I say 'Pah!' to Beta-reading.
So read at your own risk; feel free to offer constructive criticism (but not the mean, hurty kind, 'kay?)
Title: The Trouble with Tanuki
Fandom: xxxHolic
Characters: Watanuki, Doumeki, with supporting roles by the cast of xxxHolic and Man of Many Faces
Summary: Er... Doumeki goes down the tanuki hole.
Notes: This story is tucked in just after Book 10, except the seasons are a bit wacky. It is a not-sequel to "Five Days In Summer," which is unnecessary to read, but does explain what Himawari was up to in Yuuko's shop, and the source of the tanuki's grudge. (Other notes at ends of chapters.)
Disclaimer: Pauper sum ego, nihil habeo.
Warnings: Super-verbosity. Super!Grumpy!Watanuki. Super!Hungry!Doumeki. Cheesy, cheesy innuendo. Crack. Inept writing.
Chapter One: Someday, In the Rain
Watanuki
It was a terrible day, and the end of a terrible week of similarly terrible days spent trudging between spooky-spiritual sites set like beads on a string about the backside of Japan with an antique camera and that idiot Doumeki in tow like a laconic, irritating dinghy, a dinghy who broke his own arm with malice aforethought and made Watanuki mix metaphors because that was just the kind of maritime vehicle he was like - irritating.
"You mean similes," said Doumeki.
See? Irritating.
Today should have been slightly less terrible, because at least they were back in his home city, but today it was raining. Terribly. Also, stupid Doumeki had insisted on walking Watanuki back from the station. It wasn't his fault that they'd lost one of their umbrellas plugging the tiny puckered maw of a Thing that looked like a balloon and wanted to eat him through a straw (which had never yet put Watanuki in a good mood) and that meant they had to share and it was awkward and jostling and also annoyingly soggy.
So they trudged through water falling like grey and silver sheets around them, their only company the myriads of dour, suited businessman returning from work, who were also having a terrible week, or so said the bags under their eyes - dark like raccoon rings - and their silent, splattering journeys up and down the wet street.
Once again, Watanuki was shoving his umbrella more over the other boy, so that his plaster cast didn't dissolve in the rain, which would be troublesome, when another businessman - this one tall and burly under a heavy jowl and paunch - almost walked through him as if he wasn't there, and would have knocked him flying with his brief-case if Doumeki hadn't steadied him.
Then the jowly businessman stood on what looked like a small, squeaky, pink elephant toy and overbalanced over a set of steps ahead of them in the street, and Watanuki reached after the obnoxious man trying to catch him, and Doumeki who was already off balance tried to pull Watanuki back but failed, and failed again to catch himself with his other arm in a cast and sling, and then they were all
f
a
l
l
i
n
g.
Doumeki
He opened his eyes. It was blurry, but he could make out the shape of someone squatting over him, elbows and legs folded like a daddy-long-leg spider, hair sticking out around the head like a bedraggled kitten's.
“Are you quite sure you're not dead?” Watanuki said, dark blue eyes worried.
Doumeki blinked. It was still blurry. Ah, yes: “Rain in my eyes,” he said.
“Oh!” Hands fumbled around his face and slid something warm around his ears. Glasses. He was wearing Watanuki's glasses. It was still blurry. But nice.
“Can you move your fingers and toes?”
"Working on it."
"You did not have to land under me," the other boy said precisely. "Idiot."
"Hn," said Doumeki.
Doumeki had a dream, a fantasy, perhaps a bit more carnal than a boy who was going to be a priest should have but whatever, he was young. He'd rescue Watanuki from some monster or other and then, because the boy was injured just a little, or maybe shocky (he wasn't picky), Doumeki would pick the boy up, cradle him tenderly, and take him home. Probably to Watanuki's flat - there were always people around his home temple - and then, once they'd towelled each other off and any minor wounds were bandaged, then, when it was just the two of them, alone, Watanuki would look him straight in the eye and make him food. Oh yeah. Hanazushi with the coloured rice spilling out like flowers, fox-eared inari-zushi, those little three-flavour riceballs... and then there was shogen ryori cooking, which took days. The glasses steamed.
