Truth and Tanuki [IkeJun, 2/?]
Title: Truth and Tanuki
Pairing: Shison Jun/Ikeoka Ryousuke
Rating/Warnings: G/RPS.
Word Count: 3683
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Chapter 2
Life with a tanuki was infinitely preferable to life without a tanuki. Not only was it cute and fluffy, it seemed to have a knack for getting into trouble and finding interesting things to do, or to make Jun do. More than once he had to sneak into the servant quarters in the middle of the night to return a trinket the tanuki had picked up the previous night and that the owner had spent the entire day searching for. It was more than a life of crime, though. The tanuki would poke at books until Jun opened them, and if he then started reading it aloud, it would curl up in his lap and listen intently and stare up at him with the most adoring eyes. During late night kitchen raids, it would carefully seek out certain morsels which it would present to him proudly, and then paw at his arm until he ate them. Strangest (and funniest) of all, it seemed to enjoy making up its own little games, a new one every day, which Jun didn't understand the purpose of. Most of them seemed to involve imitating something Jun did, and all of them involved the tanuki repeating some motion until it was satisfied, and then bounding up to him and licking his face. He didn't understand what it was trying to accomplish, but during these games the tanuki tended to fall down a lot and bonk itself on the head when it wasn't satisfied, so Jun looked forward to it anyway. It was a part of the routine as regular as curling up with it at night and letting it out in the early morning, and he didn't give it any thought outside its entertainment value.
That is, until one day when it had finished trying to stand on its hind legs (with low levels of success) and Jun had laughed so hard he'd almost cried, and the tanuki scampered up to him and pressed its mouth to Jun's lips, and Jun smiled and pulled it into his arms, except all of a sudden he wasn't holding a tanuki, but a person, and this person was kissing him.
His reflexes kicked in and he shoved him away, jumping to his feet and drawing his sword. He was so startled by his sudden appearance and how quickly he had reacted that it took a moment before he even saw him properly. It was a boy, probably around his age, wearing a ripped cloak over a stained and patched traveling tunic. He wasn't looking at Jun at all, but was examining his hands as if he'd never seen anything so fascinating in all his life. Jun adjusted his grip on his sword. “Who are you?”
The boy looked up at Jun, coughed a few times, and after apparently thinking very hard about it, said in a deep, slow voice, “I was a tanuki.” His eyes were dark and sleepy-looking, as the tanuki's had been, and there was something about the way he sat, something about the way he moved, that was reminiscent of the creature.
“Why... are you human now?” He didn't lower the sword.
The boy went back to looking at his hand, flexing his fingers and rotating his wrist. “I was a human. But... I was...” He trailed off, looking away. He stretched out his arm and painstakingly pointed toward Jun's bookshelf. “Like Princess Ihaara.”
“You're telling me you're a cursed princess? Or, prince, I guess.”
“Cursed! I was cursed. Not a princess.”
“Let me guess: you were a petty thief.”
The boy grimaced, then started touching his cheeks and making a series of experimental faces. “Witches don't like thieves.”
Jun's arm was starting to get sore from holding the sword in the same position. “Let me ask you this. Do you mean me harm?”
“No.” The answer was instantaneous, and without the slowness that characterized his speech. Jun lowered his sword and sheathed it. He sat down on his bed, and after a second's hesitation, patted the spot beside him. The boy stood up awkwardly, swaying on two legs. He managed two steps forward before falling and landed heavily on Jun. Their lips met, and then he wasn't so heavy anymore. Jun opened his eyes to see the tanuki standing sheepishly on top of him.
“Okay. That's weird.” The tanuki lowered its head and hit itself with its two front paws. Jun thought about what he should do, then decided he didn't really have a choice. He picked it up, grimaced, and kissed it. Even though he kept his eyes open, he still somehow missed the moment when the tanuki stopped being a tanuki and started being a heavy and not nearly as cute human. It took the boy a little longer than Jun thought it should to get his lips off of him, and then he fell away from Jun. Then he fell off the bed.
“Why are you so terrible at everything?”
“I was a tanuki,” the boy said, rubbing his head with kind of a dazed expression, “for a very long time.”
“So you've totally forgotten how to be human? Wow.”
“Will you help me remember?” he asked, and his eyes were so big and hopeful that Jun got up and helped him to his feet, supporting the majority of his weight as the tanuki boy's legs slid this way and that. Eventually he was able to take two rickety steps forward and collapse onto the bed. He rolled over and stretched a hand out to Jun, but Jun stepped back, out of reach.
