[JE] [FAIRY] All the Better (a.k.a. Little Red Riding Hoodie) 1/2
Title: All the Better (a.k.a. Little Red Riding Hoodie) 1/2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Rating: G
Genre: Fairytale fluff, pre-slash
Word count: 14,495
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: If you go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise. Beautiful young men have been going missing in the woods lately. Unfortunately, Jin's mother didn't know that when she sent him off to deliver a food parcel to his grandmother.
A/N: This time 'Little Red Riding Hood' gets the Akame treatment, with a nod to a few other things on the side. Contains the death of a minor (original) character, various members of KAT-TUN as animals, and some really improbable leaps of logic. Written for
hc_bingo: 'unwanted transformation' square.
All the Better (a.k.a. Little Red Riding Hoodie) 1/2
Everyone knew you shouldn't go walking in the woods by yourself - everyone except Akanishi Jin's mother, who'd apparently missed out on the memo that said it was a really, really bad idea to send your son into dark wooded areas with a care package for his grandmother and nothing save his wits for protection. Jin protested with all his might but his mother was immune to his charms. She didn't care that he might be coming down with a cold and probably shouldn't go out, oh no. She laughed when he claimed he had to wash his hair. She didn't even crumble when he played his trump card and insisted he didn't have time to go out because he was too busy composing a song for her birthday.
Of course her birthday wasn't for another five months, but that was beside the point. It was dark in the woods, even during the day, and easy to lose sight of the path. The woods were haunted too, Ryo had told him once, but Jin wasn't sure if that was true or if his friend was just messing with his head. It wouldn't have been the first time.
Nobody else had a grandmother crazy enough to live in the middle of nowhere. When Yamapi wanted to see his relatives, all he had to do was walk two blocks. Ryo only had to go next door.
But not Jin's grandmother, who had obviously chosen her new home while under the influence of considerably more than her usual apple cider. Even the postman refused to go out there anymore, which was why Jin had been given the unenviable task of delivering his mother's homemade delicacies to a woman he hadn't seen in five years and who hadn't liked him back then anyway because she didn't think 'musician' was a suitably manly career aspiration for a teenage boy. Jin was in no rush to resume her acquaintance.
His mother had other ideas. She gave him a set of directions and a bag to sling over his shoulder and told him to get a move on or he wouldn't be back in time for dinner. Resigned to his fate and reluctant to miss a meal, Jin donned his favourite red A&F hoodie ("Akanishi & Fujigaya" - his parents ran a clothing store with the next-door neighbours) and made a start for the woods.
He had to pass through the centre of town first. Yamapi spotted him as he passed by the convenience store and waved him over. When Jin explained his mission, Yamapi's eyes locked on the bag.
"You're carrying food?"
"It's not for you." Jin was mildly irritated that his best friend hadn't immediately volunteered to join him on the trek. "But if you keep me company, you can come over for dinner tonight."
"Tempting," and the reluctance in Yamapi's voice was probably real, given how much he liked Mrs. Akanishi's cooking, "but I can't. I'm supposed to be babysitting all afternoon."
"Who is it this time?"
Yamapi shrugged. "My neighbour's adopted kids again; I can't keep up with them. He asked me to teach them all about make-up and glitter so I'm out here getting supplies."
Hearing Yamapi's plans for the afternoon made Jin feel better about his own. Adopting kids was all very well, but Takizawa Hideaki took it to extremes. His house was beginning to resemble an orphanage.
Even so, an afternoon of chaos was preferable to one spent lost in the woods. "Sure you don't want to swap?" Jin offered.
"And deprive you of the pleasure of seeing your grandmother again?"
Jin grimaced; Yamapi knew full well how he felt about his grandmother. "Maybe I'll get mauled by a wolf on the way and won't have to see her."
They both laughed, but Yamapi's amusement faded first. "Be careful that doesn't happen. All sorts of strange things go on outside town. Got cigarettes on you?"
"Yeah." Jin produced a pack from the pocket of his hooded top. "Why? So I can stab would-be attackers in the eyes with a lit one?"
Yamapi popped the lid, extracting a cigarette before Jin could snatch them away. "No, because I'm all out. But that's a good idea, though. Ryo says there are ghosts in the woods."
It was widely known that Jin did not like ghosts one bit. "I'm not sure how far I'll get trying to burn something that doesn't have any physical presence, Pi..."
Before they could get into a debate about the non-corporeal nature of the spirit world, Yamapi's younger sister showed up to deliver a long list of things their mother wanted him to pick up while he was out, and Jin took his leave. It was obvious he wasn't going to find any company for the journey. None of his other friends were around, or even the people he didn't like that much but would've been willing to put up with if it meant he didn't have to go walking through haunted woods alone.
Ghosts didn't really exist, did they? Jin wasn't sure. He made his way to the very edge of town, where trees stretched for as far as the eye could see and smooth concrete gave way to worn dirt paths, strewn with leaves and stones, twisting into dark oblivion beyond. There was no helping it. He had to go. If he ditched the parcel and stayed out of sight for a few hours his mother would know, somehow, because she always did, and she'd probably send him back with one three times the weight.
With a last, longing look at civilisation, he turned and took his first step into the woods. The first dozen weren't so bad, when he could still turn and see the walls of the town through leafy curtains. The second dozen weren't too awful either, when he could still hear the faint sounds of the big clock tower bell chiming noon.
But by the twenty-fifth step, the trees had closed themselves behind him and Jin knew home was further away than it should be. Branches crossed like swords over the path, ready to cut him down if he tried to turn back. He could only follow the path, now.
He clutched his mother's written directions in his left hand. "Follow the path straight until you reach the blasted oak," the first line read. He thought she'd been cussing the tree until she explained that the old oak tree had been struck by lightning some years ago. The poor thing was now split down the middle and quite distinctive, she said. Jin hoped that last part was true because daylight was rather limited, filtered as it was through the foliage, and he didn't want to miss anything. One wrong turn and he'd be hopelessly lost.
Getting lost wasn't an option. Just because he couldn't hear anything save the sound of his own footsteps didn't mean there wasn't anything out there, just waiting for him to stray from the path. Ghosts? Wolves? Kidnappers? He'd never know until it was too late.
Step by step, twigs crunching beneath his boots. As much as Jin wanted to shove his hands in his pockets as he walked he didn't dare, lest he trip on the uneven ground. He didn't think his mother would accept that excuse for the loss of her carefully-prepared food parcel.
He kept up a steady pace, trying to keep his eyes fixed on the path ahead rather than the surrounding shade, soon reaching the oak. The tree evoked no pity in him. Horror, yes. Pity, no. The great, gaping maw in the centre of the massive trunk ensured that. Thick, twisted branches tangled towards the ground on both sides, creating two narrow arches, each guarding a fork of the path.
Jin checked the instructions. They weren't very helpful. According to his mother, both paths led to the same place, but they only led to where you were going if you knew which one to take.
"How am I supposed to know which one to take?" he muttered to himself. Peering through the arches didn't show him anything but identical dark paths beyond.
"Most people ask the guardian."
Jin whirled around to find a medium-brown bear behind him, standing far too close for comfort - even if he was making useful suggestions. He wasn't a particularly tall bear; nor was he excessively short. In fact, if Jin was honest about it, they were probably the same height. So much for all the talking bears having left the area decades ago. Talking animals tended to keep to themselves, not blending terribly well with either humans or their less articulate kin.
"Uh...guardian?" Jin asked tentatively. He had no idea of the correct etiquette when talking to bears, and if the bear's teeth were as big as his nose, Jin didn't want to be on the wrong end of them.
"I'm the guardian," the bear said. Jin hadn't expected his voice to be so clear, but he didn't have much experience with talking animals. "Nakamaru."
"Nakumaru?"
"Nakamaru. I suppose you're one of those heroes looking for tragic princesses to save?"
Jin shook his head. "I'm just going to deliver some food to my grandmother. Do you know which path I'm supposed to take?"
"What's your name?"
"Akanishi Jin."
Nakamaru consulted a list he extracted from a hole in the trunk, giving a little "Ah!" when he found Jin's name. "It says here that I'm allowed to let you pass in safety if you can help me with my problem."
What kind of problems did a bear have, Jin wondered? "What's the alternative?"
"You choose your own path and get trapped in the darkness for all eternity."
Jin smiled brightly. "So what's your problem?"
They sat down on tree stumps while Nakamaru explained the situation. The unfortunate bear was homeless. He'd had an agreement with a couple of other bears to move into a nice cottage in the woods, with a sweet little pond and an open fireplace, but on the day he'd gone to move in, they'd supplanted him with another roommate. He wasn't big enough, they said. He wasn't small enough, they said. And they already had a guy who was just right.
Confused and annoyed, Nakamaru had lost the argument when the usurper had challenged him to a battle of bravery over the room. It was a nice place, to be sure, but not worth the risk of bungee-jumping from the nearest clock tower. He'd taken up sleeping at work instead, camping out next to the oak tree, but winter was on its way and he didn't fancy keeping it up for much longer.
Jin listened attentively, making sympathetic noises in all the right places (he didn't care much for the cold himself). "So you need a place to live," he summed up. "Within walking distance of this tree."
"Don't suggest I build myself a cabin," Nakamaru warned. "The last guy tried that. He's still out here somewhere."
The bear's paws were ill-suited for any kind of construction work; Jin could see why the suggestion hadn't been well received. Nakamaru seemed very friendly, though - quite harmless. And he was obviously responsible.
That gave Jin an idea. "How do you feel about kids?" He explained about Takizawa's house of adopted children, and how he was always taking in more, and could probably use another adult around - even if said adult was of a different species. He had plenty of space, at any rate, and had been known to take in paying lodgers before. "And the town is close enough that you can walk here every day."
Nakamaru liked the idea. "Will you write me a letter of introduction? Most humans run away screaming when bears turn up at their front doors and ask if there are any rooms available."
"I don't have anything on me to write with. If I get to my grandmother's house, I'll borrow some stationery from her and when I come back this way, I'll bring a letter with me. How does that sound?"