But, since his dream didn't look entirely likely to come true tonight, what with being flat on his back on a rain-sodden street, Doumeki would have to fall back on the old standby - trading injuries for snacks.
"I think I might have cracked my other arm," he said thoughtfully, still looking up. Watanuki's worried frown deepened to a scowl visible even through the blur of the glasses. "I... may not be able to feed myself tonight." The other boy started to twitch angrily, and Doumeki subsided, lifting his arm and wiggling his fingers to prove it wasn't actually broken.
He squinted through the borrowed glasses - the lens on the right wasn't bad to see through, just damp. Over Watanuki's shoulder he could see little men in suits with tired rings under their eyes gather around the other fallen man.
Watanuki's eyes were doing that thing again - the left was the normal dark blue, the right had shifted to a murky yellow he was familiar with from looking in the mirror every morning. Watanuki squinted at him. "Maybe it's just the glasses... but, one of your eyes just turned blue." Now, over Watanuki's shoulder, Doumeki saw all the tired businessmen - without seeming to twitch or move at all - become smaller, their noses sharpening, and striped furry tails protruding from the slits at the back of their business suits, and, somehow, they had been like that all along. One of them kicked the prone man and was applauded briskly by the others.
Doumeki frowned. "I think I'm borrowing your Sight again."
"I'll ask Haruka-san about that when I see him next: he'll know why that happens," said Watanuki, looking rather happy at the thought.
Doumeki said nothing. Watanuki regularly took delight in pointing out how Doumeki of Dreams was wiser, nicer, and all around cooler than the junior article. This was fine. He, too, admired his grandfather as a paragon of all things a scion of the Doumeki family should aspire to be. But, and he felt this should be made clear if only in the quiet fastness of his own mind, there was only one member of the Doumeki family who got handmade bento lunches cooked for him every single day and it wasn't the dead one. Top that, Honourable Grandfather.
Over Watanuki's shoulder, the tiny, furry businessmen were moving off in semi-random directions, leaving their victim to slowly pull himself upright. Then one of the little guys met Doumeki's eyes, pointed, and called the others, who began moving towards them with an intent look on their sharp-nosed, ring-eyed faces. He levered himself up on an elbow, then staggered to his feet, ignoring Watanuki's protests.
He might regularly dwell on all the delicious foodstuffs to be extracted from Watanuki's kitchen through means innocent or nefarious, because they were tasty, or tease the boy into spitting like a drunken cat, because the enthusiasm was warming, or hang around even when Watanuki claimed he wasn't wanted, just because, but there was only one element of his little fantasies that he couldn't be without - the part where Mr 'Excuse Me While I Throw Myself Back Into Mortal Peril' Watanuki survived. "Get moving!" he said, shoving the boy away with his uninjured arm.
And then they were swarming all over him.
NOTES:
tanuki Japanese raccoon-dog. Sometimes translated as 'badger' in stories in English. Often appears in J. fairytales as a trickster figure with magical powers, along with foxes (kitsune), and tengu (crow). Possessed of an unusually large scrotum which (in the stories) is unusually transformable. No, I am not explaining this further.
tiny puckered maw... I once, for various reasons of my own, did basic research on Japanese Buddhist sects in a book printed in the Meiji Era (seriously, how cool is that?), which started with a description of various unseen monsters and burning hells and such, and the Thing with the enormous appetite and tiny mouth turned up there. In honour of doing any research at all, here 'tis.
Chapter Two: Help!
Watanuki
Watanuki slammed open the doors to Yuuko's shop.
"Help! Doumeki's been kidnapped by tiny, furry businessmen!"
There was no-one in the shadowy, ornate interior, except for one solitary spider which liked to spin webs in the high curlicues of the crimson frame of a garish ornamental screen. He ignored his eternal enemy for now, kicked off his shoes, and ran through the building and out to the back garden, where Yuuko and Himawari lounged on the veranda watching the rain, and Maru and Moro and Mokona, wrapped in yellow plastic raincoats, splashed happily through the puddles and wet grass.
"Help! Doumeki's been kidnapped by tiny, furry businessmen!"