“Do you have a name, tanuki?”
“Ikeoka. Ryousuke. My friends call me IkeP. Mostly. I think. I think I had friends.”
“That makes one of us.”
“Well...” Ikeoka seemed to get distracted by his own hand again, turning it back and forth in fascination. “You have one friend at least,” he said eventually. “I'm your friend.”
“A tanuki was my friend,” Jun corrected.
“Is that different?” Ikeoka tried to sit up, but something went wrong and he just rolled onto his face instead. Jun stifled a laugh. Ikeoka managed to get his legs under his chest and push himself up with his arms. “If it's different, then you have two friends. Tanuki-me and human-me.”
“IkeP and Tanuki-P,” Jun said, and for some reason Ikeoka thought that was the funniest thing in the world. He laughed and laughed until it got annoying. “Stop laughing!”
“I... can't,” he choked out, then burst into laughter again. He rolled over and nearly fell off the bed again, but managed to save himself in time. “Forgot... how.”
Jun didn't know what to make of that, so he grabbed the boy's cheeks and pulled on them until he stopped laughing, the way his mother used to do to him as a child when he wouldn't stop whining. This worked, thankfully, and Ikeoka smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“You laughed when you were a tanuki, kinda, but I guess it's different for humans?” Jun said tentatively, trying to be kinder.
“Very different. It's easier.” Ikeoka finally managed to sit up, though he kept swaying back and forth. “Everything's harder, but laughing is easier.”
“Huh.” Jun thought for a second, then held out his hand with a smile. “You wanna play? I thought of a new game.”
Ikeoka took his hand, eyes sparkling in a very tanuki way. “Game? What game? I love games.”
“It's called 'How to be a human.' Honestly, I don't think you're going to do very well at first, but I'll help you.”
“Okay!” Ikeoka got to his feet, which immediately slid out from underneath him. He crashed to the floor and looked at Jun with the saddest expression in the world.
Jun stifled a laugh. “The first part of the game is 'Learn how to stand up again, you big clumsy dork.'”
“I... have the last part already, um. Mastered?” Ikeoka said, tongue slipping on the last word. Jun figured he'd remember how words worked if they kept talking.
“Good, that's the most important part. Now try again. Try finding your balance and remember, you only have two legs now.”
Ikeoka struggled to stand, leaning on the bed for balance. Sometimes he almost got it, but more often he fell on his butt or went sprawling across the floor.
“Are you sure you were really human once?”
Ikeoka looked up at him, seemingly not the slightest bit discouraged. “Probably! Maybe the witch... knew I'd make a better tanuki.” He tried again, and stayed on his feet longer, even though most of his weight was on the bed. Eventually he flopped onto it and rolled over. “If you don't like this... if you get, um, bored? You can, um.” He waved his hand over his face and shrugged.
“I'm good for now. What's with that anyway?” Jun felt his face growing hot and bent down so the tanuki boy couldn't see his blush.
“It was very hard to tell what the witch said the way to break the curse was,” Ikeoka said. “You must be a very special person.”
“I... That's... I'm probably not that special.”
“You're special to me anyway,” Ikeoka said, then slipped off the bed and went back to trying to stand.
“Do you think you could tell me what it's like out there?”
Ikeoka had just managed to ease his weight slightly onto his feet, and then they went out from under him again. “Look what you made me do,” he said good-naturedly. “I can try? But I might have forgotten a lot of words.”
“Please. Anything is fine.”
“Maybe you could read me some more stories. I'd remember words then. And I could tell you about the things in them?”
“I guess that could work. Can we do that now? You're not getting anywhere with standing.”
“I'll get it eventually,” Ikeoka said, and started to climb onto the bed again, but he couldn't seem to get his legs up and eventually Jun went over and pushed him up. He searched the shelf of picture books he'd brought up weeks ago for the tanuki and chose one that was about a city, which was what he most wanted to ask about. When he started reading aloud, Ikeoka leaned over and rested his head on Jun's shoulder. “I can't see the pictures,” he explained, and even though Jun opened the book wider and held it closer to him, he stayed where he was.