The bear grumbled faintly about how modern youngsters were never prepared, ignoring Jin's attempts to ask him if he had any paper other than his list of names, but agreed to the plan. "I'd better tell you how to get there, then. Take the left path."
"That's it? I was expecting some long, complicated ritual probing the true nature of my journey, and you just tell me to go left?"
Nakamaru shrugged. "Basic rule of adventuring - explore from left to right."
"And the whole thing about the paths only leading to where I'm going if I know which one to take?"
"Scares the tourists away."
Jin sighed and rose from his tree stump, preparing to continue his journey. "And I suppose the paths join up again further down the line?"
"You'll have to find that out for yourself, but there's one more thing I probably should tell you, since you've solved my problem. Good-looking young men keep vanishing in these woods. You'd better watch yourself."
Nakamaru waved a goodbye and disappeared into his tent. Jin didn't know whether to be flattered or disturbed that a bear thought he was attractive, and pulled his hood down over his eyes in the hope that he'd be safe if no one knew what he looked like.
The food parcel made it a tight squeeze but he wriggled through the left arch, as Nakamaru had said, and continued down the path. The right-hand path wasn't visible at all, being barred by a wall of branches; everything was thicker, denser, closer on this side, making Jin increasingly uneasy as he walked. If he tripped over a protruding root and broke his ankle, no one would ever find him here - excepting possibly Nakamaru, eager to find out why his letter of introduction had yet to materialise. He paid such close attention to his feet that he completely missed the branch by his ear, which snagged his hood and yanked him back with a jerk.
Jin paused to unsnare himself, startling when a snicker drifted up from near his feet.
"Didn't your parents ever teach you to watch where you're going?"
He crouched down to find the origin of the voice - a small white rabbit with a fluffy tail and a black teardrop patch on one cheek. Talking rabbits were less popular than talking bears, as most of them seemed to be in a rush to get somewhere and not inclined to stop and chat. This one was obviously in no hurry.
"My parents taught me not to laugh at the misfortune of people bigger than me," Jin retorted. Not that this had stopped his younger brother from laughing at him...
"What are you going to do - pull my tail?" the rabbit said. "You've got vulnerable flesh and I've got sharp teeth." He bared them for show.
Jin didn't care to be threatened by a bunny rabbit. "Excuse me."
"Wait." The rabbit scooted forwards to perch on Jin's boot. "Have you seen my master around? We got separated."
"You're a pet?"
The rabbit scratched its neck and Jin realised it was wearing a thin gold collar with a 'Koki' nametag hanging off it. "More like a guard dog...uh...rabbit. I make sure no bad people get near him."
"So what happened?"
"I don't know." For a rabbit, Koki sounded remarkably sheepish. "When I woke up this morning his sleeping bag was empty. We'd had kind of a lot to drink the night before so I was sleeping a little heavier than usual; didn't hear him leave but his designer sunglasses are still in the tent and he'd never have left those if he'd gone of his own free will." He pointed with one foot in the direction of a small pink tent.
Jin couldn't hide his amusement at Koki's reasoning. "Could your master have gone to take a leak?"
Koki stared at him like he'd just said the world was actually flat, or something equally preposterous. "For five hours? We didn't drink that much."
"Okay, fair enough..." Jin gently nudged the rabbit away from his toes. "Unless your master's actually a bear named Nakamaru, I haven't seen him, but if you tell me what he looks like I'll look out for him."
The rabbit twitched his tail. "He's very good-looking. Criminally handsome, but somehow cute at the same time. You can't miss him."
"That's great, but what does he look like?"
It took another five minutes of Koki raving over his master's attributes before Jin managed to get a decent description out of him. Kamenashi Kazuya, answering to 'Kame', possessed, if the bunny was to be believed, such beauty as to make the very stars weep with envy. Jin wondered if his disappearance had anything to do with Nakamaru's warning about attractive young men disappearing in the woods.
"I don't suppose you know if anyone else has gone missing in these parts, do you?" he asked.
"Sorry," Koki said, "we're just passing through. Kame's supposed to be playing in a big baseball game next week on the other side of the mountains and these woods are the fastest way to get there."
Jin didn't know much about baseball - soccer was more his thing - but he had a lot of respect for athletes. "If I find him, I'll be sure to tell him to come back to your camp," he promised. "Are you going to wait here?"
Koki nodded. "It's easier to find a lost human than a lost rabbit. But I don't think he went of his own accord. Be careful."
Jin's trip to deliver a package to his grandmother was taking on a life of its own, one he wasn't sure he liked. It was all very well writing a letter of introduction for a talking bear, but searching for a guy who might've been kidnapped by hostile forces wasn't what he'd signed up for. He fervently hoped he wouldn't encounter any other talking animals in his travels.
The next line of his mother's instructions told him to follow the stream. It didn't take him long to spot it - Kame's tent was set up nearby, presumably for easy access to the water - and Jin continued away from his home, further into the woods, leaving Koki trying to sleep off the remains of his hangover.
At first the stream was crystal clear, cool and inviting, with nary a weed in sight. Jin wouldn't have thought twice about dipping his hands in and scooping up a mouthful of refreshing water...except that he'd heard one too many stories about fools drinking something they shouldn't and suffering humiliating consequences. Downstream, the water shucked its fresh transparency in favour of a thick, murky soup of reeds, insects and the bloated bodies of deceased fish that turned Jin's stomach.
Trees pressed closer, threatening with gnarled branches. Jin found himself ducking every few steps. His mother's instructions told him to follow the stream till it joined a river, cutting him off on the wrong side of a T-junction.
Not that there was any right side to this river. Brown-green soup had given way to inky blackness, swirling furiously between the banks; water to steal not just the breath from your lungs but your very soul, should you be unlucky enough to fall in. Jin gulped a mouthful of chilled air and scanned the banks for the bridge his mother had specified.
She'd neglected to mention it was a flimsy rope bridge.
Jin wasn't sure how his mother expected him to negotiate it under normal circumstances, let alone weighed down by a heavy food parcel, but it didn't look like he had any choice in the matter, short of turning back, or following the river until he found something better and hoping he didn't stray too far from his path.
If he deviated from the instructions he was liable to find himself lost in the woods forever. It had to be the bridge.
He adjusted the straps so the bag hung more evenly over his shoulders, took a deep breath, and grasped the handrails on either side. His grandmother had better appreciate all the trouble he was going to on her behalf. The first rope sank under his weight, not low enough to reach the river but more than enough to cause alarm; he quickly placed one foot on the next rung along to distribute the load. Below, the river with a million open mouths waited for him to fall.
First one step, then another. Jin slid his hands along the rails, not looking down, keeping his eyes locked on the opposite bank while he tentatively sought the next strand of rope with his feet. The whole structure wobbled with every step, clearly not happy about humans daring to use it.
Just before Jin reached the middle of the bridge, a giant fish leapt from the river, straight through the rope, and hung in the air before him. The shock almost cost him his footing; if he hadn't had such a tight grip on the handrails he'd have fallen through. The fish must've been at least six feet long and it hung upright, blocking the way forward.
After encountering talking bears and rabbits, Jin wasn't terribly surprised when the fish, which had silvery blond scales and unusually stylish fins, started speaking to him.
"Halt! Who goes there?" it said. Then it smiled brightly and added, "I love it when I get to say that!"
Jin blinked. For a fish that had just emerged from a swirling river of doom, it sounded remarkably amiable. "Um...Akanishi Jin. Can I get by, please?" He thought he might be able to squeeze past the fish if he really tried, but one flick of the tail and he'd land up in the river. Better to ask politely.
The fish sighed. "Nobody ever wants to stay and play games with me." He loomed over Jin, who had to put up with being dripped on. "Everyone's always in such a hurry."
"Games?"
"You know," the fish said. "James Pond, Robocod, Attack Sub - stuff like that."
"How does a fish play computer games?" Jin asked, expecting some sort of joking response.
"By proxy, of course." The fish flipped one fin in the direction of a laptop, which rested on a treestump on the opposite bank. "When I don't have anyone to play with, I just watch stuff on streaming."
Jin would've facepalmed at the joke, had it not involved taking a hand off the rail and potentially falling in. "If I...if I play a game with you, will you let me through?"
The fish backflipped with delight, almost smacking Jin in the chin with its tail. "Let's play a guessing game. If you can guess the correct password for the bridge, I'll let you cross!"
It sounded a bit vague and one-sided to Jin, who was better at games that had 'Dragonball' in the title, but anything was worth a try. "Can I have a clue?"
"It's not the Elvish word for 'friend'," the fish said. "Everyone tries that."
"Everyone?"
The fish waggled its fins merrily. "Look beneath your feet."
Reluctantly, Jin looked down, clinging tight to the handrails to keep his balance. He didn't see anything at first. One inky swirl of water looked much the same as the next, till he caught sight of a pale, bloated hand caught in the reeds by the bank. He shuddered, suddenly nauseated. Would the fish knock him in if he failed, to become one more corpse lost forever in the murky depths?
"How many guesses do I get?" he asked, not feeling terribly optimistic about his chances. Maybe it wasn't too late to turn around and follow the river till he found somewhere else to cross.
"Until I get bored." The fish bent down to look him in the eye. "I'll keep asking questions till you get the right word, okay? What was the name of Oda Nobunaga's favoured page?"
Jin wasn't great with history, but he knew this one. "Mori Ranmaru."
"Wrong!"
"Am not!" Jin spluttered. "That's definitely the right guy!"
"Right answer to the question, but the wrong password," the fish said. "Let's try another one. Who's the best pitcher in the Yomiuri Giants?"
Baseball. Great. Jin knew the name of exactly one baseball player, courtesy of his guard bunny, so he figured he might as well try it. "Kamenashi Kazuya."
The fish stared at him. "You don't even look like a baseball fan!"
"You mean I'm right?"
"Same again - right answer, but wrong password. I'll have to try something harder. What's the capital of Luxembourg?"
"Luxembourg?" Jin repeated, not even sure where it was.
"Right again." The fish blew bubbles through its lips, sulking now. "How deep is the Pacific Ocean?"