Yuuko languidly sipped sake from a delicate porcelain dish. In the small walled garden, Maru and Moro and Mokona barely stopped their rain-soaked game of tag to glance his way. Only Himawari dropped the end of Yuuko's black braid that she was holding and pressed her hands to her mouth in alarm. That was because Himawari-chan was a lady of grace and sensibility who understood the import of this kind of statement. A tiny yellow bird flew out from under her hair as if to punctuate her alarm. But wait - Himawari-chan was in the shop? In Yuuko-san's clutches! Himawari's soul was in imminent danger of being extracted by heartless and insane fortune-tellers! Noooooo!!
"You're dripping, Watanuki," said Yuuko gently.
See? Heartless.
"We don't have time for this!" he exclaimed. "They swarmed all over him - they were rabid! - and knocked me away. Then they shoved him into this really tacky little mini with a furry tail dangling off the antenna and piled in after him and drove away tootling their little horn!
"I tried to stop them," he said to Himawari, his mouth thinning to an unhappy line. "I really did."
She nodded minutely, her grave eyes taking in the grazes on his hands and the mud and rips on his coat.
"But don't you want to recount your adventures through all the spooky-spiritual sites set like beads on a string about the backside of Japan armed only with an antique camera?" Yuuko quirked her fine straight eyebrows in hurt. "You don't even want to tell me about the onsen in the mountains?"
"Nothing happened at the onsen hot springs," said Watanuki. "Nobody scrubbed my back, not even that crazy Russian guy with the wrinkles. Doumeki broke his arm because he fell out of a tree and was an idiot. That is all. Which brings us back to the matter at hand. Help?"
"Did you bring souvenirs?"
He held out a bag mutely. It was pounced on with ravenous glee by the regular inhabitants of the shop. "Doumeki's been kidnapped. Don't you care?"
"Do you, Watanuki-kun?"
"Well, of course I do," Watanuki explained matter-of-factly. "If I don't rescue him then something horrid will happen and it will have been all my fault and either he'll haunt me or I'll be stuck cooking for him for the rest of my life and some things are just too horrible to contemplate. Stupid Doumeki. He does this on purpose, you know."
Watanuki had a nightmare, a recurring one, which woke him sweating at night more than he cared to admit. There weren't any monsters in it, just him, and Doumeki, and a kitchen. In his nightmare, Watanuki created meal after meal, each a minor work of art, both exquisitely tasty and highly nutritious, and it all vanished into that ravening, ungrateful maw...
"But enough of such things." Yuuko waved a languid, long-nailed hand. "Where are my pictures?"
Watanuki thoughtfully weighed the bulky, antique camera in its case. "It took ages to get some of these," he said. "All that travelling, and the endless flights of stairs up to the temples. Waiting until the shadows were just right. Oh, and wasn't there a planetary conjunction over that temple that won't happen again for years and years and years? At least that's what you told me. Three times. It would be a shame if this camera was broken and the film exposed, wouldn't it?"
Yuuko rose up, drawing the shadows about her, and loomed over Watanuki as only a mistress of Time and All Other Dimensions could. "Are you threatening me?"
"... yes?"
She turned away. "Very good." She clapped her hands. "Maru. Moro. And get yourself a towl. Wherever they are. I can never find anything when you're gone, houseboy..." She wandered inside, muttering to herself.
Watanuki's shoulders relaxed and he shared a small, brave smile with Himawari-chan.
Doumeki
He was in a dark place, earthy-rich and strung with roots. His head hurt, and his arm in the cast was throbbing a slow rhythm.
A scritching sound, and a match flared. A small tanuki raccoon-dog was looking at him, lighting a glass-chimneyed lamp, while around them other tanuki chittered and stared.
"Watanuki Kimihiro-sama?"
"Hn?"
"Are you not the Glasses Wearing One? He of the Piebald Gaze? The Good Luck Cook?"
The followers intoned, "Blue and yellow. Like the sun in the sky."
Doumeki said nothing. If the little guys found out they'd bagged the wrong schoolboy, there wasn't anything to stop them going back for Watanuki but Yuuko-san's problematic mercies. He shifted the glasses perched on his nose and touched his right eye gingerly.