As soon as he finished the story, he tossed the book aside and started asking questions about marketplaces, and how many people there had to be in a city for you not to know all their names, and why some people didn't have enough to eat, and Ikeoka answered what he could in his slow way until the sun had set on the short winter day. Then he pointed to his stomach, said “Hungry,” and pressed his lips against Jun's before he could ask another question. The tanuki jumped down, barked at the door, and then hid under the bed.
“What, you don't want to answer my questions anymore?” A whine. “Fine, I get it. I'll bring you back something after dinner. Do you want to go out or stay in?” The tanuki made no move to get into the basket, so Jun assumed that meant in. “Now that you can talk, you should wait and answer my questions instead of just transforming yourself on your own like that.”
The tanuki bounded up to him, jumped into his lap, and kissed him. “I'm sorry. I'll do that next time,” Ikeoka said, and kissed him again. The tanuki dashed away. Jun, embarrassed and annoyed, slammed the door behind him and stomped down to dinner, vowing not to bring anything good back for him.
But he did bring the good stuff back: fresh bread that was still a little warm, smoked fish drizzled with a sweet sauce, and a bowl of pumpkin soup he'd managed to beg from the cook. As soon as he opened the door, the tanuki started barking and jumping at his legs. “Hold on, okay.” He pushed him away with his foot, but the tanuki growled at him until he set the tray of food down on the bookshelf and bent down to pick him up. Before he could even get a hold on him, Ikeoka's lips were pressed firmly against his own. Jun lost his balance and sat down hard, but pretended he had meant to do that. “You're that hungry, huh?”
Ikeoka didn't answer. Even though he couldn't seem to get his legs to work, his hands were working just fine. Jun had been half-expecting to have to feed him by hand, but Ikeoka used the fork and spoon as easily as an ordinary human would, if a little slowly at first.
“Of course you'd be good at this,” Jun said. Watching a boy eat was not as interesting as watching a tanuki eat, but he finished the food so quickly that there wasn't time to do much else besides flip through a picture book.
“Humans are better at tasting than tanukis are,” Ikeoka said. He started to lick the plate, but Jun snatched it away.
“Gross. Don't do that.”
“If I were a tanuki, you'd let me.” Ikeoka leaned in close, smiling, but didn't kiss him. Which was fine by Jun.
“I won't let you do it at all now that I know you're not really a tanuki.” He stacked the dishes together and set them in the hallway.
“What else is going to change now?” Ikeoka asked. He looked at the bed. “Do you not want me to sleep with you anymore?”
Jun hadn't even thought of that. “You can when you're a tanuki,” he decided. “And are you okay staying out in the woods in that form every morning? Is it dangerous for you?”
“No, predators can tell I'm human, I think. They don't attack me. I'd rather go out.”
“Okay, good. I always worried about that.”
A strange expression came over Ikeoka's face, like his mouth was trying to go in three different directions at once, but he didn't say anything, and eventually Jun picked up the picture book he had been looking at earlier. He scooted next to Ikeoka and started to read. It wasn't long before Ikeoka's head was resting on his shoulder again, and they sat on the floor looking at pictures together until the moon rose and the fire started to burn low.
-
A new routine developed, this one based around books and balancing and conversation. As before, Jun would let the tanuki out when he woke up and let it back up when he finished his afternoon lessons, and then he would kiss it and it would turn into Ikeoka. They'd talk and work on walking, or whatever other human thing Ikeoka had forgotten how to do, and later they'd eat dinner and read together, and eventually Ikeoka would get tired and start falling asleep on Jun's shoulder, and then Jun would kiss him good night and carry the tanuki to bed. Ikeoka might transform several times throughout the day, depending on how often he wanted to go out or what form Jun wanted to play with. Once Jun got used to how the transformation felt, kissing Ikeoka didn't bother him much. Ikeoka wasn't embarrassed by it in the slightest, and would often switch to tanuki form during one of their talks to check that the chain around his neck was still there, and immediately switch back.
After a few weeks, he was finally walking on his own. He wasn't very quick or very steady but at least he didn't have to lean on Jun anymore. After a few circuits around the room, he sat down on the bed and gestured for Jun to do the same. “You know how I told you there was a king in the biggest city?”
“Yeah? What about him?”
“I think you're probably his long-lost son. The prince and heir to the throne.”
“What are you talking about? I read you too many stories, now you think we're in one too.” Although a cursed human who turned into a tanuki when kissed was definitely the kind of thing that belonged in one of Jun's picture books. “Wait, you don't think that because you turn human when I kiss you, right? Like one of the ones where the princess has special powers?”