"Um..." Jin hated geography questions, unless they were about California. "I have no idea."
"You're getting closer!" the fish praised him. "Here, have another one. Recite pi to a million places."
"I can't even do it to ten!"
"Getting warmer. Hit me with your best love confession."
Jin groaned. No way was he confessing to a giant fish, whether it would get him across the bridge or not. "Pass!"
The fish clapped its fins together, so violent in its excitement that it nearly overbalanced. "Almost there! You've got the first half."
"The first half of the password is 'pass'?"
The fish beamed at him. "I don't like to make it too difficult."
Jin decided to take a wild guess. "Is the password 'password'?"
With a splash, the fish dived back into the river, clearing the bridge for Jin. He ducked to avoid the spray; by the time the bridge stopped swaying the fish had popped its head above the surface.
"It's one of the most popular passwords," it said, splashing near Jin's feet. "Most people guess it eventually and go on their way."
"What about that guy?" Jin jerked his chin toward the floating hand by the bank.
"He slipped," the fish said sadly. "We were playing DDR and he lost his footing. Be careful as you cross; the bank's kind of slippery."
Jin picked his way gingerly across the remainder of the bridge, scarcely breathing till he stood safe on the other side. The fish watched him with surprisingly gentle eyes.
It couldn't hurt to ask, could it? "Uh...the guy who was playing with you and fell in, how long ago was that? Because I'm supposed to be keeping an eye out for Kamenashi, and-"
"Kamenashi? The baseball player? He came through here earlier," the fish said. "He said he was looking for someone too."
So Koki's master was still alive; good to know. But who could he be looking for in the middle of the woods?
"Any idea which way he went?"
"Same way you're about to go." The fish pointed a fin past the laptop, down through the trees. "There's only one path. Be careful as you go, though. Young men have been going missing around here lately and you don't want to be one of them."
"So I hear, but how did you know that?"
"I live in the water," the fish said. "Best place to get the current gossip."
Jin groaned but couldn't keep back a giggle, which seemed to please the fish. "Thanks for the warning...uh..."
"Junno." The fish swept one fin in front in an odd aquatic bow. "Thanks for stopping to play. I didn't mean to scare you with the threats; I just thought they might help put you in the right mood."
"I play better when I'm not terrified," Jin said.
"Then let's play again on your way back!"
Junno flipped his tail and sank below the surface, leaving Jin alone on the bank with the laptop, which was plugged into a nearby tree. Maybe it was a generator in disguise or something. Too bad there wasn't a printer or he could've done Nakamaru's letter of introduction. Jin watched the flying fish screensaver for a minute, mesmerised by the pretty colours, then remembered to check his mother's instructions.
From there they were simple: follow the path without a single deviation until he reached the clearing where his grandmother's house stood. It sounded straightforward enough. Turning his back on the river, Jin set off through the trees, keeping a close eye on the path beneath his feet. It was so narrow he didn't dare do otherwise, for fear of straying. His mother had underlined the "without a single deviation" part, so that had to be important somehow.
Crossing the rope bridge had left him feeling wobbly, the aftermath of tensing up for so long, and as he walked he felt increasingly like it would be nice to sit down for a few minutes and let his legs catch up to the rest of him. It wouldn't do to strain a muscle, after all. Though the path was relatively clear of grass, there were many small stones and twigs in his way, and he had to watch his step.
The further Jin walked, the wearier he became. Just when he thought his legs couldn't support him any further, he spotted a ring of stumps through the trees. A small clearing, unoccupied, inviting. It couldn't hurt to sit down for a couple of minutes, could it? He lifted one foot from the path, began to set it down in the direction of the clearing...and froze.
It wasn't unoccupied after all. A stray sunbeam, one of few to pierce the canopy of tree branches, caught the edge of a statue.
No...not a statue. The figure had not the substance for that. A young man, weeping into his hands as he sat on a tree stump, sharing his lament with the girl to his right. Where they fell into shadow they disappeared, bodies formed of nothing more than light.
So the ghost stories were true after all. Jin shivered, more disturbed by the sobbing human spirits than by the talking animals he'd met in the woods, and set his foot back down on the path. He no longer felt the impulse to stray.
Another ten minutes along the way the trees were thicker than ever, closing in on the path so Jin had to squeeze through with his bag of goodies. His grandmother sure lived in an awkward location. He didn't relish the prospect of the return trip; the mere thought of it left him nervous and drymouthed.
Uncomfortably so, in fact. Unfortunately he hadn't thought to bring a water bottle, his mother hadn't packed any drinks in the bag, and there were no coffee shops in the middle of the woods.
There was, however, a vending machine.
Jin paused, blinking to clear away what had to be an hallucination. Certainly, Japan had no shortage of vending machines, and it was possible to walk down a street and encounter one every ten steps, but finding one amongst the trees, no power source in sight, could scarcely be considered normal. It wasn't a brand he recognised; he strained to see the contents without removing his feet from the path. One glimpse proved fatal. The barest possibility of obtaining a cool, refreshing drink left him gasping for moisture, desperate for something to ease the raging fire in his throat.
There were no ghosts here, were there? No sobbing phantoms who'd failed to follow their mother's instructions. Jin felt in his pocket for loose change, finding enough to treat himself if only he dared to do so.
How much harm could a vending machine do, anyway? Fall on him, maybe. Steal his change. Trap his fingers in the flap. Acceptable, everyday risks. If the machine turned out to be a figment of his imagination, at least there would be no witnesses.
"Don't move!"
Jin froze in the act of lifting his foot from the path. So much for there not being any witnesses.
He risked a peek in the direction of the voice, finding a young man wearing faded blue jeans, a skull-print black T-shirt and a black leather jacket running towards him from further down the path. The stranger carried a baseball bat and wore a Giants cap over his reddish-brown hair. Koki's missing master, perhaps?
"Don't move," he repeated as he reached Jin, panting a little from the exertion. "If you step off the path, you'll end up in the vending machine."
"In the vending machine?" Jin scoffed.
The stranger nodded, peering up at Jin from under the cap's bill, deadly serious. "In a water bottle. The fish told me."
Had Jin been having any other kind of day, he'd have assumed the young man was out of his mind. Instead, he felt annoyed that the fish hadn't thought to tell him. "So all those bottles in there...?"
"Yeah. You put your money in the slot, and that's when it sucks you in. I think it's part of the wolf's security system."
"There aren't any wolves around here," Jin said. "My grandmother wouldn't live here if there were."
"Your grandmother? And you are?"
"Akanishi Jin. Are you Kamenashi Kazuya? Your rabbit's worried about you."
"Koki's awake?" Kamenashi frowned, tilting his head so Jin could see the tiny turtle glinting in his earlobe. "I thought I gave him enough to keep him sleeping till I got back."
"You drugged your bunny?"
"No! But he can't hold his liquor. I didn't want him coming after me. It's too dangerous."
Jin looked around nervously, but other than the vending machine, the only danger in the area appeared to be from Kamenashi himself, who kept passing his bat from hand to hand.
"Kamenashi, I-"
"Are you armed?"
"Armed?" Jin took a step back. "You're not really a baseball player, are you?"
"I am," Kamenashi said, "but I do a few other things on the side. On Tuesdays I'm a pole dancer, Thursdays I'm an assassin, and Saturdays I'm a hunter."
"Seriously?"
"Nah." Kamenashi grinned. "I get Thursdays off. I'm here to find a missing friend; the game next week's just an excuse to keep Koki from worrying about me. He didn't follow you, did he?"
Jin hoped not. "He said he was going to stay put."
"Good." Kamenashi pulled off his cap and stuffed it in an inside pocket. "You should get out of here too, Akanishi. Pretty boys like you keep going missing in these woods."
"Take a look in the mirror and then take your own advice," Jin retorted, rolling his eyes. Why did everyone think he made such good prey? "I have to deliver this package to my grandmother, because my mother will kill me if I don't, and then I'm going home. I don't plan to get in your way."
"It's not safe here. Just turn around and go back, okay? There is a wolf in these woods and you're its favourite kind of snack."
"What makes you think there's a wolf? I promise you, Kamenashi, my grandmother wouldn't live here if there were wolves. She's terrified of them."
To Jin's surprise, Kamenashi pulled out his cell phone. It had no bars, of course, but it did have a bunch of surveillance photos. "See this shadow by the church? Wolf. These pawprints by the youth club? Wolf. You can just about see its muzzle in this one."
There were twenty-three photos in all, some taken of the wolf's trail in the woods, and others where Jin knew the locations well, the photos having been taken in his town. The final one set alarm bells ringing in his head. He grabbed the phone for a closer look, but there was no mistaking it.
"That's outside my house!"
Kamenashi swiped his phone back. "Hmm? Then maybe you're safest sticking with me after all. Come on, I'd like to find Ueda before he gets turned into wolf chow."
As they hurried along the path, Kame - he'd told Jin to call him that, on the grounds that if Jin were to start screaming for help, lopping the last couple of syllables off Kame's surname would speed things up - explained how his friend Ueda had gone missing after declaring his intention to go on one of those "manly" training adventures in the woods.
"He's filthy rich," Kame said, "but for some reason he enjoys challenging himself in the wilderness. I think he's trying to make up for the fact that he looks like a princess."
Jin tucked his dark, wavy hair into his hood and hoped Kame wouldn't be in the mood to make comparisons.
"When nobody could get hold of him, I arranged to play in a charity match out this way, packed up my gear, and left. I didn't realise there was a wolf involved till the kids in town started talking about seeing a big dog hanging around the outskirts. I know dogs, and that is no dog."
"Um...wouldn't a gun be more useful than a baseball bat?" Jin asked.
Kame turned just enough for Jin to see his smile: sharp, deadly, and totally in control. "I don't play games with this bat."
After that, Jin kept half an eye on the bat, just in case it transformed into a sword or something cool like that. Clearly he should've paid more attention to baseball, if the players did this kind of thing in their spare time.