The tanuki in front set the lamp on the floor to wobble awkwardly and bowed deeply, setting three fingers of each paw to the dirt and knocking his head against it. "Would you, would you, Watanuki-sama, for these insignificant persons, would you not cook for us?"
Doumeki sat and thought.
"...I can make tea."
Watanuki
He exited the room he used at Yuuko's, still towelling his hair, and saw Himawari-chan and Maru and Moro set up by the paper screen (scrawled with crayon, dammit! You leave the house for one week and - but anyway) seperating the customer area from the rest of the house. Maru lounged on a battered couch, drooping languidly, and her sister squatted on an overstuffed cushion on the floor. Himawari-chan knelt a little back from them, with her hands on her knees, looking at them both wide-eyed.
"... so we're asking you now," said Moro, smirking. "No, no, we never steal. We wouldn't steal the boy." She giggled in a self-satisfied manner. "Your servant shall be returned in one piece when The Event has ended. We're good for the hirage fee." She drummed a brief tattoo on the cushion between her legs and Himawari winced.
On the couch, Maru raised one disdainful eyebrow. "For my dear Watanuki's services, I charge very high indeed."
Moro raised one blithe hand. "After we win, we will pay anything you ask."
Maru smiled, cruel, inscrutable, "Oh, you will. Pay." She waved one hand. "But this is tiresome. "Maru, Moro."
At that, the pair of little girls jumped up, trotted to Himawari, and each planted a kiss on one of her eyes, mwah, mwah. She giggled. Then her eyes opened wide with a strange pearly sheen over them. "Ohhhhh," she breathed, and hurried into the main room. Watanuki peeked after her.
In exactly the positions that the soulless girls had mimed out, Yuuko lounged on a gilt fainting couch and a small furry person squatted on a large pink cushion on the floor. His ears, like his nose, were very large, and from them protruded tawny bristles. He wore a stiff red jacket bedecked with gold braid, and GENERALISSIMO written on the back.
Himawari-chan knelt in front of him, bowing, and tugged one of the narrow white ribbons that pulled her torrents of hair back from her face. It fell with a sinister slither and she dropped it into the tanuki's paw. She fixed the little furry guy with a melting gaze and said, "Please pass this onto my friend. While I am sure that you are looking after him well I, I worry, and I want him to know that I am thinking of him." The tanuki froze wide-eyed, like an animal caught in headlights, stuttered, nodded, and fled, taking his cushion with him.
Watanuki's stomach sank down to the floor. Of course Himawari-chan loved Doumeki better, the cad.
Well, he'd worry about that later. However much Doumeki annoyed him with his quiet, and his appetite, and his luck with girls, and his infernal reliability, and his appetite, there was one part of Watanuki's recurring nightmare which he reckoned he could live with, the bit where Mr 'Excuse Me While I Throw Myself Into Mortal Peril (For You)' Doumeki survived. And that was that.
From the couch Yuuko said, "If you follow a recipe all the way through, you will always have tasty food at the end. But magic isn't cookery."
Himawari nodded, and rose from the floor. "Was this unwise?"
Yuuko shrugged. Then she said, "the Sight won't last, but consider your bill added to. I want cheesecake tomorrow."
Himawari froze, then lifted her sleeve to cover her mouth and giggled. She dropped her other white ribbon on the floor. Tilting her head like a bird, she caught Watanuki's eyes and said, "I worry about you too, Watanuki-kun. Please take care."
He loved the way she smelled. Today it was lemon and ginger with overtones of parsley, which was odd, but nice, and very refreshing in the fug of Yuuko's shop. He crossed the room in three long-legged strides and caught her hand. She froze, but forced a sunny smile. "You are a fool, Watanuki-kun."
He shrugged and smiled. "Take care, Himawari-chan." He walked her outside, to where two crescent moons adorned the posts of the gate.
There were two furry children standing just outside, a tiny fox boy in a stripy cotton kimono, and a little tanuki girl in a frilly dress with a ribbon.
"Please, Watanuki-san!" they said, clasping their hands together. "Please help us bring the light back to someone's benighted heart!"