“No, that's something completely different. It makes sense, though! There was some fight between the king and his brother about who was supposed to inherit the throne and then his son went missing. And you're a wealthy kid living in a castle in the middle of nowhere and you aren't allowed to leave the house.”
“Right,” Jun said. “That's why I have to practice fencing every day, so that when I grow up I can challenge the king's brother to a duel and claim my rightful throne.”
Ikeoka shrugged. “Yeah, probably. You study other prince things too, right?”
“I don't think princes study as much math as I have to. Kings have treasurers, or, like, ministers or whatever for that kind of thing, right? Wouldn't I be studying more culture stuff, like languages or even just geography?” Jun argued, although he secretly liked the idea of being lost royalty.
“Not if it meant you'd try to leave so you could go see those places.”
“I don't think I'd make a very good prince. Or king. Can't I just go traveling with you instead?”
“You'd make a terrible king,” Ikeoka said, and laughed, so Jun pushed him off the bed. “Seriously, you'd be no good. But everyone would adore you probably, so maybe you'd be okay.”
“Ugh, don't say that kind of stuff. That's worse than me being bad.” Jun shuddered. He cast around for a new subject to take his mind off of being doted on by more people than he'd met in his entire life. “What did you mean before though, about the kissing thing not being related? I thought you didn't know how the curse was broken?”
“Oh, well, I guess I know what it is. Not going to tell you though.”
“What? Why not? I deserve to know!”
“Hmm... Probably. But I don't care.”
“IkeP, you're so mean! Is it because I pushed you off the bed? I won't do it anymore, promise.” But Ikeoka refused to tell him, even after he made the cutest and most pathetic face he could, even after he snuck down to the kitchen and brought back a big slice of fruit pie for him. He ate it all with a big smile and then started talking about an apple orchard he had stolen from once, and how sweet apple blossoms smelled, and how they should go to a big garden together some day.
Jun kept bugging him about it over the next several days, and Ikeoka deflected it every time with talk of some new thing in the outside world that Jun had never had the chance to experience but that Ikeoka knew he would love. After listening rather impatiently to Ikeoka go on and on about how cats were the most evil and yet divine and perfect creatures on the face of the earth, he finally asked why he wouldn't tell him.
“Because if I tell you, I don't think you'll like me anymore,” Ikeoka said.
“That makes no sense. Why would I stop liking you?”
Ikeoka was silent for a while. “You know, I have a theory that explains why I transform back and forth, or, in other words, why the curse isn't completely broken yet. It's because it doesn't go both ways.” His words were slow and strangely devoid of inflection, the way they had been when he had first become human again.
“What does that mean? Just tell me what it is!”
“It was hard to hear what the curse put on me was exactly, seriously. But if I could fall in love with someone as a tanuki and have them kiss me, I could become human again.”
“So you're saying that you're in love with me and that I'm not in love with you,” Jun heard himself say. Only after that did Ikeoka's words resonate with him.
“Ah, see, I knew I shouldn't tell you. I'll tell you more if you want, but you'll really be upset then.”
“I'm not upset.” At least he didn't think he was, not really, but it occurred to him that maybe he should be. He curled one hand into a fist and squeezed it tightly with his other hand. “Tell me.”
“Well, it wasn't chance that I fell in love with you either. Well, it was kind of a coincidence that you picked me up that day, but after that first day, when I realized you were wealthy and probably a prince and beautiful and desperately lonely, I thought, you know, I should try to fall in love with him.”
“And... you did, huh.”
“I did.”
Jun stared at his hands and bit the inside of his cheek and was glad when Ikeoka moved a little farther away from him, even though he pretended not to notice.
“Do you have anything else you want to ask me, or do you want me to leave?” Ikeoka asked quietly.
Jun managed to keep his voice steady. “I want you to leave.” He stood up and made his face blank and motionless. Ikeoka stood up as well, and his face looked much the same, save for the wavering corner of his mouth. Jun thought he would say something, but in the end, he simply pressed his lips to Jun's as briefly as he ever had and padded his way over to the basket. Jun lowered it out the window as usual, watched the tanuki jump out, pulled the basket back up, and slammed the window shut.
He slept alone that night for the first time in a long while, and he knew that Ikeoka's absence wasn't the reason his bed felt cold.
