Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ Learning to Stand ❯ Happy Coincidences ( Chapter 9 )

Chapter 9: Happy Coincidences

He does love me! I'm sure of it! He asks for my opinion more and more, holds my hands. He touches my face and tells me I should smile more. I smile all the time when I am with him, not because he tells me to but because I cannot stop myself. Every night, after I have served him the evening meal he asks me to sit with him and we talk. We talk about everything. He wants to know more and more about me. I answer his questions and my answers seem to make him even sadder. He says he never realized how difficult a servant's life is. Difficult? How can my life be difficult if it has brought me to him? If I had not been a servant I would never have had the opportunity to clean Minoru-sama's home and truly fall in love with him.

I now know the terrible truth about the Sohma jyuunishi. I know why Minoru-sama would never hold me. Why he always maintained a distance between us. It's also the reason why Minoru-sama spends the winter and early spring in his home, never going outside in the snow. I don't think he ever intended for me to find out. How could I have been so foolish? I am such a selfish girl. Because he never held me, I doubted his love. And so, I surprised him in his study. I wrapped my arms around him before he realized what I was about. I thought I had wanted to show him that I wanted to be held, to be closer to him. Instead I now realize that the closeness I craved is not to be. Wrapped in my arms, he disappeared in a cloud of smoke. When it cleared I found his clothing in a pile and a white snake coiling itself before me. I think I fainted for the next thing I remember is opening my eyes and finding myself laying on the floor, the snake beside me.

"Haruko-San?" the snake asked with my love's beautiful voice. "Minoru-sama?" I looked frantically about the room, but only the snake and I were present. "Where are you?" The snake moved closer to me. "Haruko-san, I am here. I didn't want you to find out this way." "Find out what, Minoru-sama?" Surely, I thought, this must be a dream. I am still unconscious. Then the cloud of smoke appeared again and my love was kneeling beside me, covered only by his beautiful hair. "Minoru-sama? I don't understand. What happened to you?" I will never forget the look on his face-so sad and so afraid. Why would my love be afraid? "Haruko-san, I will explain everything to you. You deserve that much for the love you have given me but I fear that after Katsuo-sama discovers my error I will never see you again. Or I will see you and you will not remember me at all." He turned away from me and began to dress. His nudity had made me realize his beauty anew, and I looked away as my face heated. When he was dressed he helped me to my knees and knelt beside me. He kissed me so sweetly, but I felt a panic rising in my heart. It felt like he was saying goodbye in that kiss. I clutched at his hands. "Minoru-sama?" He sighed my name, pressing my hands to his lips and closing his eyes. "I will tell you everything, Haruko-san. The Sohma live under a curse borne by twelve members of the family-the jyuunishi." I stared at him. Was it possible? "We are possessed by the vengeful spirits of the zodiac. Whenever we are embraced by a member of the opposite sex or our bodies are considerably weakened we transform into an animal." I knew my eyes must look like saucers. I wanted to deny his words. I knew I could not. I had seen the proof of it myself. "I am possessed by the spirit of the snake."

He fell silent for a while. He seemed to be fighting with himself. "You can see why that would make a relationship difficult." I shook my head in denial. I wanted to beg him not to let me go. I wanted to be by his side forever. "There is more. To the jyuunishi, Katsuo-sama is more than the head of the family. We cannot deny him anything he asks or demands of us. If he were to command me to forsake you I would have no choice but to obey. I do not want Haruko-san made so unhappy." There were tears in his eyes. "Haruko-san has made me happy with her smiles and her love. I know that Haruko-san is happy when she is with me. I do not want to lose that." "I do not care!" I found myself crying out. "I love Minoru-sama! I love everything that he is. The snake is a part of you, and you would not be my love if you were not possessed by it! Just as I cannot ever regret being a servant because it has brought me to Minoru-sama's side!" I stroked my hands from his face to his shoulders and kissed him with all the love and passion I had in me. "I do not want to think about what will happen! I only want to know what I feel now! I love Minoru-sama more than my own life! He sees me and he has entrusted me with his pain. How can I ever regret meeting him?" He simply looked at me. I think my outburst had surprised him. Then his look changed to a fierceness I had never seen before and I knew he had decided to give me the now I had begged him for without realizing it.

I shook my head at the translation. A curse? That only happens in legends and fairy tales. Curses don't exist. Perhaps this wasn't a journal after all. Maybe it was simply a girl's fantasy story. Whatever it was, I was in too deep now. I decided to wait until I'd finished a little more before I showed it to Isuzu-chan.

It was the first time I truly felt…cursed. Wasn't that what Isuzu-chan had said? I knew I had a good memory. When had she said that? It was after our encounter with Hatsuharu-san. She had been telling me about her parents. That's right! I leaned back in my chair and out of habit the pen began traveling through my fingers. Ayame-san had hair and eyes the same color as Sohma Minoru. This will bear more thought.

