Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ Cry ❯ Cry ( Chapter 1 )

Author's Note: I don't own Fruits Basket or any of its characters. Natsuka Takaya does.

 

 

Cry

 

I'm a doctor. I take care of people. That is what I do. No one forced me into it. Its what I've always wanted. I've always been good at saying the right thing, knowing the `medicine' that everyone needs.

There's one patient in particular that I always had in mind. Someone that I wanted to save. I went through eight years of medical school so that I could sit in my office today, with this creature leaning over me, clutching my shirt collar in his fist and whispering nonsense in my ear.

When he's finished he sits back, crouched on his feet, and giggles under his breath, his dark eyes narrowed. I try as I always do to work out his meaning, irritated because there seems to be none. He seems to be doing this on purpose, knowing full well my discomfort and enjoying it every bit. My face is blank but he knows, just as he always does.

He continues his game for a while, hoping it seems, for a reaction. And when I give him none, he puts his hands over his face and sighs. I watch him sink inside himself, lost in a world that I could never fathom.

“Akito.”

He looks at me and I see the rage flickering just below the surface…he hides it well. But it was there from the day he was born—that rage. Anger at our family for the injustice, for the burden they placed on him before he ever understood.

I was eight years old, holding that baby in my arms as his cousin, my mother, prattled away on the phone. She was always so busy, my mother. A firm, intelligent woman of good reputation among the Soumas, she always ended up taking care of the odd jobs that no one else wanted—like babysitting my newborn, already-dying cousin.

As I looked into his eyes at that young age, I was disturbed to see that anger so intense, held inside such a tiny body. I didn't know much about anger then, but something inside me—something much wiser and, perhaps primitive, understood all too well. He was such a quiet baby…he never cried. This was wrong, considering how sick he was. How does an infant keep that pain to himself? You wouldn't have known how much he was hurting—until you looked into those angry blue-black eyes, and then you would realize that he was hurting and hating you for his pain. Using all of his tiny, childish energy to wish you dead.

Nineteen years later, I am looking into his eyes still, and see that pain and that anger, but also that youth that never faded away. The angry little kid that never grew up. He'll die before he grows up. And I can't hate him, even after everything he's done to me, to the family…he's just a kid.

I watch him sink inside himself…

“Akito.”

“Hatori.” His voice so even, so calm…like he doesn't want to hurt me or anybody else. I know better.

“You haven't been taking your medicine.” And I want to scold him, slap him, something…anything to make him care that I care, and maybe try a little harder for somebody's sake…He's so selfish.

“I haven't been taking my medicine.” He replies tonelessly.

“You need to do that.”

“I need to do that.”

We lock eyes for a moment, a silent battle of wills waging between us. There's something I've always wanted to ask him. He has every right to have me put to death if I ever cross that line.

“Do you want to die?” For a dreadful moment, my words hang in the air, nonexistent in his selective mind. And when he answers me, he says nothing at all, but turns and shuffles out of the room; head down, arms wrapped around his own thin body.

He pauses in the doorway, as though he might speak. And when he leaves that spot I feel him there still; waiting, deciding, and passing on…as quiet as he ever was, that first cry caught somewhere in his throat…it's echo ringing in my ears.

 

THE END.