Pairing: Shison Jun/Ikeoka Ryousuke
Rating/Warnings: G/RPS.
Word Count: 3683
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Chapter 2
Life with a tanuki was infinitely preferable to life without a tanuki. Not only was it cute and fluffy, it seemed to have a knack for getting into trouble and finding interesting things to do, or to make Jun do. More than once he had to sneak into the servant quarters in the middle of the night to return a trinket the tanuki had picked up the previous night and that the owner had spent the entire day searching for. It was more than a life of crime, though. The tanuki would poke at books until Jun opened them, and if he then started reading it aloud, it would curl up in his lap and listen intently and stare up at him with the most adoring eyes. During late night kitchen raids, it would carefully seek out certain morsels which it would present to him proudly, and then paw at his arm until he ate them. Strangest (and funniest) of all, it seemed to enjoy making up its own little games, a new one every day, which Jun didn't understand the purpose of. Most of them seemed to involve imitating something Jun did, and all of them involved the tanuki repeating some motion until it was satisfied, and then bounding up to him and licking his face. He didn't understand what it was trying to accomplish, but during these games the tanuki tended to fall down a lot and bonk itself on the head when it wasn't satisfied, so Jun looked forward to it anyway. It was a part of the routine as regular as curling up with it at night and letting it out in the early morning, and he didn't give it any thought outside its entertainment value.
That is, until one day when it had finished trying to stand on its hind legs (with low levels of success) and Jun had laughed so hard he'd almost cried, and the tanuki scampered up to him and pressed its mouth to Jun's lips, and Jun smiled and pulled it into his arms, except all of a sudden he wasn't holding a tanuki, but a person, and this person was kissing him.
His reflexes kicked in and he shoved him away, jumping to his feet and drawing his sword. He was so startled by his sudden appearance and how quickly he had reacted that it took a moment before he even saw him properly. It was a boy, probably around his age, wearing a ripped cloak over a stained and patched traveling tunic. He wasn't looking at Jun at all, but was examining his hands as if he'd never seen anything so fascinating in all his life. Jun adjusted his grip on his sword. “Who are you?”
The boy looked up at Jun, coughed a few times, and after apparently thinking very hard about it, said in a deep, slow voice, “I was a tanuki.” His eyes were dark and sleepy-looking, as the tanuki's had been, and there was something about the way he sat, something about the way he moved, that was reminiscent of the creature.
“Why... are you human now?” He didn't lower the sword.
The boy went back to looking at his hand, flexing his fingers and rotating his wrist. “I was a human. But... I was...” He trailed off, looking away. He stretched out his arm and painstakingly pointed toward Jun's bookshelf. “Like Princess Ihaara.”
“You're telling me you're a cursed princess? Or, prince, I guess.”
“Cursed! I was cursed. Not a princess.”
“Let me guess: you were a petty thief.”
The boy grimaced, then started touching his cheeks and making a series of experimental faces. “Witches don't like thieves.”
Jun's arm was starting to get sore from holding the sword in the same position. “Let me ask you this. Do you mean me harm?”
“No.” The answer was instantaneous, and without the slowness that characterized his speech. Jun lowered his sword and sheathed it. He sat down on his bed, and after a second's hesitation, patted the spot beside him. The boy stood up awkwardly, swaying on two legs. He managed two steps forward before falling and landed heavily on Jun. Their lips met, and then he wasn't so heavy anymore. Jun opened his eyes to see the tanuki standing sheepishly on top of him.
“Okay. That's weird.” The tanuki lowered its head and hit itself with its two front paws. Jun thought about what he should do, then decided he didn't really have a choice. He picked it up, grimaced, and kissed it. Even though he kept his eyes open, he still somehow missed the moment when the tanuki stopped being a tanuki and started being a heavy and not nearly as cute human. It took the boy a little longer than Jun thought it should to get his lips off of him, and then he fell away from Jun. Then he fell off the bed.
“Why are you so terrible at everything?”
“I was a tanuki,” the boy said, rubbing his head with kind of a dazed expression, “for a very long time.”
“So you've totally forgotten how to be human? Wow.”
“Will you help me remember?” he asked, and his eyes were so big and hopeful that Jun got up and helped him to his feet, supporting the majority of his weight as the tanuki boy's legs slid this way and that. Eventually he was able to take two rickety steps forward and collapse onto the bed. He rolled over and stretched a hand out to Jun, but Jun stepped back, out of reach.
