Dreams of Tanabata

When he was seven years old Touma had gone to the star festival with his best friend Kusuo. It had been truly wonderful to walk hand in hand with his dear friend as the stars shone above them and the festival lights shone around them.

An adorable plush cow available as a prize at one of the booths had caught his eye. It was black and white with a shining golden bell fastened to its neck by a red ribbon tied into a bow.

Kusuo having noticed Touma's interest, won the stuffed animal and gave it to him.

Cream, as the cow somewhat uncreatively came to be called, has served as Touma's bedfellow each and every night since he'd first received her almost ten years ago. After Kusuo moved away she had become especially dear to him as a memento of their friendship.

Tonight, she's nowhere to be found.

After searching the house high and low to no avail, Touma asks his mother, "I cannot seem to find Cream tonight. You wouldn't have happened to pack her away without notifying me, would you?"

"Oh, that thing," his mother says, guiltily casting her gaze to one side, "It was getting really gross and ratty so I put it out with the burnable trash this morning."

Touma is hit by a wave of despondency at news of this betrayal.

Sure, Cream's fur had been starting to mat and become discolored, the white staining to yellow and the black fading to gray, the ribbon had come undone from its bow long ago and started to fray apart at the ends, the bell had tarnished, and her stuffing had become rather clumpy from all the times she'd had to take a trip through the wash after Touma wet the bed, but all that was perfectly fixable.

If Mom had just told him that Cream's current condition was so distasteful he could have taken steps to remedy it but no she had to get rid of it behind his back so as not to give him a chance to object, and now his lovely plush reminder of his friendship with Kusuo is gone to a place that he cannot follow, much like Kusuo himself, where it will be reduced to ashes, hopefully very unlike Kusuo himself. Not that Touma can know, being left behind like he was.

Touma hugs his knees as a long keening sound escapes his mouth.

"Oh dear. I didn't know it meant so much to you. We can get you a much nicer one after we move."

"I don't want a nicer one," Touma keens, "I want the one that Kusuo won for me."

"I don't understand. Who's Kusuo?"

It turns out that his mother doesn't remember Kusuo at all and continues not to no matter how much Touma tries to explain and jog her memory.

After asking his mom sufficient follow-up questions to determine that she doesn't seem to have memory issues aside from her inability to recall Kusuo, Touma calls his father to see if he remembers.

He does not.

Over the next few days Touma asks his peers and teachers about Kusuo. They don't remember him either.

In spite of this Touma doesn't doubt for a moment that Kusuo and his memories of their friendship are real.

They have to be, or else Touma has only ever been loved with the obligatory love that his parents spared him whenever they weren't too busy hating each other and has never in his life had anyone truly accept him as he is.

*

Starting tomorrow Makoto is going to be out of town for a week to do filming on location for a new drama he's in, so the Teruhashi siblings are, as is their tradition taking a trip to the shrine to pray for his safe travels.

They wash their hands and mouths and make their way up the stairs to the main body of the shrine.

Kokomi doesn't usually ask for anything on these visits save for her brother's safe return. After all, a perfect pretty girl like her already has everything she could ever need.

However today she asks, Please make my brother love me only in the ways a brother should love his sister.

A few weeks ago she'd dreamed she found him lying in the grass behind some festival stalls tangled in a lovers embrace with a girl who looked exactly like her.

Even if it was just a dream, since then it has been much harder to write off her brother's comments about wanting to marry her as tasteless jokes.

After leaving the shrine they stand at the top of the stairs and watch the sun set.

"Dearest Kokomi," her brother says," The sunset is really beautiful today, isn't it?"

"It really is beautiful," Kokomi says, and for a moment a sublime sense of peace settles over her.

The moment is sadly short-lived and is ruined instantly when her brother leans in and presses his lips passionately against hers. His tongue forces its way past her lips and probes around her mouth.

The moment she recovers from the initial shock to start processing what is happening, she pushes her brother away from her.

He loses his balance and goes tumbling backwards down the stairs that Kokomi forgot that they were standing at the top of.

Kokomi scrambles down the stairs to check if he's okay but by the time she reaches him, a tall man in a kitsune mask is standing over him. He's dressed in traditional clothing and his blond hair is tied back is a sloppy ponytail.

He reaches down and presses two fingers against her brother's wrist, checking for a pulse.