Chapter Three (the last) in a couple of days. There will be cheerleaders.
Title: The Trouble with Tanuki
Fandom: xxxHolic
Characters: Watanuki, Doumeki, with supporting roles by the cast of xxxHolic and Man of Many Faces
Summary: Er... Doumeki goes down the tanuki hole.
Notes: This story is tucked in just after Book 10, except the seasons are a bit wacky. It is a not-sequel to "Five Days In Summer," which is unnecessary to read, but does explain what Himawari was up to in Yuuko's shop, and the source of the tanuki's grudge. (Other notes at ends of chapters.)
Disclaimer: Pauper sum ego, nihil habeo.
Warnings: Super-verbosity. Super!Grumpy!Watanuki. Super!Hungry!Doumeki. Cheesy, cheesy innuendo. Crack. Inept writing.
Chapter One: Someday, In the Rain
Watanuki
It was a terrible day, and the end of a terrible week of similarly terrible days spent trudging between spooky-spiritual sites set like beads on a string about the backside of Japan with an antique camera and that idiot Doumeki in tow like a laconic, irritating dinghy, a dinghy who broke his own arm with malice aforethought and made Watanuki mix metaphors because that was just the kind of maritime vehicle he was like - irritating.
"You mean similes," said Doumeki.
See? Irritating.
Today should have been slightly less terrible, because at least they were back in his home city, but today it was raining. Terribly. Also, stupid Doumeki had insisted on walking Watanuki back from the station. It wasn't his fault that they'd lost one of their umbrellas plugging the tiny puckered maw of a Thing that looked like a balloon and wanted to eat him through a straw (which had never yet put Watanuki in a good mood) and that meant they had to share and it was awkward and jostling and also annoyingly soggy.
So they trudged through water falling like grey and silver sheets around them, their only company the myriads of dour, suited businessman returning from work, who were also having a terrible week, or so said the bags under their eyes - dark like raccoon rings - and their silent, splattering journeys up and down the wet street.
Once again, Watanuki was shoving his umbrella more over the other boy, so that his plaster cast didn't dissolve in the rain, which would be troublesome, when another businessman - this one tall and burly under a heavy jowl and paunch - almost walked through him as if he wasn't there, and would have knocked him flying with his brief-case if Doumeki hadn't steadied him.
Then the jowly businessman stood on what looked like a small, squeaky, pink elephant toy and overbalanced over a set of steps ahead of them in the street, and Watanuki reached after the obnoxious man trying to catch him, and Doumeki who was already off balance tried to pull Watanuki back but failed, and failed again to catch himself with his other arm in a cast and sling, and then they were all
f
a
l
l
i
n
g.
Doumeki
He opened his eyes. It was blurry, but he could make out the shape of someone squatting over him, elbows and legs folded like a daddy-long-leg spider, hair sticking out around the head like a bedraggled kitten's.
“Are you quite sure you're not dead?” Watanuki said, dark blue eyes worried.
Doumeki blinked. It was still blurry. Ah, yes: “Rain in my eyes,” he said.
“Oh!” Hands fumbled around his face and slid something warm around his ears. Glasses. He was wearing Watanuki's glasses. It was still blurry. But nice.
“Can you move your fingers and toes?”
"Working on it."
"You did not have to land under me," the other boy said precisely. "Idiot."
"Hn," said Doumeki.
Doumeki had a dream, a fantasy, perhaps a bit more carnal than a boy who was going to be a priest should have but whatever, he was young. He'd rescue Watanuki from some monster or other and then, because the boy was injured just a little, or maybe shocky (he wasn't picky), Doumeki would pick the boy up, cradle him tenderly, and take him home. Probably to Watanuki's flat - there were always people around his home temple - and then, once they'd towelled each other off and any minor wounds were bandaged, then, when it was just the two of them, alone, Watanuki would look him straight in the eye and make him food. Oh yeah. Hanazushi with the coloured rice spilling out like flowers, fox-eared inari-zushi, those little three-flavour riceballs... and then there was shogen ryori cooking, which took days. The glasses steamed.