But as interesting as it was, traipsing through the woods with Kame, Jin couldn't help worrying about his grandmother. If this wolf did exist, she'd be terrified. While he couldn't stand the woman she was his family - he didn't want to see her mauled to death by a wild animal. Maybe if he could stage a daring, last-minute rescue, she'd start to think better of him.
"Can I help? What are we looking for?" he whispered when Kame paused to remove a stone from his boot and told him to keep an eye out.
"Body parts. Torn clothing. Big furry things. Pretend you're trying to find your way to an orgy."
"Very helpful."
Jin didn't see any of that, though the dense foliage made it hard to see anything at all. Kame must've had amazing eyesight to be finding the wolf's trail in the woods. "Are there pawprints? I'm not seeing anything."
"Uh..." Kame smiled sheepishly. "I'm just following the path, like the fish told me. If I step off it, I don't think I'll be making it back to Koki. Hopefully the wolf's limited the same way."
So much for the mighty hunter. "This path only leads to one place," Jin said.
Kame pointed to a small wooden cabin up ahead. The path led right to the front door. "Is that your grandmother's house?"
"Yeah." No light appeared through the narrow windows; no welcome mat adorned the door. Jin knew the old woman wouldn't even care that he'd come to bring her tasty, homecooked food. "I'm not seeing any body parts."
Kame led the way to the front door. "Doesn't look like the wolf's been here unless he used a key."
Jin didn't have a key either, so he knocked. A familiar voice demanded he identify himself or be shot for trespassing. Kame immediately raised his bat, but Jin told him to stand down. "That's my grandmother," he said glumly. "Warm and welcoming as ever."
The old woman scowled when she found Jin on her doorstep, but changed her tune when she saw Kame. "Come in, dear," she cooed at him. "Let me get you something to drink. Perhaps a little cider? It's my own recipe, you know."
Jin stood gaping in the doorway as Kame allowed himself to be drawn inside and shown to the second-best armchair. (The best, of course, was reserved for its owner.) Jin's grandmother kept a tidy house, everything in its proper place - including the family photos on the mantlepiece, which made it painfully obvious that Jin was not in favour. He thought she'd gone a bit far, blacking out his face with a marker pen.
"Grandma, I brought-" he tried, but she barked at him to shut the door and turned, sweet as sugar, to offer Kame a tray of biscuits. Never mind that Jin might want one too, oh no. He dumped the backpack on the floor. "Mom made me bring you this stuff. There's food, you might want to do something with it..."
"Leave it in the kitchen," his grandmother said without even looking at him. "And mind you don't knock anything over."
"We should get going," Kame said politely, trying to rise to his feet without dropping the enormous tray of biscuits. "Have you seen a young man around here, hair a little lighter than mine but about the same length, has big pouty lips like your grandson?"
"My what? Oh, Reio. I don't think his lips are-"
"Not that grandson. Jin, the one standing by the door, who could probably do with a mug of that cider?"
"Oh." Jin's grandmother sniffed disdainfully, as though Jin offended her every sense merely by being there. "Him. He can have some water if he likes, before he goes. But you, my dear, you haven't touched your cider. Not to your taste?"
"Not during baseball season," Kame said, finally managing to offload the tray on a nearby coffee table.
"Then you must let me get you something else. You look absolutely parched, poor thing. Wait just a moment."
Jin breathed a sigh of relief when the old woman snatched up the parcel of food and swept off to the kitchen, leaving them alone in the room. He took the opportunity to swipe a biscuit from the tray when his grandmother couldn't see him. He would've had the cider, too, but Kame stopped him with a warning hand on his arm.
"No alcohol," Kame said. "You'll need your wits about you."
"Sorry about my grandmother." Jin hated feeling like he had to apologise on behalf of someone he didn't even like, but...family. "I've never seen her this friendly."
"She doesn't seem to like you much, does she? What did you do to upset her?"
Jin shrugged. "Be born, I think." He picked up one of the altered photographs. His parents and younger brother smiled brightly, oblivious to the large black hole standing between them. "This used to be a nice picture."
Kame glanced at it, then skimmed the rest of the room. It wasn't particularly warm, though there was a fire in the hearth, and Jin wished he'd thought to wear something over his hoodie. If anything, it was colder indoors than outdoors.
"Does your grandmother wear hooded sweatshirts?" Kame asked.
"No idea. Doesn't seem her style, though." Jin had only ever seen her in large, floral-print dresses and sensible shoes with the occasional shawl - "casual" wasn't in her vocabulary. "Why?"
"Because there's one behind this armchair." Kame slid the end of his bat under the garment and held it up. "Do you see a label on this?"
Jin reached inside the neck of the grey sweatshirt and found a tag with a couple of kanji even he couldn't screw up. "Ue-da?"
"He labels everything he wears to the gym," Kame said grimly. "So it doesn't get mixed up. Your grandmother never answered my question about whether or not she'd seen him."
He dropped the sweatshirt as the woman herself returned at that moment with a glass of tomato juice for Kame and half a glass of water for Jin. "Give your mother my thanks," she muttered at Jin, shoving the glass at him so fast he had no choice but to take it. "And this is for you, dear. Drink up."
Kame shook his head at the proffered juice. "Thank you, but I don't like tomatoes."
"Then perhaps some orange? I'll just be a moment."
"He doesn't want a drink," Jin blurted out, setting his water glass down on the mantlepiece and picking up the sweatshirt. "And where did you get this?"
"So rude, boy." His grandmother clucked her tongue. "You'll never amount to anything if you don't learn some manners. That must've been left here by the hiker who came through the other day. He stopped to ask for directions, I kindly allowed him to use my bathroom and he went on his way. Perhaps you'll be good enough to find him and return it."
Kame slid his hand a third of the way down his bat. "Ueda wouldn't have asked for directions."
"Ueda? Was that his name?" Jin's grandmother smiled sweetly at Kame, batting her eyelashes like a flirty schoolgirl. They were the same height. "A friend of yours?"
"A good friend, yes." Kame shrank back from the overwhelming scent of lavender, stumbling into Jin. "Do you have something in your eye?"
"Crocodile tears," Jin muttered under his breath.
"I think I might," his grandmother said. "Why don't you take a look?"
Kame gulped loud enough for Jin to hear and said, "What big eyes you have," in a voice that suggested he was aiming for a compliment but couldn't find anything genuinely nice to say.
"All the better to see you with, my dear."
"Maybe you should consider getting glasses," Jin said. "What did you do with Ueda?" He started to move towards the kitchen, intending to search the other rooms of the house for signs of life, but his grandmother seized his arm with surprising force.
He looked down at the hand gripping his upper arm. Surely his grandmother's hand hadn't always been like that, with short, thick fingers, covered in coarse black hair? He hadn't seen her in a while, of course, but he vaguely recalled her having long, elegant fingers, which she'd used to smack him away from the biscuits as a child.
Kame noticed too. "What big hands you have."
Jin's grandmother took this as an invitation to tuck Kame's hair back behind his ear with her free hand. "All the better to touch you with, my dear," she said.
Disgusting, that's what it was. Jin wrenched his arm away, horrified to discover his grandmother, who must've been ancient, was a cougar. Chasing after young men like some hormonal teenager. She obviously had no restraint whatsoever.
Kame didn't seem impressed by it either, to judge by his stony expression. "Is he here or not?"
A change came over the old woman: as the sun hid behind a cloud, so her flirtatious manner fell into shadow, leaving a sharp alertness behind. Jin felt it at once, the temperature decreasing in the already cool room.
"I think you'd both better leave now," his grandmother said in a voice of grit and gravel. "It's dangerous to walk through the woods at night."
"It's three in the afternoon!" Jin held up his watch. "It's not even dark yet!"
But it was - inside, where the narrow windows kept out all but the tiniest scraps of light, and the fire flickered and died of its own accord. Jin felt around for his cell phone, intending to use it as a torch; Kame beat him to it, shining the light straight at the old woman. It caught her in the eyes and as she opened her mouth to berate him for it, Jin decided he might not be too far off in thinking of her as a cougar.
"What big teeth you have!" he exclaimed.
His grandmother snarled at him through teeth too large to be contained by a human mouth. "All the better to eat you with!"
Jin didn't merit a "my dear", but he didn't really want one, not when the woman who gave birth to his father sprang forwards to sink her teeth into his hoodie. Inhuman teeth - but an inhuman body, too, that changed mid-leap to one considerably more lupine. Dark hair sprouted through the ugly lilac dress; scraps of fabric fluttered to the ground, torn apart by the cracking spine and contorting limbs. Hands became paws, small but more than strong enough to make Jin feel like he'd had an anvil thrown at him when they hit his chest.
His grandmother might have had the mating instincts of a cougar, but she was all wolf.
By the time Kame yelled "Get away from him!", Jin was flat on the floor, struggling to steal a breath away from the creature on his chest. The shock of being knocked to the ground left him momentarily senseless, fire surging up his spine with such intensity he felt sure he'd never be able to stand again.
It didn't look like he was going to get a choice about that, anyway. The thing that had been his grandmother weighed far more as a wolf than he'd ever imagined she could as a human, or perhaps the fear added to her weight. He almost missed her stale lavender scent; anything would be an improvement on the warm, fetid breath washing over him.
A crack split the air. The wolf rocked, tearing her teeth free of Jin's hoodie, but refused to budge; Jin heard Kame swearing from above and assumed he'd hit the creature with his baseball bat. Fresh pain bloomed in his gut as she pressed him further into the floor. If he'd had the breath to scream, he'd have brought the house down.
"Hold on, Akanishi!" Kame yelled. "I'll have it working in a second!"
Working? Jin flailed wildly with his right arm - his left being pinned by a paw - but he couldn't get anything like the amount of leverage needed to shift the wolf. His hand found tattered scraps of material clinging to soft dark fur - the only remaining sign of his grandmother's former humanity.
She snarled down at him, hatred practically dripping from her jaws as he squirmed, desperate to keep those sharp teeth away from his tender flesh. Koki's threat, so trivial from a rabbit, could be fatal from a wolf.
Another sound emerged from behind the snarl: a mechanical humming, almost too faint to be real. Jin thought he was hearing things - at least until Kame cracked the bat across the wolf's head again and lightning lit the room. The wolf collapsed.
