that they even avoided the monks themselves. They were always his shelter when all else failed, at the expense of the quickly thinning patience of the caretakers. So, a little shrine in the middle of the forest became his saviour… He almost laughed at the absurdity, and yet, it was comforting.

Beside the cold stone, all his fear began to melt away, leaving nothing but his sheer exhaustion behind. How long had he been running, he wondered? The pages of the little book rustled from where it was nestled in both arms. “Too long!”, he substituted in place of the sound, and this time he laughed. It almost felt alive, sometimes. Not in any way he could place by thinking, but a deeper feeling, like a nice sentiment. He decided that maybe the book itself was the friend. That sounded nice, didn't it?

Through all the aches and scratches, though the hard ground dug into his side, Takashi felt the slow flood of sleep overtake him, and didn't fight it as he cradled his friend.

After all, it wasn't as if he had anywhere else to go.