But, since his dream didn't look entirely likely to come true tonight, what with being flat on his back on a rain-sodden street, Doumeki would have to fall back on the old standby - trading injuries for snacks.
"I think I might have cracked my other arm," he said thoughtfully, still looking up. Watanuki's worried frown deepened to a scowl visible even through the blur of the glasses. "I... may not be able to feed myself tonight." The other boy started to twitch angrily, and Doumeki subsided, lifting his arm and wiggling his fingers to prove it wasn't actually broken.
He squinted through the borrowed glasses - the lens on the right wasn't bad to see through, just damp. Over Watanuki's shoulder he could see little men in suits with tired rings under their eyes gather around the other fallen man.
Watanuki's eyes were doing that thing again - the left was the normal dark blue, the right had shifted to a murky yellow he was familiar with from looking in the mirror every morning. Watanuki squinted at him. "Maybe it's just the glasses... but, one of your eyes just turned blue." Now, over Watanuki's shoulder, Doumeki saw all the tired businessmen - without seeming to twitch or move at all - become smaller, their noses sharpening, and striped furry tails protruding from the slits at the back of their business suits, and, somehow, they had been like that all along. One of them kicked the prone man and was applauded briskly by the others.
Doumeki frowned. "I think I'm borrowing your Sight again."
"I'll ask Haruka-san about that when I see him next: he'll know why that happens," said Watanuki, looking rather happy at the thought.
Doumeki said nothing. Watanuki regularly took delight in pointing out how Doumeki of Dreams was wiser, nicer, and all around cooler than the junior article. This was fine. He, too, admired his grandfather as a paragon of all things a scion of the Doumeki family should aspire to be. But, and he felt this should be made clear if only in the quiet fastness of his own mind, there was only one member of the Doumeki family who got handmade bento lunches cooked for him every single day and it wasn't the dead one. Top that, Honourable Grandfather.
Over Watanuki's shoulder, the tiny, furry businessmen were moving off in semi-random directions, leaving their victim to slowly pull himself upright. Then one of the little guys met Doumeki's eyes, pointed, and called the others, who began moving towards them with an intent look on their sharp-nosed, ring-eyed faces. He levered himself up on an elbow, then staggered to his feet, ignoring Watanuki's protests.
He might regularly dwell on all the delicious foodstuffs to be extracted from Watanuki's kitchen through means innocent or nefarious, because they were tasty, or tease the boy into spitting like a drunken cat, because the enthusiasm was warming, or hang around even when Watanuki claimed he wasn't wanted, just because, but there was only one element of his little fantasies that he couldn't be without - the part where Mr 'Excuse Me While I Throw Myself Back Into Mortal Peril' Watanuki survived. "Get moving!" he said, shoving the boy away with his uninjured arm.
And then they were swarming all over him.
NOTES:
tanuki Japanese raccoon-dog. Sometimes translated as 'badger' in stories in English. Often appears in J. fairytales as a trickster figure with magical powers, along with foxes (kitsune), and tengu (crow). Possessed of an unusually large scrotum which (in the stories) is unusually transformable. No, I am not explaining this further.
tiny puckered maw... I once, for various reasons of my own, did basic research on Japanese Buddhist sects in a book printed in the Meiji Era (seriously, how cool is that?), which started with a description of various unseen monsters and burning hells and such, and the Thing with the enormous appetite and tiny mouth turned up there. In honour of doing any research at all, here 'tis.
Chapter Two: Help!
Watanuki
Watanuki slammed open the doors to Yuuko's shop.
"Help! Doumeki's been kidnapped by tiny, furry businessmen!"
There was no-one in the shadowy, ornate interior, except for one solitary spider which liked to spin webs in the high curlicues of the crimson frame of a garish ornamental screen. He ignored his eternal enemy for now, kicked off his shoes, and ran through the building and out to the back garden, where Yuuko and Himawari lounged on the veranda watching the rain, and Maru and Moro and Mokona, wrapped in yellow plastic raincoats, splashed happily through the puddles and wet grass.
"Help! Doumeki's been kidnapped by tiny, furry businessmen!"