So did Jin.
Part 2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Rating: G
Genre: Fairytale fluff, pre-slash
Word count: 14,495
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: If you go down to the woods today you're in for a big surprise. Beautiful young men have been going missing in the woods lately. Unfortunately, Jin's mother didn't know that when she sent him off to deliver a food parcel to his grandmother.
A/N: This time 'Little Red Riding Hood' gets the Akame treatment, with a nod to a few other things on the side. Contains the death of a minor (original) character, various members of KAT-TUN as animals, and some really improbable leaps of logic. Written for
hc_bingo: 'unwanted transformation' square.
All the Better (a.k.a. Little Red Riding Hoodie) 1/2
Everyone knew you shouldn't go walking in the woods by yourself - everyone except Akanishi Jin's mother, who'd apparently missed out on the memo that said it was a really, really bad idea to send your son into dark wooded areas with a care package for his grandmother and nothing save his wits for protection. Jin protested with all his might but his mother was immune to his charms. She didn't care that he might be coming down with a cold and probably shouldn't go out, oh no. She laughed when he claimed he had to wash his hair. She didn't even crumble when he played his trump card and insisted he didn't have time to go out because he was too busy composing a song for her birthday.
Of course her birthday wasn't for another five months, but that was beside the point. It was dark in the woods, even during the day, and easy to lose sight of the path. The woods were haunted too, Ryo had told him once, but Jin wasn't sure if that was true or if his friend was just messing with his head. It wouldn't have been the first time.
Nobody else had a grandmother crazy enough to live in the middle of nowhere. When Yamapi wanted to see his relatives, all he had to do was walk two blocks. Ryo only had to go next door.
But not Jin's grandmother, who had obviously chosen her new home while under the influence of considerably more than her usual apple cider. Even the postman refused to go out there anymore, which was why Jin had been given the unenviable task of delivering his mother's homemade delicacies to a woman he hadn't seen in five years and who hadn't liked him back then anyway because she didn't think 'musician' was a suitably manly career aspiration for a teenage boy. Jin was in no rush to resume her acquaintance.
His mother had other ideas. She gave him a set of directions and a bag to sling over his shoulder and told him to get a move on or he wouldn't be back in time for dinner. Resigned to his fate and reluctant to miss a meal, Jin donned his favourite red A&F hoodie ("Akanishi & Fujigaya" - his parents ran a clothing store with the next-door neighbours) and made a start for the woods.
He had to pass through the centre of town first. Yamapi spotted him as he passed by the convenience store and waved him over. When Jin explained his mission, Yamapi's eyes locked on the bag.
"You're carrying food?"
"It's not for you." Jin was mildly irritated that his best friend hadn't immediately volunteered to join him on the trek. "But if you keep me company, you can come over for dinner tonight."
"Tempting," and the reluctance in Yamapi's voice was probably real, given how much he liked Mrs. Akanishi's cooking, "but I can't. I'm supposed to be babysitting all afternoon."
"Who is it this time?"
Yamapi shrugged. "My neighbour's adopted kids again; I can't keep up with them. He asked me to teach them all about make-up and glitter so I'm out here getting supplies."
Hearing Yamapi's plans for the afternoon made Jin feel better about his own. Adopting kids was all very well, but Takizawa Hideaki took it to extremes. His house was beginning to resemble an orphanage.
Even so, an afternoon of chaos was preferable to one spent lost in the woods. "Sure you don't want to swap?" Jin offered.
"And deprive you of the pleasure of seeing your grandmother again?"
Jin grimaced; Yamapi knew full well how he felt about his grandmother. "Maybe I'll get mauled by a wolf on the way and won't have to see her."
They both laughed, but Yamapi's amusement faded first. "Be careful that doesn't happen. All sorts of strange things go on outside town. Got cigarettes on you?"
"Yeah." Jin produced a pack from the pocket of his hooded top. "Why? So I can stab would-be attackers in the eyes with a lit one?"
Yamapi popped the lid, extracting a cigarette before Jin could snatch them away. "No, because I'm all out. But that's a good idea, though. Ryo says there are ghosts in the woods."
It was widely known that Jin did not like ghosts one bit. "I'm not sure how far I'll get trying to burn something that doesn't have any physical presence, Pi..."
Before they could get into a debate about the non-corporeal nature of the spirit world, Yamapi's younger sister showed up to deliver a long list of things their mother wanted him to pick up while he was out, and Jin took his leave. It was obvious he wasn't going to find any company for the journey. None of his other friends were around, or even the people he didn't like that much but would've been willing to put up with if it meant he didn't have to go walking through haunted woods alone.
Ghosts didn't really exist, did they? Jin wasn't sure. He made his way to the very edge of town, where trees stretched for as far as the eye could see and smooth concrete gave way to worn dirt paths, strewn with leaves and stones, twisting into dark oblivion beyond. There was no helping it. He had to go. If he ditched the parcel and stayed out of sight for a few hours his mother would know, somehow, because she always did, and she'd probably send him back with one three times the weight.
With a last, longing look at civilisation, he turned and took his first step into the woods. The first dozen weren't so bad, when he could still turn and see the walls of the town through leafy curtains. The second dozen weren't too awful either, when he could still hear the faint sounds of the big clock tower bell chiming noon.
But by the twenty-fifth step, the trees had closed themselves behind him and Jin knew home was further away than it should be. Branches crossed like swords over the path, ready to cut him down if he tried to turn back. He could only follow the path, now.
He clutched his mother's written directions in his left hand. "Follow the path straight until you reach the blasted oak," the first line read. He thought she'd been cussing the tree until she explained that the old oak tree had been struck by lightning some years ago. The poor thing was now split down the middle and quite distinctive, she said. Jin hoped that last part was true because daylight was rather limited, filtered as it was through the foliage, and he didn't want to miss anything. One wrong turn and he'd be hopelessly lost.
Getting lost wasn't an option. Just because he couldn't hear anything save the sound of his own footsteps didn't mean there wasn't anything out there, just waiting for him to stray from the path. Ghosts? Wolves? Kidnappers? He'd never know until it was too late.
Step by step, twigs crunching beneath his boots. As much as Jin wanted to shove his hands in his pockets as he walked he didn't dare, lest he trip on the uneven ground. He didn't think his mother would accept that excuse for the loss of her carefully-prepared food parcel.
He kept up a steady pace, trying to keep his eyes fixed on the path ahead rather than the surrounding shade, soon reaching the oak. The tree evoked no pity in him. Horror, yes. Pity, no. The great, gaping maw in the centre of the massive trunk ensured that. Thick, twisted branches tangled towards the ground on both sides, creating two narrow arches, each guarding a fork of the path.
Jin checked the instructions. They weren't very helpful. According to his mother, both paths led to the same place, but they only led to where you were going if you knew which one to take.
"How am I supposed to know which one to take?" he muttered to himself. Peering through the arches didn't show him anything but identical dark paths beyond.
"Most people ask the guardian."
Jin whirled around to find a medium-brown bear behind him, standing far too close for comfort - even if he was making useful suggestions. He wasn't a particularly tall bear; nor was he excessively short. In fact, if Jin was honest about it, they were probably the same height. So much for all the talking bears having left the area decades ago. Talking animals tended to keep to themselves, not blending terribly well with either humans or their less articulate kin.
"Uh...guardian?" Jin asked tentatively. He had no idea of the correct etiquette when talking to bears, and if the bear's teeth were as big as his nose, Jin didn't want to be on the wrong end of them.
"I'm the guardian," the bear said. Jin hadn't expected his voice to be so clear, but he didn't have much experience with talking animals. "Nakamaru."
"Nakumaru?"
"Nakamaru. I suppose you're one of those heroes looking for tragic princesses to save?"
Jin shook his head. "I'm just going to deliver some food to my grandmother. Do you know which path I'm supposed to take?"
"What's your name?"
"Akanishi Jin."
Nakamaru consulted a list he extracted from a hole in the trunk, giving a little "Ah!" when he found Jin's name. "It says here that I'm allowed to let you pass in safety if you can help me with my problem."
What kind of problems did a bear have, Jin wondered? "What's the alternative?"
"You choose your own path and get trapped in the darkness for all eternity."
Jin smiled brightly. "So what's your problem?"
They sat down on tree stumps while Nakamaru explained the situation. The unfortunate bear was homeless. He'd had an agreement with a couple of other bears to move into a nice cottage in the woods, with a sweet little pond and an open fireplace, but on the day he'd gone to move in, they'd supplanted him with another roommate. He wasn't big enough, they said. He wasn't small enough, they said. And they already had a guy who was just right.
Confused and annoyed, Nakamaru had lost the argument when the usurper had challenged him to a battle of bravery over the room. It was a nice place, to be sure, but not worth the risk of bungee-jumping from the nearest clock tower. He'd taken up sleeping at work instead, camping out next to the oak tree, but winter was on its way and he didn't fancy keeping it up for much longer.
Jin listened attentively, making sympathetic noises in all the right places (he didn't care much for the cold himself). "So you need a place to live," he summed up. "Within walking distance of this tree."
"Don't suggest I build myself a cabin," Nakamaru warned. "The last guy tried that. He's still out here somewhere."
The bear's paws were ill-suited for any kind of construction work; Jin could see why the suggestion hadn't been well received. Nakamaru seemed very friendly, though - quite harmless. And he was obviously responsible.
That gave Jin an idea. "How do you feel about kids?" He explained about Takizawa's house of adopted children, and how he was always taking in more, and could probably use another adult around - even if said adult was of a different species. He had plenty of space, at any rate, and had been known to take in paying lodgers before. "And the town is close enough that you can walk here every day."
Nakamaru liked the idea. "Will you write me a letter of introduction? Most humans run away screaming when bears turn up at their front doors and ask if there are any rooms available."
"I don't have anything on me to write with. If I get to my grandmother's house, I'll borrow some stationery from her and when I come back this way, I'll bring a letter with me. How does that sound?"
