Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ All I Ever Needed ❯ Melting Smoke ( Chapter 6 )

Chapter 6: Melting Smoke

 

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“And I would have liked to have known you

But I was just a kid

Your candle burned out long before

Your legend ever did”

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-Candle in the Wind Lyrics By: Bernie Taupin

 

WARNING!! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR VOL. 16, CHAPTERS 90 - 94

 

“I'm afraid Kunimitsu isn't here today, Kyoko-san.” Kyoko smiled a sad little smile.

“Oh. It's my mistake for not checking ahead. I guess I'd better-”

“Shishou?” The same orange haired little boy she had seen on the day she'd visited Kunimitsu the first time, almost three years ago. The little boy with a healing heart.

“Could you wait a minute, Kyo, I'm a bit busy.” The little boy had a handful of Kazuma's robe and was peeking his head around Kazuma's legs. Kyoko crouched down to Kyo's level, then, looking up a Kazuma asked;

“And who might this be?”

“Oh, I apologize. This is my adopted son Kyo. He and Kunimitsu have been getting along fairly well.” Kazuma smiled kindly. Kyoko looked back at Kyo.

“Is that so?” She asked, a playfully smile quirked up the corners of her mouth. Kyo just stared at her. “Well, I hope he's not giving you too much trouble. I'm afraid restlessness runs in the family.” She stood up, brushing off her pants, looking around.

“Shishou…!” Kyo whispered more urgently, tugging at the handful of robe in his fist.

“I'll be right there, Kyo, all right?”

“I was wondering…” Kyoko said. “If it wouldn't be too much trouble…could I possibly look around. Maybe if I get an idea of the environment Kunimitsu was spending his time in, I could connect with him a little more.” Kazuma nodded.

“That would be no trouble. Of course. You're welcome to look around. My home is your home” Kyoko gave him a little bow.

“Thank you, Kazuma-san.”

 

 

Kyoko wandered the grounds for a while, watching the spars between all ages and levels of students. A group of teenage students were warming up with some kata, moving into the different positions together like an eerily synchronized school of fish. She watched them for some time; their hypnotizing movements a blessed distraction from the world.

Tohru was nine, almost ten, and Katsuya had been dead for almost three years now. Kyoko wandered over to a low wall, which came up to about her waist line, and half sat, half leaned on the wall, her head turned up towards the sky.

“Um, Ms?”

“Hm?” Kyoko jumped a bit. There, standing a little ways down, was the little red haired boy she'd seen. Kyo.

“Why are you here to see Kunimitsu?” he asked, scooting sideways across the wall, and finally settling about two feet from her, his tiny legs dangling over the ledge.

“I'm his birth mother.”

Kyoko saw Kyo flinch a bit, but thought nothing of it.

“Um, could I ask you something?” Kyo said, drawing his legs up to his chest, his eyes fixed on a tuft of grass.

“Shoot.”

“Well, you see. I don't have a birth mother. All the papers say she died in an “accident”.” The way he said the word made her keep silent so he could continue. “But everyone who brings it up while they think I'm not listening says they're sure it was suicide. My father, my real one, Shishou is the greatest. But my biological father, he lost it after a couple days, and he screamed and yelled at me. “It's you fault! It's your fault! It's all your fault your mother's dead! You killed my wife, you monster!””

Kyo was silent for a moment, as he seemed to fight back tears.

“And it's really painful and all, having your mother's death blamed on you. But I don't think I could handle them saying, “she just couldn't handle life anymore”. It would be like when no one's blaming you, but you know you did something wrong. I know…being…who I am…caused a lot of problems for Mom, but I don't want them to blame me for her death, and at the same time, I don't want them to take all the blame away.”

He looked up at her, and she gave him a sideways glance.

“Y'know. I wanted them to blame me too.” He looked at her questioningly, and she continued her story. “Before middle school, I was already out of control. I fell in with the “bad kids” and spent my days doing “bad things”. Some people cried or begged,” she sighed, “But I still beat people senseless. Or they beat me.

“Parents. Well, I had them. But I came from a cold household.” She gave Kyo a bitter smile. “Dad never thought of the family, and Mom only cared about her husband and her image. We never went out as a family, and we rarely even ate together. I can't remember even being held.”