Yuuko languidly sipped sake from a delicate porcelain dish. In the small walled garden, Maru and Moro and Mokona barely stopped their rain-soaked game of tag to glance his way. Only Himawari dropped the end of Yuuko's black braid that she was holding and pressed her hands to her mouth in alarm. That was because Himawari-chan was a lady of grace and sensibility who understood the import of this kind of statement. A tiny yellow bird flew out from under her hair as if to punctuate her alarm. But wait - Himawari-chan was in the shop? In Yuuko-san's clutches! Himawari's soul was in imminent danger of being extracted by heartless and insane fortune-tellers! Noooooo!!
"You're dripping, Watanuki," said Yuuko gently.
See? Heartless.
"We don't have time for this!" he exclaimed. "They swarmed all over him - they were rabid! - and knocked me away. Then they shoved him into this really tacky little mini with a furry tail dangling off the antenna and piled in after him and drove away tootling their little horn!
"I tried to stop them," he said to Himawari, his mouth thinning to an unhappy line. "I really did."
She nodded minutely, her grave eyes taking in the grazes on his hands and the mud and rips on his coat.
"But don't you want to recount your adventures through all the spooky-spiritual sites set like beads on a string about the backside of Japan armed only with an antique camera?" Yuuko quirked her fine straight eyebrows in hurt. "You don't even want to tell me about the onsen in the mountains?"
"Nothing happened at the onsen hot springs," said Watanuki. "Nobody scrubbed my back, not even that crazy Russian guy with the wrinkles. Doumeki broke his arm because he fell out of a tree and was an idiot. That is all. Which brings us back to the matter at hand. Help?"
"Did you bring souvenirs?"
He held out a bag mutely. It was pounced on with ravenous glee by the regular inhabitants of the shop. "Doumeki's been kidnapped. Don't you care?"
"Do you, Watanuki-kun?"
"Well, of course I do," Watanuki explained matter-of-factly. "If I don't rescue him then something horrid will happen and it will have been all my fault and either he'll haunt me or I'll be stuck cooking for him for the rest of my life and some things are just too horrible to contemplate. Stupid Doumeki. He does this on purpose, you know."
Watanuki had a nightmare, a recurring one, which woke him sweating at night more than he cared to admit. There weren't any monsters in it, just him, and Doumeki, and a kitchen. In his nightmare, Watanuki created meal after meal, each a minor work of art, both exquisitely tasty and highly nutritious, and it all vanished into that ravening, ungrateful maw...
"But enough of such things." Yuuko waved a languid, long-nailed hand. "Where are my pictures?"
Watanuki thoughtfully weighed the bulky, antique camera in its case. "It took ages to get some of these," he said. "All that travelling, and the endless flights of stairs up to the temples. Waiting until the shadows were just right. Oh, and wasn't there a planetary conjunction over that temple that won't happen again for years and years and years? At least that's what you told me. Three times. It would be a shame if this camera was broken and the film exposed, wouldn't it?"
Yuuko rose up, drawing the shadows about her, and loomed over Watanuki as only a mistress of Time and All Other Dimensions could. "Are you threatening me?"
"... yes?"
She turned away. "Very good." She clapped her hands. "Maru. Moro. And get yourself a towl. Wherever they are. I can never find anything when you're gone, houseboy..." She wandered inside, muttering to herself.
Watanuki's shoulders relaxed and he shared a small, brave smile with Himawari-chan.
Doumeki
He was in a dark place, earthy-rich and strung with roots. His head hurt, and his arm in the cast was throbbing a slow rhythm.
A scritching sound, and a match flared. A small tanuki raccoon-dog was looking at him, lighting a glass-chimneyed lamp, while around them other tanuki chittered and stared.
"Watanuki Kimihiro-sama?"
"Hn?"
"Are you not the Glasses Wearing One? He of the Piebald Gaze? The Good Luck Cook?"
The followers intoned, "Blue and yellow. Like the sun in the sky."
Doumeki said nothing. If the little guys found out they'd bagged the wrong schoolboy, there wasn't anything to stop them going back for Watanuki but Yuuko-san's problematic mercies. He shifted the glasses perched on his nose and touched his right eye gingerly.