"How are you doing, Isuzu-chan?" She was pacing again. She's been doing that more often lately. She's restless.

"I'm FINE!" she yelled at me. I rocked back in the chair.

"Have you heard from Ayame-san? It's been a while since we spoke with him."

She sighed. "No, I haven't. I haven't had much contact with anyone lately. It's like they're avoiding me."

"Is that unusual?"

"Ie. It's more a feeling than anything else. Sidelong glances and the like."

"I see." And I did. For a while lately I had been feeling like I was being watched but I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. She looked at me.

"How's the translation coming along?"

"Swimmingly. I've finally gotten to the meaty part. The last entry was long."

"Can I read it?" I debated for a second before digging through the mess on my desk and handing her the papers. She paced as she read, her mouth set in that familiar mulish line. She paused at one point; I knew she had reached the part where Minoru had transformed. When she was done she handed them back to me.

"Do you have any questions?" She knew I wasn't stupid.

"Ie. I want to wait until I've translated more. I might have misinterpreted something. I'm going to have to go back and recheck my references." Was that relief I saw chasing across her perfect face? "Either way, I'm sure I'll have more in a week or so. What brings you here today?"

"Shigure-san asked about you. He's the only person who doesn't seem to be avoiding me." Another look I couldn't identify crossed her features. There's so much I don't know about her.

"Sohma-san? What did he want to know?" Why was my stomach tightening?

"I don't know. He asked how your assignment went last semester. It took me a minute to remember that you'd told him `the project' was something you'd been assigned in your ancient Chinese language class. I told him you got full marks. He seemed satisfied with it." She shrugged.

"Then why are you pacing? Something's bothering you." I made it a statement. We had been friends too long for me not to know when she was upset.

"I don't know! Shigure-san's never asked me about you before. It made me nervous, I guess. I think he saw more that day than we thought. He just had this look. Like a child who had hidden a prize. It irritated me." She threw her hands up in the air and looked around her. "I want to get out of here. Come with me?" I nodded. The translation could wait a few hours.

Night had already fallen. She set a fast pace and I struggled to catch up. I knew she was holding back for my sake. Gomen, Isuzu-chan. I have lied to you again. I couldn't let myself feel guilty about it just yet. There was a deeper mystery here than just her uneasy relationship with her relatives. I knew the journal could help me learn what that mystery was. I just wasn't sure I could solve it for her.

"You hungry?" She was always hungry. Another thing learned from a year of friendship. I nodded and she steered us towards a restaurant. As we sat waiting for our order I stared blankly into my cup of tea.

"What are you thinking about?" I glanced up at her.

"Haruko and Minoru. Secrets. I wonder if she ever told him she could write?"

"It does seem strange. But then with our family, strange seems to be the norm."

"What's it like? Being in your family?" She stared at me so long I felt I had asked something taboo. Show no fear… Another lesson learned from Isuzu-chan. Finally she broke eye contact and took a sip of her tea.

"It's difficult. Most of us haven't had the best lives. Some are worse than others. You know I live with Kagura, right?" I nodded. "Well, she's got it better than the majority of us do. Her parents are pretty understanding. They're a little overprotective, but they're not as bad as some other parents." She glared into her cup. I knew she was thinking of her own parents.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to dredge up old feelings." She shrugged.

"It's still hard to believe sometimes. It's hard not to be angry. I know it's my fault, but…sometimes I wonder if my life would have been different if I'd been born a year earlier or a year later or to a different family." I shook my head at her. "What?"

"If Isuzu-chan had been born at any other time and in any other place than she had been we never would have met. I never would have been able to get to know you."

"You sound like Haruko."

"I guess I do. I agree with her on a lot of points. Life is just a set of happy coincidences, isn't it?"

"Happy?"

"Well, for me anyway. When I first saw you I thought you were gorgeous! I thought you would be so popular and I wouldn't be able to get close to you. Kind of like how Haruko felt about Minoru. Like you were high above me." She looked surprised.

"Really?"

"Yes. I saw how you ignored all the attention, and I wondered why. You seemed so sad sometimes. I wanted to know why someone as beautiful as you would be so sad." Our order arrived and we began to eat.

"And?"

"And you know the rest. I asked you for the psychology notes and you were quite rude to me!" I laughed.

"You lied to me about needing my notes."

"Hai. A small lie. I didn't know how to approach you otherwise. I got the feeling that if I had walked up to you and said `Let's be friends' you would have run in the opposite direction."

"I probably would have. And if you hadn't happened to be studying to become an archivist and realized what I was trying to read I wouldn't have approached you later on." I nodded.

"A happy coincidence, ne?" She looked at me intently before she smiled.

"Hai. A happy coincidence, after all."