"Don't bother." The man says, gesturing for Kokomi to stop her approach, "He's dead."

Then he turns to look at Kokomi with twinkling green eyes and adds, "I saw what happened, you know."

Kokomi's blood runs cold upon hearing this, "I didn't mean to. It was an accident."

"Oh really? Surely, you wanted your brother to die at least a little bit after he kissed you like that. It would be rather bad for your reputation if news of this got out.~"

"I didn't." Kokomi insists.

She didn't, right? Truthfully, she can't really remember what she had been feeling in the heat of that moment.

"Don't worry. As long as you don't tell anyone that I took your brother's body away from here, I'll let everyone go on thinking you're some perfect little angel," he says, bending down and picking up Makoto's body, "but if you tell a single soul about this meeting, then I'll make sure that everyone learns what a nasty little devil you really are.~"

Then he walks off into the woods surrounding the shrine, her brother's body slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Kokomi watches him go a strangely heavy emptiness settling in her chest.

She doesn't cry.

*

Touma presses the buzzer and waits patiently at the gate.

A woman with graying green hair comes out to greet him.

She's clearly a bit puzzled to see a high-school student paying her house a visit, so Touma explains, "I'm here to see your son. You see, we were classmates back in elementary school before he became unwell."

Touma does not lie and say that they were friends (they had in fact been quite the opposite) instead he lets her fill in that herself through selective withholding of information. He continues," I'm moving away soon and I would like to see him one last time before I go."

"I see," the woman says, "He's probably nothing like the boy you remember."

"I understand and have adjusted my expectations accordingly."

She leads him into the house, which is small and sparsely furnished.

He is seated on an aging sofa as she ventures down the hall and returns with Takashi trailing listlessly behind her.

He's scrawny in a way that suggests he hasn't been eating properly and he has impressive dark circles under his eyes.

What's more he has the broken stance of a man condemned. Or at least the broken stance Touma imagines a man condemned would have. He's never seen one himself.

It's hard for Touma to believe that this is the boy who'd tormented him back in grade school.

"I brought you shrimp chips. Specifically, the spicy kind that you used to eat to show off how good you were at eating spicy things." Touma says, offering a bag of said treat. He doesn't know if these were Takashi's favorite snack, but they're the only one that came up when he asked around about what snacks Takashi had liked. Takashi stares blankly at the bag and makes no move to take it.

"Well then, I suppose that I'll just have to consume all of these chips without your assistance," Touma says opening the bag and letting the sweet shrimpy smell waft out. Takashi snatches the bag away from Touma and begins to eat one tentatively.

"Oh good! It looks like you're more than just an empty shell. Maybe you'll be able to help me after all!" Touma says with a smile, "Do you remember our dear classmate Kusuo? If you require a description to jog your memory, he was that pink-haired kid-"

The bag of chips slips from Takashi's grasp, as he flinches at having his memory of Kusuo jogged.

"Ah, so you do remember him. Excellent! May I ask you a few questions regarding the last time you saw him?"

Takashi mutters something under his breath, too quiet for Touma to make out.

"Pardon? I'm afraid I didn't quite catch that."

"Get out." Takashi says, his voice low and gravelly, like he hasn't used it in a long time. He's standing now, fists clenched and shaking with anger. Or is it fear?

"Now, now, there is no need to get so worked up. I simply wished to ask you a few questions."

"I don't want to talk to you about this. Not when you're the one who sicced him on us!" Takashi says almost crying now.

Touma rankles at this accusation. He had not "sicced" Kusuo on them like some kind of animal, but rather called out to his dear friend to help save him from the torment that Takashi and his cronies were putting him through. There's no way he could have known that whatever Kusuo had done to achieve this end would mess up the other boys' minds the way it had.

He's about to say as much when Takashi's mother rushes into the room, her attention presumably drawn by her sons distressed voice.

She gives Touma an apologetic look and says, "You should probably go. When something sets him off like this there's nothing to be done except take him back to his room and leave him be for a few hours until he calms down again."

Her tone is uncomfortably reminiscent of the one Touma's own mother had used to apologize on his behalf the many times he had embarrassed her in public as a child by falling afoul of some hidden rule or another that he'd failed to intuit.

This being the second time he's been requested to leave, Touma obliges.