“Do you have a name, tanuki?”
“Ikeoka. Ryousuke. My friends call me IkeP. Mostly. I think. I think I had friends.”
“That makes one of us.”
“Well...” Ikeoka seemed to get distracted by his own hand again, turning it back and forth in fascination. “You have one friend at least,” he said eventually. “I'm your friend.”
“A tanuki was my friend,” Jun corrected.
“Is that different?” Ikeoka tried to sit up, but something went wrong and he just rolled onto his face instead. Jun stifled a laugh. Ikeoka managed to get his legs under his chest and push himself up with his arms. “If it's different, then you have two friends. Tanuki-me and human-me.”
“IkeP and Tanuki-P,” Jun said, and for some reason Ikeoka thought that was the funniest thing in the world. He laughed and laughed until it got annoying. “Stop laughing!”
“I... can't,” he choked out, then burst into laughter again. He rolled over and nearly fell off the bed again, but managed to save himself in time. “Forgot... how.”
Jun didn't know what to make of that, so he grabbed the boy's cheeks and pulled on them until he stopped laughing, the way his mother used to do to him as a child when he wouldn't stop whining. This worked, thankfully, and Ikeoka smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“You laughed when you were a tanuki, kinda, but I guess it's different for humans?” Jun said tentatively, trying to be kinder.
“Very different. It's easier.” Ikeoka finally managed to sit up, though he kept swaying back and forth. “Everything's harder, but laughing is easier.”
“Huh.” Jun thought for a second, then held out his hand with a smile. “You wanna play? I thought of a new game.”
Ikeoka took his hand, eyes sparkling in a very tanuki way. “Game? What game? I love games.”
“It's called 'How to be a human.' Honestly, I don't think you're going to do very well at first, but I'll help you.”
“Okay!” Ikeoka got to his feet, which immediately slid out from underneath him. He crashed to the floor and looked at Jun with the saddest expression in the world.
Jun stifled a laugh. “The first part of the game is 'Learn how to stand up again, you big clumsy dork.'”
“I... have the last part already, um. Mastered?” Ikeoka said, tongue slipping on the last word. Jun figured he'd remember how words worked if they kept talking.
“Good, that's the most important part. Now try again. Try finding your balance and remember, you only have two legs now.”
Ikeoka struggled to stand, leaning on the bed for balance. Sometimes he almost got it, but more often he fell on his butt or went sprawling across the floor.
“Are you sure you were really human once?”
Ikeoka looked up at him, seemingly not the slightest bit discouraged. “Probably! Maybe the witch... knew I'd make a better tanuki.” He tried again, and stayed on his feet longer, even though most of his weight was on the bed. Eventually he flopped onto it and rolled over. “If you don't like this... if you get, um, bored? You can, um.” He waved his hand over his face and shrugged.
“I'm good for now. What's with that anyway?” Jun felt his face growing hot and bent down so the tanuki boy couldn't see his blush.
“It was very hard to tell what the witch said the way to break the curse was,” Ikeoka said. “You must be a very special person.”
“I... That's... I'm probably not that special.”
“You're special to me anyway,” Ikeoka said, then slipped off the bed and went back to trying to stand.
“Do you think you could tell me what it's like out there?”
Ikeoka had just managed to ease his weight slightly onto his feet, and then they went out from under him again. “Look what you made me do,” he said good-naturedly. “I can try? But I might have forgotten a lot of words.”
“Please. Anything is fine.”
“Maybe you could read me some more stories. I'd remember words then. And I could tell you about the things in them?”
“I guess that could work. Can we do that now? You're not getting anywhere with standing.”
“I'll get it eventually,” Ikeoka said, and started to climb onto the bed again, but he couldn't seem to get his legs up and eventually Jun went over and pushed him up. He searched the shelf of picture books he'd brought up weeks ago for the tanuki and chose one that was about a city, which was what he most wanted to ask about. When he started reading aloud, Ikeoka leaned over and rested his head on Jun's shoulder. “I can't see the pictures,” he explained, and even though Jun opened the book wider and held it closer to him, he stayed where he was.