The bear grumbled faintly about how modern youngsters were never prepared, ignoring Jin's attempts to ask him if he had any paper other than his list of names, but agreed to the plan. "I'd better tell you how to get there, then. Take the left path."
"That's it? I was expecting some long, complicated ritual probing the true nature of my journey, and you just tell me to go left?"
Nakamaru shrugged. "Basic rule of adventuring - explore from left to right."
"And the whole thing about the paths only leading to where I'm going if I know which one to take?"
"Scares the tourists away."
Jin sighed and rose from his tree stump, preparing to continue his journey. "And I suppose the paths join up again further down the line?"
"You'll have to find that out for yourself, but there's one more thing I probably should tell you, since you've solved my problem. Good-looking young men keep vanishing in these woods. You'd better watch yourself."
Nakamaru waved a goodbye and disappeared into his tent. Jin didn't know whether to be flattered or disturbed that a bear thought he was attractive, and pulled his hood down over his eyes in the hope that he'd be safe if no one knew what he looked like.
The food parcel made it a tight squeeze but he wriggled through the left arch, as Nakamaru had said, and continued down the path. The right-hand path wasn't visible at all, being barred by a wall of branches; everything was thicker, denser, closer on this side, making Jin increasingly uneasy as he walked. If he tripped over a protruding root and broke his ankle, no one would ever find him here - excepting possibly Nakamaru, eager to find out why his letter of introduction had yet to materialise. He paid such close attention to his feet that he completely missed the branch by his ear, which snagged his hood and yanked him back with a jerk.
Jin paused to unsnare himself, startling when a snicker drifted up from near his feet.
"Didn't your parents ever teach you to watch where you're going?"
He crouched down to find the origin of the voice - a small white rabbit with a fluffy tail and a black teardrop patch on one cheek. Talking rabbits were less popular than talking bears, as most of them seemed to be in a rush to get somewhere and not inclined to stop and chat. This one was obviously in no hurry.
"My parents taught me not to laugh at the misfortune of people bigger than me," Jin retorted. Not that this had stopped his younger brother from laughing at him...
"What are you going to do - pull my tail?" the rabbit said. "You've got vulnerable flesh and I've got sharp teeth." He bared them for show.
Jin didn't care to be threatened by a bunny rabbit. "Excuse me."
"Wait." The rabbit scooted forwards to perch on Jin's boot. "Have you seen my master around? We got separated."
"You're a pet?"
The rabbit scratched its neck and Jin realised it was wearing a thin gold collar with a 'Koki' nametag hanging off it. "More like a guard dog...uh...rabbit. I make sure no bad people get near him."
"So what happened?"
"I don't know." For a rabbit, Koki sounded remarkably sheepish. "When I woke up this morning his sleeping bag was empty. We'd had kind of a lot to drink the night before so I was sleeping a little heavier than usual; didn't hear him leave but his designer sunglasses are still in the tent and he'd never have left those if he'd gone of his own free will." He pointed with one foot in the direction of a small pink tent.
Jin couldn't hide his amusement at Koki's reasoning. "Could your master have gone to take a leak?"
Koki stared at him like he'd just said the world was actually flat, or something equally preposterous. "For five hours? We didn't drink that much."
"Okay, fair enough..." Jin gently nudged the rabbit away from his toes. "Unless your master's actually a bear named Nakamaru, I haven't seen him, but if you tell me what he looks like I'll look out for him."
The rabbit twitched his tail. "He's very good-looking. Criminally handsome, but somehow cute at the same time. You can't miss him."
"That's great, but what does he look like?"
It took another five minutes of Koki raving over his master's attributes before Jin managed to get a decent description out of him. Kamenashi Kazuya, answering to 'Kame', possessed, if the bunny was to be believed, such beauty as to make the very stars weep with envy. Jin wondered if his disappearance had anything to do with Nakamaru's warning about attractive young men disappearing in the woods.
"I don't suppose you know if anyone else has gone missing in these parts, do you?" he asked.
"Sorry," Koki said, "we're just passing through. Kame's supposed to be playing in a big baseball game next week on the other side of the mountains and these woods are the fastest way to get there."
Jin didn't know much about baseball - soccer was more his thing - but he had a lot of respect for athletes. "If I find him, I'll be sure to tell him to come back to your camp," he promised. "Are you going to wait here?"
Koki nodded. "It's easier to find a lost human than a lost rabbit. But I don't think he went of his own accord. Be careful."
Jin's trip to deliver a package to his grandmother was taking on a life of its own, one he wasn't sure he liked. It was all very well writing a letter of introduction for a talking bear, but searching for a guy who might've been kidnapped by hostile forces wasn't what he'd signed up for. He fervently hoped he wouldn't encounter any other talking animals in his travels.
The next line of his mother's instructions told him to follow the stream. It didn't take him long to spot it - Kame's tent was set up nearby, presumably for easy access to the water - and Jin continued away from his home, further into the woods, leaving Koki trying to sleep off the remains of his hangover.
At first the stream was crystal clear, cool and inviting, with nary a weed in sight. Jin wouldn't have thought twice about dipping his hands in and scooping up a mouthful of refreshing water...except that he'd heard one too many stories about fools drinking something they shouldn't and suffering humiliating consequences. Downstream, the water shucked its fresh transparency in favour of a thick, murky soup of reeds, insects and the bloated bodies of deceased fish that turned Jin's stomach.
Trees pressed closer, threatening with gnarled branches. Jin found himself ducking every few steps. His mother's instructions told him to follow the stream till it joined a river, cutting him off on the wrong side of a T-junction.
Not that there was any right side to this river. Brown-green soup had given way to inky blackness, swirling furiously between the banks; water to steal not just the breath from your lungs but your very soul, should you be unlucky enough to fall in. Jin gulped a mouthful of chilled air and scanned the banks for the bridge his mother had specified.
She'd neglected to mention it was a flimsy rope bridge.
Jin wasn't sure how his mother expected him to negotiate it under normal circumstances, let alone weighed down by a heavy food parcel, but it didn't look like he had any choice in the matter, short of turning back, or following the river until he found something better and hoping he didn't stray too far from his path.
If he deviated from the instructions he was liable to find himself lost in the woods forever. It had to be the bridge.
He adjusted the straps so the bag hung more evenly over his shoulders, took a deep breath, and grasped the handrails on either side. His grandmother had better appreciate all the trouble he was going to on her behalf. The first rope sank under his weight, not low enough to reach the river but more than enough to cause alarm; he quickly placed one foot on the next rung along to distribute the load. Below, the river with a million open mouths waited for him to fall.
First one step, then another. Jin slid his hands along the rails, not looking down, keeping his eyes locked on the opposite bank while he tentatively sought the next strand of rope with his feet. The whole structure wobbled with every step, clearly not happy about humans daring to use it.
Just before Jin reached the middle of the bridge, a giant fish leapt from the river, straight through the rope, and hung in the air before him. The shock almost cost him his footing; if he hadn't had such a tight grip on the handrails he'd have fallen through. The fish must've been at least six feet long and it hung upright, blocking the way forward.
After encountering talking bears and rabbits, Jin wasn't terribly surprised when the fish, which had silvery blond scales and unusually stylish fins, started speaking to him.
"Halt! Who goes there?" it said. Then it smiled brightly and added, "I love it when I get to say that!"
Jin blinked. For a fish that had just emerged from a swirling river of doom, it sounded remarkably amiable. "Um...Akanishi Jin. Can I get by, please?" He thought he might be able to squeeze past the fish if he really tried, but one flick of the tail and he'd land up in the river. Better to ask politely.
The fish sighed. "Nobody ever wants to stay and play games with me." He loomed over Jin, who had to put up with being dripped on. "Everyone's always in such a hurry."
"Games?"
"You know," the fish said. "James Pond, Robocod, Attack Sub - stuff like that."
"How does a fish play computer games?" Jin asked, expecting some sort of joking response.
"By proxy, of course." The fish flipped one fin in the direction of a laptop, which rested on a treestump on the opposite bank. "When I don't have anyone to play with, I just watch stuff on streaming."
Jin would've facepalmed at the joke, had it not involved taking a hand off the rail and potentially falling in. "If I...if I play a game with you, will you let me through?"
The fish backflipped with delight, almost smacking Jin in the chin with its tail. "Let's play a guessing game. If you can guess the correct password for the bridge, I'll let you cross!"
It sounded a bit vague and one-sided to Jin, who was better at games that had 'Dragonball' in the title, but anything was worth a try. "Can I have a clue?"
"It's not the Elvish word for 'friend'," the fish said. "Everyone tries that."
"Everyone?"
The fish waggled its fins merrily. "Look beneath your feet."
Reluctantly, Jin looked down, clinging tight to the handrails to keep his balance. He didn't see anything at first. One inky swirl of water looked much the same as the next, till he caught sight of a pale, bloated hand caught in the reeds by the bank. He shuddered, suddenly nauseated. Would the fish knock him in if he failed, to become one more corpse lost forever in the murky depths?
"How many guesses do I get?" he asked, not feeling terribly optimistic about his chances. Maybe it wasn't too late to turn around and follow the river till he found somewhere else to cross.
"Until I get bored." The fish bent down to look him in the eye. "I'll keep asking questions till you get the right word, okay? What was the name of Oda Nobunaga's favoured page?"
Jin wasn't great with history, but he knew this one. "Mori Ranmaru."
"Wrong!"
"Am not!" Jin spluttered. "That's definitely the right guy!"
"Right answer to the question, but the wrong password," the fish said. "Let's try another one. Who's the best pitcher in the Yomiuri Giants?"
Baseball. Great. Jin knew the name of exactly one baseball player, courtesy of his guard bunny, so he figured he might as well try it. "Kamenashi Kazuya."
The fish stared at him. "You don't even look like a baseball fan!"
"You mean I'm right?"
"Same again - right answer, but wrong password. I'll have to try something harder. What's the capital of Luxembourg?"
"Luxembourg?" Jin repeated, not even sure where it was.
"Right again." The fish blew bubbles through its lips, sulking now. "How deep is the Pacific Ocean?"
"Um..." Jin hated geography questions, unless they were about California. "I have no idea."