The tanuki in front set the lamp on the floor to wobble awkwardly and bowed deeply, setting three fingers of each paw to the dirt and knocking his head against it. "Would you, would you, Watanuki-sama, for these insignificant persons, would you not cook for us?"
Doumeki sat and thought.
"...I can make tea."
Watanuki
He exited the room he used at Yuuko's, still towelling his hair, and saw Himawari-chan and Maru and Moro set up by the paper screen (scrawled with crayon, dammit! You leave the house for one week and - but anyway) seperating the customer area from the rest of the house. Maru lounged on a battered couch, drooping languidly, and her sister squatted on an overstuffed cushion on the floor. Himawari-chan knelt a little back from them, with her hands on her knees, looking at them both wide-eyed.
"... so we're asking you now," said Moro, smirking. "No, no, we never steal. We wouldn't steal the boy." She giggled in a self-satisfied manner. "Your servant shall be returned in one piece when The Event has ended. We're good for the hirage fee." She drummed a brief tattoo on the cushion between her legs and Himawari winced.
On the couch, Maru raised one disdainful eyebrow. "For my dear Watanuki's services, I charge very high indeed."
Moro raised one blithe hand. "After we win, we will pay anything you ask."
Maru smiled, cruel, inscrutable, "Oh, you will. Pay." She waved one hand. "But this is tiresome. "Maru, Moro."
At that, the pair of little girls jumped up, trotted to Himawari, and each planted a kiss on one of her eyes, mwah, mwah. She giggled. Then her eyes opened wide with a strange pearly sheen over them. "Ohhhhh," she breathed, and hurried into the main room. Watanuki peeked after her.
In exactly the positions that the soulless girls had mimed out, Yuuko lounged on a gilt fainting couch and a small furry person squatted on a large pink cushion on the floor. His ears, like his nose, were very large, and from them protruded tawny bristles. He wore a stiff red jacket bedecked with gold braid, and GENERALISSIMO written on the back.
Himawari-chan knelt in front of him, bowing, and tugged one of the narrow white ribbons that pulled her torrents of hair back from her face. It fell with a sinister slither and she dropped it into the tanuki's paw. She fixed the little furry guy with a melting gaze and said, "Please pass this onto my friend. While I am sure that you are looking after him well I, I worry, and I want him to know that I am thinking of him." The tanuki froze wide-eyed, like an animal caught in headlights, stuttered, nodded, and fled, taking his cushion with him.
Watanuki's stomach sank down to the floor. Of course Himawari-chan loved Doumeki better, the cad.
Well, he'd worry about that later. However much Doumeki annoyed him with his quiet, and his appetite, and his luck with girls, and his infernal reliability, and his appetite, there was one part of Watanuki's recurring nightmare which he reckoned he could live with, the bit where Mr 'Excuse Me While I Throw Myself Into Mortal Peril (For You)' Doumeki survived. And that was that.
From the couch Yuuko said, "If you follow a recipe all the way through, you will always have tasty food at the end. But magic isn't cookery."
Himawari nodded, and rose from the floor. "Was this unwise?"
Yuuko shrugged. Then she said, "the Sight won't last, but consider your bill added to. I want cheesecake tomorrow."
Himawari froze, then lifted her sleeve to cover her mouth and giggled. She dropped her other white ribbon on the floor. Tilting her head like a bird, she caught Watanuki's eyes and said, "I worry about you too, Watanuki-kun. Please take care."
He loved the way she smelled. Today it was lemon and ginger with overtones of parsley, which was odd, but nice, and very refreshing in the fug of Yuuko's shop. He crossed the room in three long-legged strides and caught her hand. She froze, but forced a sunny smile. "You are a fool, Watanuki-kun."
He shrugged and smiled. "Take care, Himawari-chan." He walked her outside, to where two crescent moons adorned the posts of the gate.
There were two furry children standing just outside, a tiny fox boy in a stripy cotton kimono, and a little tanuki girl in a frilly dress with a ribbon.
"Please, Watanuki-san!" they said, clasping their hands together. "Please help us bring the light back to someone's benighted heart!"
Chapter Three (the last) in a couple of days. There will be cheerleaders.