[FIC] Ouran/xxxholic: The Price of a Wish - Prologue

[evocates]

Straight down the street, a tiny-looking, traditionally built house between two modern high-rise buildings...Kyouya stumbled blindly through the streets of Tokyo as he tried to remember the rain sprite's instructions to that mysterious shop. Last he recalled, it was broad daylight, but he was surrounded now by a hoard of dirty, stinking spirits only he could see. He gritted his teeth and cursed colorfully, before another violent coughing fit overtook him.

Kyouya crumpled against a wall when, suddenly, he was blinded by blue sky. There was fresh air. He could breathe!

After his eyesight adjusted again, he focused on a sign in front of him, reading, "Ichihara Yuuko."

A great deal of tension left his shoulders as he silently stared at the words for a few seconds longer.

Smiling, he nudged his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, and walked past the unguarded front gates.

"Welcome!" A pair of young, doll-like girls opened the door for him with bright smiles and empty eyes. If Kyouya was a less observant young man, he would have stopped studying them just to stare at their hair color: light pink and baby blue.

Unsure as to whether they were this Yuuko's daughters or servants, he smiled politely. "Hello. My name is Ohtori Kyouya. I'm here to see the master of the house."

The girls giggled, and they spoke as one, "You are Master's Guest! You are Master's Guest!" They wrapped their pale arms around his own, and started pulling him through the corridors before he could even remove his shoes.

To his credit, Kyouya managed to keep his surprise to himself.” Ichihara-san was expecting me?" he asked as they tugged him towards two ornate sliding doors.

"You were destined to come here," a low, sultry voice reached his ears. Immediately, the girls let go of him to pull the doors apart.

Thick incense smoke rolled out through the air, curling around him. Through the sickly-sweet haze, Kyouya saw a frail butterfly of a woman with indecently long black hair and legs that seemed to stretch on forever from a kimono far too loosely tied at the waist.

She was the Witch Lady, he knew. The Far Eastern Witch. The Wish-Granting Sorceress. Known throughout the multi-verse most notably as The Witch of Dimension and Time, Kyouya now understood why his father only referred to Ichihara Yuuko as "that wicked wench" in the same breath he used as he disinherited Kyouya for being "one more curse upon the family."

Kyouya smirked bitterly.” It was destiny, was it? ...Well, I suppose coming here was inevitable."

"Destiny," the woman mused, "refers to an event that would definitely happen. Without it, nothing is possible. From one thing, you see, many other things can be imagined."

Kyouya remembered reading similar words from the 2nd Edition Japanese Learning Dictionary that was in his school bag. With a disappointed feeling, and the belief that there was nothing much to lose, he pulled the dictionary out, and checked.

"Either you have a good memory,” he murmured, “or you've used this pitch far too much.”

She blinked at him, sitting up quickly. It was a wonder her breasts didn't bounce out in the open, but he supposed she practiced.

"You are quite rude," she drawled.

"Rude boy~ Rude boy~!" The pink and blue girls sang.

Kyouya sniffed and stared straight back at her. “It must run in the family."

She didn't take the bait. Instead, she asked him, "Name?"

Kyouya gave it to her easily. Despite being disowned, there was nothing else he would use.

"Is it written with the kanji for "phoenix," "mirror", and "night", Ohtori Kyouya?"

He nodded.

"Birthday?"

That was not the follow-up he expected from her. His eyes narrowed, and irritation seeped into his voice when he replied, "Why do you need to know?"

The woman shrugged, and repeated herself as if she was perfectly content to simply ask him that forever, if she had to.

"November 22nd," Kyouya supplied. If he didn’t give, he felt that he wouldn’t gain much from her either.

The woman laughed out loud. “I never knew anyone who would so willingly give their real name and birthday out to strangers," she told the girls.

Frowning, Kyouya asked, "What merit would be gained from you knowing such things?"

"Plenty. By giving out your name, you give another the ability to take your soul. By giving out your birthday, you give over the control of your entire life."

"My soul? My life? Take it, if you can find a use for it," he smirked. At one time perhaps, his father would have paid a ransom for him, but that time was gone now. “Fat lot of good it would serve you..."

The woman smiled back knowingly before changed the subject. “Aren’t you going to ask my name?"

"You're Ichihara Yuuko, correct?"

"That's my fake name, yes." she nodded proudly.

His response was dry. “Of course."