"You're getting closer!" the fish praised him. "Here, have another one. Recite pi to a million places."
"I can't even do it to ten!"
"Getting warmer. Hit me with your best love confession."
Jin groaned. No way was he confessing to a giant fish, whether it would get him across the bridge or not. "Pass!"
The fish clapped its fins together, so violent in its excitement that it nearly overbalanced. "Almost there! You've got the first half."
"The first half of the password is 'pass'?"
The fish beamed at him. "I don't like to make it too difficult."
Jin decided to take a wild guess. "Is the password 'password'?"
With a splash, the fish dived back into the river, clearing the bridge for Jin. He ducked to avoid the spray; by the time the bridge stopped swaying the fish had popped its head above the surface.
"It's one of the most popular passwords," it said, splashing near Jin's feet. "Most people guess it eventually and go on their way."
"What about that guy?" Jin jerked his chin toward the floating hand by the bank.
"He slipped," the fish said sadly. "We were playing DDR and he lost his footing. Be careful as you cross; the bank's kind of slippery."
Jin picked his way gingerly across the remainder of the bridge, scarcely breathing till he stood safe on the other side. The fish watched him with surprisingly gentle eyes.
It couldn't hurt to ask, could it? "Uh...the guy who was playing with you and fell in, how long ago was that? Because I'm supposed to be keeping an eye out for Kamenashi, and-"
"Kamenashi? The baseball player? He came through here earlier," the fish said. "He said he was looking for someone too."
So Koki's master was still alive; good to know. But who could he be looking for in the middle of the woods?
"Any idea which way he went?"
"Same way you're about to go." The fish pointed a fin past the laptop, down through the trees. "There's only one path. Be careful as you go, though. Young men have been going missing around here lately and you don't want to be one of them."
"So I hear, but how did you know that?"
"I live in the water," the fish said. "Best place to get the current gossip."
Jin groaned but couldn't keep back a giggle, which seemed to please the fish. "Thanks for the warning...uh..."
"Junno." The fish swept one fin in front in an odd aquatic bow. "Thanks for stopping to play. I didn't mean to scare you with the threats; I just thought they might help put you in the right mood."
"I play better when I'm not terrified," Jin said.
"Then let's play again on your way back!"
Junno flipped his tail and sank below the surface, leaving Jin alone on the bank with the laptop, which was plugged into a nearby tree. Maybe it was a generator in disguise or something. Too bad there wasn't a printer or he could've done Nakamaru's letter of introduction. Jin watched the flying fish screensaver for a minute, mesmerised by the pretty colours, then remembered to check his mother's instructions.
From there they were simple: follow the path without a single deviation until he reached the clearing where his grandmother's house stood. It sounded straightforward enough. Turning his back on the river, Jin set off through the trees, keeping a close eye on the path beneath his feet. It was so narrow he didn't dare do otherwise, for fear of straying. His mother had underlined the "without a single deviation" part, so that had to be important somehow.
Crossing the rope bridge had left him feeling wobbly, the aftermath of tensing up for so long, and as he walked he felt increasingly like it would be nice to sit down for a few minutes and let his legs catch up to the rest of him. It wouldn't do to strain a muscle, after all. Though the path was relatively clear of grass, there were many small stones and twigs in his way, and he had to watch his step.
The further Jin walked, the wearier he became. Just when he thought his legs couldn't support him any further, he spotted a ring of stumps through the trees. A small clearing, unoccupied, inviting. It couldn't hurt to sit down for a couple of minutes, could it? He lifted one foot from the path, began to set it down in the direction of the clearing...and froze.
It wasn't unoccupied after all. A stray sunbeam, one of few to pierce the canopy of tree branches, caught the edge of a statue.
No...not a statue. The figure had not the substance for that. A young man, weeping into his hands as he sat on a tree stump, sharing his lament with the girl to his right. Where they fell into shadow they disappeared, bodies formed of nothing more than light.
So the ghost stories were true after all. Jin shivered, more disturbed by the sobbing human spirits than by the talking animals he'd met in the woods, and set his foot back down on the path. He no longer felt the impulse to stray.
Another ten minutes along the way the trees were thicker than ever, closing in on the path so Jin had to squeeze through with his bag of goodies. His grandmother sure lived in an awkward location. He didn't relish the prospect of the return trip; the mere thought of it left him nervous and drymouthed.
Uncomfortably so, in fact. Unfortunately he hadn't thought to bring a water bottle, his mother hadn't packed any drinks in the bag, and there were no coffee shops in the middle of the woods.
There was, however, a vending machine.
Jin paused, blinking to clear away what had to be an hallucination. Certainly, Japan had no shortage of vending machines, and it was possible to walk down a street and encounter one every ten steps, but finding one amongst the trees, no power source in sight, could scarcely be considered normal. It wasn't a brand he recognised; he strained to see the contents without removing his feet from the path. One glimpse proved fatal. The barest possibility of obtaining a cool, refreshing drink left him gasping for moisture, desperate for something to ease the raging fire in his throat.
There were no ghosts here, were there? No sobbing phantoms who'd failed to follow their mother's instructions. Jin felt in his pocket for loose change, finding enough to treat himself if only he dared to do so.
How much harm could a vending machine do, anyway? Fall on him, maybe. Steal his change. Trap his fingers in the flap. Acceptable, everyday risks. If the machine turned out to be a figment of his imagination, at least there would be no witnesses.
"Don't move!"
Jin froze in the act of lifting his foot from the path. So much for there not being any witnesses.
He risked a peek in the direction of the voice, finding a young man wearing faded blue jeans, a skull-print black T-shirt and a black leather jacket running towards him from further down the path. The stranger carried a baseball bat and wore a Giants cap over his reddish-brown hair. Koki's missing master, perhaps?
"Don't move," he repeated as he reached Jin, panting a little from the exertion. "If you step off the path, you'll end up in the vending machine."
"In the vending machine?" Jin scoffed.
The stranger nodded, peering up at Jin from under the cap's bill, deadly serious. "In a water bottle. The fish told me."
Had Jin been having any other kind of day, he'd have assumed the young man was out of his mind. Instead, he felt annoyed that the fish hadn't thought to tell him. "So all those bottles in there...?"
"Yeah. You put your money in the slot, and that's when it sucks you in. I think it's part of the wolf's security system."
"There aren't any wolves around here," Jin said. "My grandmother wouldn't live here if there were."
"Your grandmother? And you are?"
"Akanishi Jin. Are you Kamenashi Kazuya? Your rabbit's worried about you."
"Koki's awake?" Kamenashi frowned, tilting his head so Jin could see the tiny turtle glinting in his earlobe. "I thought I gave him enough to keep him sleeping till I got back."
"You drugged your bunny?"
"No! But he can't hold his liquor. I didn't want him coming after me. It's too dangerous."
Jin looked around nervously, but other than the vending machine, the only danger in the area appeared to be from Kamenashi himself, who kept passing his bat from hand to hand.
"Kamenashi, I-"
"Are you armed?"
"Armed?" Jin took a step back. "You're not really a baseball player, are you?"
"I am," Kamenashi said, "but I do a few other things on the side. On Tuesdays I'm a pole dancer, Thursdays I'm an assassin, and Saturdays I'm a hunter."
"Seriously?"
"Nah." Kamenashi grinned. "I get Thursdays off. I'm here to find a missing friend; the game next week's just an excuse to keep Koki from worrying about me. He didn't follow you, did he?"
Jin hoped not. "He said he was going to stay put."
"Good." Kamenashi pulled off his cap and stuffed it in an inside pocket. "You should get out of here too, Akanishi. Pretty boys like you keep going missing in these woods."
"Take a look in the mirror and then take your own advice," Jin retorted, rolling his eyes. Why did everyone think he made such good prey? "I have to deliver this package to my grandmother, because my mother will kill me if I don't, and then I'm going home. I don't plan to get in your way."
"It's not safe here. Just turn around and go back, okay? There is a wolf in these woods and you're its favourite kind of snack."
"What makes you think there's a wolf? I promise you, Kamenashi, my grandmother wouldn't live here if there were wolves. She's terrified of them."
To Jin's surprise, Kamenashi pulled out his cell phone. It had no bars, of course, but it did have a bunch of surveillance photos. "See this shadow by the church? Wolf. These pawprints by the youth club? Wolf. You can just about see its muzzle in this one."
There were twenty-three photos in all, some taken of the wolf's trail in the woods, and others where Jin knew the locations well, the photos having been taken in his town. The final one set alarm bells ringing in his head. He grabbed the phone for a closer look, but there was no mistaking it.
"That's outside my house!"
Kamenashi swiped his phone back. "Hmm? Then maybe you're safest sticking with me after all. Come on, I'd like to find Ueda before he gets turned into wolf chow."
As they hurried along the path, Kame - he'd told Jin to call him that, on the grounds that if Jin were to start screaming for help, lopping the last couple of syllables off Kame's surname would speed things up - explained how his friend Ueda had gone missing after declaring his intention to go on one of those "manly" training adventures in the woods.
"He's filthy rich," Kame said, "but for some reason he enjoys challenging himself in the wilderness. I think he's trying to make up for the fact that he looks like a princess."
Jin tucked his dark, wavy hair into his hood and hoped Kame wouldn't be in the mood to make comparisons.
"When nobody could get hold of him, I arranged to play in a charity match out this way, packed up my gear, and left. I didn't realise there was a wolf involved till the kids in town started talking about seeing a big dog hanging around the outskirts. I know dogs, and that is no dog."
"Um...wouldn't a gun be more useful than a baseball bat?" Jin asked.
Kame turned just enough for Jin to see his smile: sharp, deadly, and totally in control. "I don't play games with this bat."
After that, Jin kept half an eye on the bat, just in case it transformed into a sword or something cool like that. Clearly he should've paid more attention to baseball, if the players did this kind of thing in their spare time.
But as interesting as it was, traipsing through the woods with Kame, Jin couldn't help worrying about his grandmother. If this wolf did exist, she'd be terrified. While he couldn't stand the woman she was his family - he didn't want to see her mauled to death by a wild animal. Maybe if he could stage a daring, last-minute rescue, she'd start to think better of him.