She told him of the heated confrontation between her mother and father.

“It was like my body was made of broken glass. I couldn't trust anyone. Not my parents, not my friends…” she sighed. “I only hurt them.” She looked over at Kyo, who was watching her, his chin on his knees, watching her intently.

“What happened next?”

“Well, I used to bike at night. I'd stay out really late. Those nights on the road, I felt like laughing, or crying. I felt like I could go anywhere. But at the same time, I couldn't move. In middle school, I barely ever showed. That's why; it really was coincidental that I met him there at all.”

She smiled a bit more kindly at Kyo as she told him of how she met Katsuya Honda. Her teacher! He was surprised. She told Kyo of how Katsuya had told her how she really did want people to love her. Kyo looked down into the grass.

“But I knew,” she said, and Kyo looked up at her, “I knew I couldn't change.” She told him of him hauling her off to get ramen. “At first I thought he was weird. At first anyway. I couldn't tell if he was as gentle as he seemed. He could've been faking the manners. He'd run off with a student he didn't even know. He'd brought her to a restaurant, calm as could be. He was nuts, or at least he acted like it.

“But that day, I only knew one thing for sure. That ramen tasted good!” Kyo almost burst out laughing. “Yes, but they stung at my wounds. But the ramen we ate was good.” Kyoko narrowed her eyes and said that with a smile.

 

“After my first meeting with Katsuya Honda, I started to change.”

Katsuya told her about his father, and how he had to take the family business. But he said the influences from his father helped him push boundaries.

“I told him: Whoa! You're like the worst person I know! And you know what he said back?” Kyo shook his head. “Thank you! Can you believe that?” Kyoko shook her head smiling. “He had strong habits, and was fake polite. And also cold in some ways. But that didn't stop me from being attracted to him.”

“You're teacher?!” Kyo burst out, “It's that like, illegal?!”

“Only if we did anything. Which we didn't, but I'll get to that part later. Now do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?” Kyo sighed and nodded. “All right then.

“I started going to school at lot. I never showed up for classes, but I still walked through the door. Katsuya always visited me at lunch. We never talked long, but I looked forward to it.”

Kyoko told him of how her gang started to get suspicious. Of how Katsuya Honda told her he was leaving the teaching job at their school. How his father had lost his “edge”. She explained how she'd wanted to got to his last lecture, but how there was no place for her there anymore.

And then how he'd taken her to the beach. She'd jumped around, crying: The ocean! The ocean!

“I was like an abandoned cat. He didn't have to care, but he did. And that's when I clicked, and I looked at him and thought: Sensei, I love you.”

“So is this gonna be a sick romance story?” Kyo asked speculatively.

“No. We're almost past the romance part, all right? Things have to get worse before they can get better. That's my motto. Anyway. He told me that we could still see each other outside of school. Back then, I didn't know the real reason he came to see me. I was happy but confused. He eventually got a job at a pharmaceutical company. He looked over my schoolwork every weekend.” Then Kyoko sighed and murmured, “But then I was punished.”

She told of how she'd wanted to leave the gang so badly. To try to change. But they beat her unconscious.

“I remember one of them saying before I blacked out : “You wanna leave the gang that bad? Show us how bad, princess. You're such a moron. You can't fix what's so badly been broken.” She sighed. “When I came to, I was in the hospital. Cops and teachers came by. My parents gave some excuse to avoid me. And I couldn't take the high school entrance exams. And amongst all of it, one phrase kept echoing in my head. You got what you deserved…”

She told Kyo of how Katsuya had showed up at her doorstep as she was being kicked out, and had told her parents:

“Well, I hope to marry this imperfect girl.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And then he was explaining how he found me and all, and I shouted “Katsuya!” and that caught his attention. It was the first time I had called him anything but “Sensei.” He said he was serious about what he had said. Its okay, I told him, you don't have to go that far for me. You can throw me out now. You did enough, I'm okay.”

She explained how he'd told her; it was because she'd cried.

“He said, when you cried and confessed to loneliness, you seemed very human to me. Then he told me he loved me. And he said: if you still can't believe me, I'll say whatever you need to hear. I'll say it as often as you like, but remember I don't like wasting words. And then he-”

“Okay! Eww! Who'd wanna kiss a girl?!”