"These children," she gestured to the girls, "are Maru-chan and Moro-chan. Their real names, by the way, are Marudashi and Morodashi. Very cute names..."

"Streaking and Flashing?" Kyouya twitched.

The little girls posed for him, pouting their lips and twisting their hips like prostitutes in training.

"How distasteful," he uttered as he turned. He grimaced. Kyouya couldn't believe he skipped out from a supermarket sale to meet these...people. "Excuse me for disturbing you. I’ll show myself out."

Behind him, Maru and Moro gasped in unison, "You're leaving? You’re leaving?"

He didn't bother to answer. However, before he could place one foot out of the room, the doors snapped close. Kyouya glared back at the females, but there was no remote control he could recognize in anyone’s hands.

"Have I not already told you?” Her mirthful tone turned serious as she continued, “This was destined. Nothing in this world happened randomly. Everything...is destined.”

“I know that,” he scowled.

“Do you now?” When Kyouya remained silent, she went on. “Please take out the thing in your back pocket.”

“My back pocket?”

“Quickly.” She held out a hand. “Take it out.”

Kyouya fished out his cell phone, habitually glancing at the screen to check the time, see if he received any missed calls. Finding none, he placed it into her waiting palm.

“This is a good cell phone,” Yuuko murmured, turning the phone this way and that. “It’s not very old, but there are so many souls and lives already recorded within it.”

She was a witch, Kyouya reminded himself. Of course she could tell he had a lot of contacts in the device without pressing buttons.

“Well then, that should probably be okay.” Yuuko murmured. She lifted a small, round disk out from one kimono sleeve, flipping it around so that the mandala design etched into it faced up. When Maru and Moro brought a flat bowl of water into the middle of the room, Kyouya berated himself for not noticing that they left in the first place.

Yuuko slid the disk into the bowl and let it sink beneath the surface on its own.

“Ohtori Kyouya,” she whispered, looking down. She chanted. “Ohtori Kyouya.”

The disk began to spin.

Faster.

Wind suddenly picked up in the room. Kyouya gaped at the bowl, which seemed to be the source of it.

“The place of your birth and the place you now live are not the same.” Yuuko crooned with a deep, old voice. “Somewhere in the middle, you moved. You have no family.”

At that last sentence, Kyouya bit his lower lip. The first two were so vague, they could have applied to anyone, but the last one - it was true. He had no family now. After what father did, and what happened to his older sister, who got too close to him, neither of his two elder brothers dared to contact him. Mother died giving birth to him anyhow. He supposed the women were weak against the spirits that followed him around simply because feeling too much, caring too much made them more vulnerable.

“You don’t live with your biological parents,” she stated, “but you are still provided for in the place you now live.”

Kyouya couldn’t deny that. He lived in a single apartment and went to a public middle school of above average standing. It was nothing like the private academy Ohtori Yoshio planned for his third son, but Kyouya’s tuition and housing was still paid for by that man. The boy just needed to work part time in order to pay for everything else, such as used textbooks, some new clothing - his own peace of mind especially.

A well-kept and consistently upgraded laptop with steady access to the Internet and an eBay account was a wonderful money making tool for the underage boy. There was never a shortage for lazy and or idiotic people in need of a ghostwriter to type up books and or essays; after all...Kyouya wasn’t the best student in his year, every year, for nothing. Even around the neighborhood where he now lived, he offered tutoring to some children, and their parents just had to pay him - he was too kind, a poor abandoned child working hard to do his best despite the odds .Of course - he got paid. And if nothing else, it would look good on his resume.

“You have a keen mind...” Yuuko was saying, “that works a lot with statistical analysis and calculations, but also because of the place you live, you are required to hone these skills.”

Kyouya found himself nodding.

“Right now, and since the time you were young, you have always been troubled. However, that is because of your family reasons.”

He clenched his fists, frowning harder.

“Also,” Kyouya wondered when the witch would stop. “There are “destined” things that trouble you.” she looked up from the bowl then, and smiled at him darkly. “You can see true magic. This is due to the blood flowing within your body, your blood that strongly attracts true magic.”

He wondered why, if it was due to his blood, that he was the one who could see spirits...unlike his siblings or other relatives.

Well...except perhaps Ichihara Yuuko - but Kyouya still wasn’t sure how distantly they were related.

“You know all this from my name,” he finally spoke.