"Can I help? What are we looking for?" he whispered when Kame paused to remove a stone from his boot and told him to keep an eye out.
"Body parts. Torn clothing. Big furry things. Pretend you're trying to find your way to an orgy."
"Very helpful."
Jin didn't see any of that, though the dense foliage made it hard to see anything at all. Kame must've had amazing eyesight to be finding the wolf's trail in the woods. "Are there pawprints? I'm not seeing anything."
"Uh..." Kame smiled sheepishly. "I'm just following the path, like the fish told me. If I step off it, I don't think I'll be making it back to Koki. Hopefully the wolf's limited the same way."
So much for the mighty hunter. "This path only leads to one place," Jin said.
Kame pointed to a small wooden cabin up ahead. The path led right to the front door. "Is that your grandmother's house?"
"Yeah." No light appeared through the narrow windows; no welcome mat adorned the door. Jin knew the old woman wouldn't even care that he'd come to bring her tasty, homecooked food. "I'm not seeing any body parts."
Kame led the way to the front door. "Doesn't look like the wolf's been here unless he used a key."
Jin didn't have a key either, so he knocked. A familiar voice demanded he identify himself or be shot for trespassing. Kame immediately raised his bat, but Jin told him to stand down. "That's my grandmother," he said glumly. "Warm and welcoming as ever."
The old woman scowled when she found Jin on her doorstep, but changed her tune when she saw Kame. "Come in, dear," she cooed at him. "Let me get you something to drink. Perhaps a little cider? It's my own recipe, you know."
Jin stood gaping in the doorway as Kame allowed himself to be drawn inside and shown to the second-best armchair. (The best, of course, was reserved for its owner.) Jin's grandmother kept a tidy house, everything in its proper place - including the family photos on the mantlepiece, which made it painfully obvious that Jin was not in favour. He thought she'd gone a bit far, blacking out his face with a marker pen.
"Grandma, I brought-" he tried, but she barked at him to shut the door and turned, sweet as sugar, to offer Kame a tray of biscuits. Never mind that Jin might want one too, oh no. He dumped the backpack on the floor. "Mom made me bring you this stuff. There's food, you might want to do something with it..."
"Leave it in the kitchen," his grandmother said without even looking at him. "And mind you don't knock anything over."
"We should get going," Kame said politely, trying to rise to his feet without dropping the enormous tray of biscuits. "Have you seen a young man around here, hair a little lighter than mine but about the same length, has big pouty lips like your grandson?"
"My what? Oh, Reio. I don't think his lips are-"
"Not that grandson. Jin, the one standing by the door, who could probably do with a mug of that cider?"
"Oh." Jin's grandmother sniffed disdainfully, as though Jin offended her every sense merely by being there. "Him. He can have some water if he likes, before he goes. But you, my dear, you haven't touched your cider. Not to your taste?"
"Not during baseball season," Kame said, finally managing to offload the tray on a nearby coffee table.
"Then you must let me get you something else. You look absolutely parched, poor thing. Wait just a moment."
Jin breathed a sigh of relief when the old woman snatched up the parcel of food and swept off to the kitchen, leaving them alone in the room. He took the opportunity to swipe a biscuit from the tray when his grandmother couldn't see him. He would've had the cider, too, but Kame stopped him with a warning hand on his arm.
"No alcohol," Kame said. "You'll need your wits about you."
"Sorry about my grandmother." Jin hated feeling like he had to apologise on behalf of someone he didn't even like, but...family. "I've never seen her this friendly."
"She doesn't seem to like you much, does she? What did you do to upset her?"
Jin shrugged. "Be born, I think." He picked up one of the altered photographs. His parents and younger brother smiled brightly, oblivious to the large black hole standing between them. "This used to be a nice picture."
Kame glanced at it, then skimmed the rest of the room. It wasn't particularly warm, though there was a fire in the hearth, and Jin wished he'd thought to wear something over his hoodie. If anything, it was colder indoors than outdoors.
"Does your grandmother wear hooded sweatshirts?" Kame asked.
"No idea. Doesn't seem her style, though." Jin had only ever seen her in large, floral-print dresses and sensible shoes with the occasional shawl - "casual" wasn't in her vocabulary. "Why?"
"Because there's one behind this armchair." Kame slid the end of his bat under the garment and held it up. "Do you see a label on this?"
Jin reached inside the neck of the grey sweatshirt and found a tag with a couple of kanji even he couldn't screw up. "Ue-da?"
"He labels everything he wears to the gym," Kame said grimly. "So it doesn't get mixed up. Your grandmother never answered my question about whether or not she'd seen him."
He dropped the sweatshirt as the woman herself returned at that moment with a glass of tomato juice for Kame and half a glass of water for Jin. "Give your mother my thanks," she muttered at Jin, shoving the glass at him so fast he had no choice but to take it. "And this is for you, dear. Drink up."
Kame shook his head at the proffered juice. "Thank you, but I don't like tomatoes."
"Then perhaps some orange? I'll just be a moment."
"He doesn't want a drink," Jin blurted out, setting his water glass down on the mantlepiece and picking up the sweatshirt. "And where did you get this?"
"So rude, boy." His grandmother clucked her tongue. "You'll never amount to anything if you don't learn some manners. That must've been left here by the hiker who came through the other day. He stopped to ask for directions, I kindly allowed him to use my bathroom and he went on his way. Perhaps you'll be good enough to find him and return it."
Kame slid his hand a third of the way down his bat. "Ueda wouldn't have asked for directions."
"Ueda? Was that his name?" Jin's grandmother smiled sweetly at Kame, batting her eyelashes like a flirty schoolgirl. They were the same height. "A friend of yours?"
"A good friend, yes." Kame shrank back from the overwhelming scent of lavender, stumbling into Jin. "Do you have something in your eye?"
"Crocodile tears," Jin muttered under his breath.
"I think I might," his grandmother said. "Why don't you take a look?"
Kame gulped loud enough for Jin to hear and said, "What big eyes you have," in a voice that suggested he was aiming for a compliment but couldn't find anything genuinely nice to say.
"All the better to see you with, my dear."
"Maybe you should consider getting glasses," Jin said. "What did you do with Ueda?" He started to move towards the kitchen, intending to search the other rooms of the house for signs of life, but his grandmother seized his arm with surprising force.
He looked down at the hand gripping his upper arm. Surely his grandmother's hand hadn't always been like that, with short, thick fingers, covered in coarse black hair? He hadn't seen her in a while, of course, but he vaguely recalled her having long, elegant fingers, which she'd used to smack him away from the biscuits as a child.
Kame noticed too. "What big hands you have."
Jin's grandmother took this as an invitation to tuck Kame's hair back behind his ear with her free hand. "All the better to touch you with, my dear," she said.
Disgusting, that's what it was. Jin wrenched his arm away, horrified to discover his grandmother, who must've been ancient, was a cougar. Chasing after young men like some hormonal teenager. She obviously had no restraint whatsoever.
Kame didn't seem impressed by it either, to judge by his stony expression. "Is he here or not?"
A change came over the old woman: as the sun hid behind a cloud, so her flirtatious manner fell into shadow, leaving a sharp alertness behind. Jin felt it at once, the temperature decreasing in the already cool room.
"I think you'd both better leave now," his grandmother said in a voice of grit and gravel. "It's dangerous to walk through the woods at night."
"It's three in the afternoon!" Jin held up his watch. "It's not even dark yet!"
But it was - inside, where the narrow windows kept out all but the tiniest scraps of light, and the fire flickered and died of its own accord. Jin felt around for his cell phone, intending to use it as a torch; Kame beat him to it, shining the light straight at the old woman. It caught her in the eyes and as she opened her mouth to berate him for it, Jin decided he might not be too far off in thinking of her as a cougar.
"What big teeth you have!" he exclaimed.
His grandmother snarled at him through teeth too large to be contained by a human mouth. "All the better to eat you with!"
Jin didn't merit a "my dear", but he didn't really want one, not when the woman who gave birth to his father sprang forwards to sink her teeth into his hoodie. Inhuman teeth - but an inhuman body, too, that changed mid-leap to one considerably more lupine. Dark hair sprouted through the ugly lilac dress; scraps of fabric fluttered to the ground, torn apart by the cracking spine and contorting limbs. Hands became paws, small but more than strong enough to make Jin feel like he'd had an anvil thrown at him when they hit his chest.
His grandmother might have had the mating instincts of a cougar, but she was all wolf.
By the time Kame yelled "Get away from him!", Jin was flat on the floor, struggling to steal a breath away from the creature on his chest. The shock of being knocked to the ground left him momentarily senseless, fire surging up his spine with such intensity he felt sure he'd never be able to stand again.
It didn't look like he was going to get a choice about that, anyway. The thing that had been his grandmother weighed far more as a wolf than he'd ever imagined she could as a human, or perhaps the fear added to her weight. He almost missed her stale lavender scent; anything would be an improvement on the warm, fetid breath washing over him.
A crack split the air. The wolf rocked, tearing her teeth free of Jin's hoodie, but refused to budge; Jin heard Kame swearing from above and assumed he'd hit the creature with his baseball bat. Fresh pain bloomed in his gut as she pressed him further into the floor. If he'd had the breath to scream, he'd have brought the house down.
"Hold on, Akanishi!" Kame yelled. "I'll have it working in a second!"
Working? Jin flailed wildly with his right arm - his left being pinned by a paw - but he couldn't get anything like the amount of leverage needed to shift the wolf. His hand found tattered scraps of material clinging to soft dark fur - the only remaining sign of his grandmother's former humanity.
She snarled down at him, hatred practically dripping from her jaws as he squirmed, desperate to keep those sharp teeth away from his tender flesh. Koki's threat, so trivial from a rabbit, could be fatal from a wolf.
Another sound emerged from behind the snarl: a mechanical humming, almost too faint to be real. Jin thought he was hearing things - at least until Kame cracked the bat across the wolf's head again and lightning lit the room. The wolf collapsed.
So did Jin.
Part 2