“You will someday!” Kyoko teased, lightly hitting Kyo on the shoulder. “One day you'll meet a girl you'll want to kiss so much you can't stand it!”

“Will not. Girls are gross. For more than one reason.”

“You won't always think that.”

“Okay, okay. But I'm, confused. How does Kunimitsu fit into all of this?”

“Oh! He was an accident. When I was still a “bad” girl, this was…mm…right after I'd met Katsuya, I found out I was pregnant. I decided to give the baby up for adoption so he'd have a chance at a good life.”

“Okay, that works.”

“Anyway. So we got married. It was just us. Nobody celebrated. All the Honda's were against it. Except for one: Katsuya's father. We lived near the ocean and on Katsuya's days off, we would go out together. It didn't matter where we went. We just had to be together. The fact that we were together, was all that mattered.”

And then Kyo was told how scared Kyoko was when she found of she was pregnant with Tohru, and would be raising her. She was scared that Tohru might not want her as a mother. She hadn't been scared with Kunimitsu, because he wouldn't get her as a mother anyway. But Katsuya had reassured her that everything would be all right.

Many years later, Kyo would think; and that was how she was born. The most the most precious thing in the world…Tohru.

“Time passed quietly and softly. We still went out, smiling, and together. I watched him. When Katsuya held Tohru, his face got so gentle. I loved it so much I wanted to cry. But I was also a bit guilty that I hadn't told Katsuya about Kunimitsu. But I was happy enough to cry, and that feeling stayed with me.”

She told him about the last phone conversation they had, the day she'd visited Kunimitsu for the first time. And then how Katsuya had passed away from the illness.

“I wanted them all to blame me for his death. I wanted them to. I wanted them to make me feel something but emptiness and grief. And I was also distraught that he was gone and I hadn't told him. I hadn't told him about my other child. I was so upset. But it was too short . Katsuya was cremated. After that, he was smoke and white ash. The whole thing was too short.” Kyoko took a deep breath, trying to squash down the resurfacing feelings of that time.

“I don't remember much. From the period right after he died. It was blank. The only thing I knew was constant despair.”

She looked Kyo in the eye and told him how the world needs no one. If you die, the world keeps spinning and day and night still come. How, for however brief a moment, she'd wanted to follow Katsuya, and had almost throw herself off a bridge before:

“I remembered Tohru. I ran home as fast as I could, thinking “What the hell was I doing? Being so selfish, when I have someone here at home who loves me and will be here to welcome me home.”

“So…?”

“Well, maybe it's true. Maybe the world doesn't need me. But there's still one person who's kind enough to need me. I only need that to live. That's all I need to live, y'know?” she told him, looking at him from the corner of her eye. “But I think my parental authority got a liiiiitle dangerous over Tohru. It's a good thing I had Toto-san, Katsuya's father, to help out.”

Parental authority? Kyo thought.

“There was a lot to do after that- - like moving. I guess keeping busy cheered me up. In the end, why not? I know Tohru's here for me!” Kyo looked at her.

“Then you don't think about it anymore? Wanting to see Katsuya Honda?” She gave him a bittersweet smile, then looked out at the landscape ahead of her. “I makes me wonder.” She said, “How lost you'll all get…how long you'll take. It can be hard to find your own answers.”

Kyo was unsure what she meant, but then she continued. “Everyone has to lose their way once. It's the only way to learn.” She smiled at him, a knowing smile. “Everyone.”

 

 

End of Chapter 6:

“Melting Smoke”

A/n: I'm so sorry everyone!! I wrote a scene with Kyo and Tohru in it to put in this chapter, but the Kyoko-Kyo part got too long, so I'm just gonna put it in the next chapter! Again I'm so sorry! T_T anyway. This chapter only had 2 titles this time! Hurray! I'm getting better! And the chapters are getting steadily longer. This chapter wasn't as much fun to write as the rest because a lot of it came straight out of the book, and I didn't really get to write much myself. But it had some comic relief in it this time! ^ _^ But anyway. I really do apologize for not getting back to Kyo and Tohru, but if the story flows with it, the writer's gotta go with the flow! So I'm gonna put that scene in next chapter, I promise! (For real this time! T_T) okay! See you next chapter!

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