As soon as he finished the story, he tossed the book aside and started asking questions about marketplaces, and how many people there had to be in a city for you not to know all their names, and why some people didn't have enough to eat, and Ikeoka answered what he could in his slow way until the sun had set on the short winter day. Then he pointed to his stomach, said “Hungry,” and pressed his lips against Jun's before he could ask another question. The tanuki jumped down, barked at the door, and then hid under the bed.
“What, you don't want to answer my questions anymore?” A whine. “Fine, I get it. I'll bring you back something after dinner. Do you want to go out or stay in?” The tanuki made no move to get into the basket, so Jun assumed that meant in. “Now that you can talk, you should wait and answer my questions instead of just transforming yourself on your own like that.”
The tanuki bounded up to him, jumped into his lap, and kissed him. “I'm sorry. I'll do that next time,” Ikeoka said, and kissed him again. The tanuki dashed away. Jun, embarrassed and annoyed, slammed the door behind him and stomped down to dinner, vowing not to bring anything good back for him.
But he did bring the good stuff back: fresh bread that was still a little warm, smoked fish drizzled with a sweet sauce, and a bowl of pumpkin soup he'd managed to beg from the cook. As soon as he opened the door, the tanuki started barking and jumping at his legs. “Hold on, okay.” He pushed him away with his foot, but the tanuki growled at him until he set the tray of food down on the bookshelf and bent down to pick him up. Before he could even get a hold on him, Ikeoka's lips were pressed firmly against his own. Jun lost his balance and sat down hard, but pretended he had meant to do that. “You're that hungry, huh?”
Ikeoka didn't answer. Even though he couldn't seem to get his legs to work, his hands were working just fine. Jun had been half-expecting to have to feed him by hand, but Ikeoka used the fork and spoon as easily as an ordinary human would, if a little slowly at first.
“Of course you'd be good at this,” Jun said. Watching a boy eat was not as interesting as watching a tanuki eat, but he finished the food so quickly that there wasn't time to do much else besides flip through a picture book.
“Humans are better at tasting than tanukis are,” Ikeoka said. He started to lick the plate, but Jun snatched it away.
“Gross. Don't do that.”
“If I were a tanuki, you'd let me.” Ikeoka leaned in close, smiling, but didn't kiss him. Which was fine by Jun.
“I won't let you do it at all now that I know you're not really a tanuki.” He stacked the dishes together and set them in the hallway.
“What else is going to change now?” Ikeoka asked. He looked at the bed. “Do you not want me to sleep with you anymore?”
Jun hadn't even thought of that. “You can when you're a tanuki,” he decided. “And are you okay staying out in the woods in that form every morning? Is it dangerous for you?”
“No, predators can tell I'm human, I think. They don't attack me. I'd rather go out.”
“Okay, good. I always worried about that.”
A strange expression came over Ikeoka's face, like his mouth was trying to go in three different directions at once, but he didn't say anything, and eventually Jun picked up the picture book he had been looking at earlier. He scooted next to Ikeoka and started to read. It wasn't long before Ikeoka's head was resting on his shoulder again, and they sat on the floor looking at pictures together until the moon rose and the fire started to burn low.
-
A new routine developed, this one based around books and balancing and conversation. As before, Jun would let the tanuki out when he woke up and let it back up when he finished his afternoon lessons, and then he would kiss it and it would turn into Ikeoka. They'd talk and work on walking, or whatever other human thing Ikeoka had forgotten how to do, and later they'd eat dinner and read together, and eventually Ikeoka would get tired and start falling asleep on Jun's shoulder, and then Jun would kiss him good night and carry the tanuki to bed. Ikeoka might transform several times throughout the day, depending on how often he wanted to go out or what form Jun wanted to play with. Once Jun got used to how the transformation felt, kissing Ikeoka didn't bother him much. Ikeoka wasn't embarrassed by it in the slightest, and would often switch to tanuki form during one of their talks to check that the chain around his neck was still there, and immediately switch back.
After a few weeks, he was finally walking on his own. He wasn't very quick or very steady but at least he didn't have to lean on Jun anymore. After a few circuits around the room, he sat down on the bed and gestured for Jun to do the same. “You know how I told you there was a king in the biggest city?”
“Yeah? What about him?”
“I think you're probably his long-lost son. The prince and heir to the throne.”
“What are you talking about? I read you too many stories, now you think we're in one too.” Although a cursed human who turned into a tanuki when kissed was definitely the kind of thing that belonged in one of Jun's picture books. “Wait, you don't think that because you turn human when I kiss you, right? Like one of the ones where the princess has special powers?”
“No, that's something completely different. It makes sense, though! There was some fight between the king and his brother about who was supposed to inherit the throne and then his son went missing. And you're a wealthy kid living in a castle in the middle of nowhere and you aren't allowed to leave the house.”
“Right,” Jun said. “That's why I have to practice fencing every day, so that when I grow up I can challenge the king's brother to a duel and claim my rightful throne.”
Ikeoka shrugged. “Yeah, probably. You study other prince things too, right?”
“I don't think princes study as much math as I have to. Kings have treasurers, or, like, ministers or whatever for that kind of thing, right? Wouldn't I be studying more culture stuff, like languages or even just geography?” Jun argued, although he secretly liked the idea of being lost royalty.
“Not if it meant you'd try to leave so you could go see those places.”
“I don't think I'd make a very good prince. Or king. Can't I just go traveling with you instead?”
“You'd make a terrible king,” Ikeoka said, and laughed, so Jun pushed him off the bed. “Seriously, you'd be no good. But everyone would adore you probably, so maybe you'd be okay.”
“Ugh, don't say that kind of stuff. That's worse than me being bad.” Jun shuddered. He cast around for a new subject to take his mind off of being doted on by more people than he'd met in his entire life. “What did you mean before though, about the kissing thing not being related? I thought you didn't know how the curse was broken?”
“Oh, well, I guess I know what it is. Not going to tell you though.”
“What? Why not? I deserve to know!”
“Hmm... Probably. But I don't care.”
“IkeP, you're so mean! Is it because I pushed you off the bed? I won't do it anymore, promise.” But Ikeoka refused to tell him, even after he made the cutest and most pathetic face he could, even after he snuck down to the kitchen and brought back a big slice of fruit pie for him. He ate it all with a big smile and then started talking about an apple orchard he had stolen from once, and how sweet apple blossoms smelled, and how they should go to a big garden together some day.
Jun kept bugging him about it over the next several days, and Ikeoka deflected it every time with talk of some new thing in the outside world that Jun had never had the chance to experience but that Ikeoka knew he would love. After listening rather impatiently to Ikeoka go on and on about how cats were the most evil and yet divine and perfect creatures on the face of the earth, he finally asked why he wouldn't tell him.
“Because if I tell you, I don't think you'll like me anymore,” Ikeoka said.
“That makes no sense. Why would I stop liking you?”
Ikeoka was silent for a while. “You know, I have a theory that explains why I transform back and forth, or, in other words, why the curse isn't completely broken yet. It's because it doesn't go both ways.” His words were slow and strangely devoid of inflection, the way they had been when he had first become human again.
“What does that mean? Just tell me what it is!”
“It was hard to hear what the curse put on me was exactly, seriously. But if I could fall in love with someone as a tanuki and have them kiss me, I could become human again.”
“So you're saying that you're in love with me and that I'm not in love with you,” Jun heard himself say. Only after that did Ikeoka's words resonate with him.
“Ah, see, I knew I shouldn't tell you. I'll tell you more if you want, but you'll really be upset then.”
“I'm not upset.” At least he didn't think he was, not really, but it occurred to him that maybe he should be. He curled one hand into a fist and squeezed it tightly with his other hand. “Tell me.”
“Well, it wasn't chance that I fell in love with you either. Well, it was kind of a coincidence that you picked me up that day, but after that first day, when I realized you were wealthy and probably a prince and beautiful and desperately lonely, I thought, you know, I should try to fall in love with him.”
“And... you did, huh.”
“I did.”
Jun stared at his hands and bit the inside of his cheek and was glad when Ikeoka moved a little farther away from him, even though he pretended not to notice.
“Do you have anything else you want to ask me, or do you want me to leave?” Ikeoka asked quietly.
Jun managed to keep his voice steady. “I want you to leave.” He stood up and made his face blank and motionless. Ikeoka stood up as well, and his face looked much the same, save for the wavering corner of his mouth. Jun thought he would say something, but in the end, he simply pressed his lips to Jun's as briefly as he ever had and padded his way over to the basket. Jun lowered it out the window as usual, watched the tanuki jump out, pulled the basket back up, and slammed the window shut.
He slept alone that night for the first time in a long while, and he knew that Ikeoka's absence wasn't the reason his bed felt cold.