“And your birth date,” she nodded brightly.

“Is this all?”

“Oh, no, but you’ll have to decipher the rest for yourself. Anyway, this cell phone is now mine!”

“Wait!” His eyes went wide. “What do you mean this cell phone is yours?”

“This is your payment, of course.” Teasingly, she tossed the device in the air, and caught it without looking at it, simply staring at him. “For everything you desire, you have to pay an equal price in return. You cannot gain more nor give more. It cannot be more or less. All must be in… balance. Or else,” she leaned closer to him again, lifting a hand to his cheek.

Kyouya sifted her words silently, managing to keep his tone flat when he responded. “Is that a threat?”

Yuuko didn’t answer his question. She only clarified, “There will be “mishaps,” whether to a person’s physical body, hidden fates, or spirit in other worlds...”

It barely made sense, but only because Kyouya had recently begun to look into the idea of their being alternate dimensions, after learning of the witch.

“I didn’t ask you to read my life,” he grounded. He wanted his cell phone back.

Yuuko grinned, and turned to Maru and Moro, “Put this away for me,” and dropped the phone in one of the girls’ hands.

“Yes!”

Kyouya started in their direction when the door that opened for them closed in his face once more.

“Ichihara-san,” he turned back to her after internally counting to ten. “Unless my life and soul is worth the same as all the contacts I have on that cell phone, that isn’t exactly what I call a balanced trade.”

“It is equivalent trade.” She took a long drag on her pipe, and blew the smoke out slowly. Yuuko was deliberately testing his patience - he knew it. When she was satisfied, she curled a finger, a gesture that said ‘come-hither.’

Kyouya stood his ground long enough for the smoke to clear before stepped forward.

“I will take anything of equal value,” Yuuko whispered. He had to lean down to properly hear her as she continued, “Such as...souls. Like yours.”

He stared at her unflinchingly, his eyes a hard, unexpressive black.

“Ahahaha!” She leaned back first. “So weird, so weird. No matter what, your behavior is so weird.”

Closing his eyes, Kyouya pushed his glasses up, hoping he disturbed that woman as much as she disturbed him. “What merit would you gain from killing me?” he asked. He was glad his voice remained steady.

Yuuko folded her arms daintily over her one knee. “I won’t kill you.”

The boy blinked, raising one eyebrow at the woman, who softly smiled as she spoke.

“Murdering people is a dangerous thing that I won’t do. No matter for what reason, killing people brings a burden to the killer, a great burden that is ruinous.”

Having never thought about killing people before, Kyouya wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Others will come after you,” Yuuko said, and somehow, it didn’t sound like the witch was referring only to law enforcement authorities. “Anyone who knows this won’t ever kill anymore, because it is not a worthwhile endeavor.”

“Anymore?” He felt a chill down his spine. She was practically admitting that she killed before. Kyouya shook his head; he didn’t want or need to know.

“So...” he asked instead, “taking souls is different from killing lives?”

Yuuko savored her opium as if in preparation for a long explanation.

“Souls have a different meaning than lives.” After a moment, Kyouya nodded, and she went on. “A soul represents what is important to an individual. To fulfill a wish, your soul reveals parts that are important and up for trade. Mine is a wish-fulfilling business. I...will take an important part of your soul should you want to fulfill your wish.”

It was as the rain sprite said: if he could find the Wish-Granting Sorceress, if he could pay her price, she would make it so that spirits would never trouble him for the rest of his life.

“What’s your price?”

At his unspoken acceptance of her deal, her posture straightened. Her eyes were suddenly piercingly clear and her smile simply cold. “Never initiate contact with those people listed on your cell phone again.”

Kyouya had his contact list backed up, but his contact list included the people who wrote for, and her wording meant...“I can’t just stop,” he began. “There are people who expect me to-“

“You won’t meet them again, or see them, unless they find and ask for you.”

“I can’t.” He shook his head. “I refuse to just get by,” on my Father’s money, he couldn’t say.

Yuuko studied her nails disinterestedly. “Work here then.”

“...In your shop?”

She nodded. “When your diligence has balanced out your wish, I will fulfill it. I can pay you some. It will make your term with me longer...Just work.”

Maru and Moro started dancing immediately, laughing and singing together. “He’s the custodian now!”

“Hey, this will only merit you.”

Kyouya thought otherwise, but in the long run he was confident he could rebuild a new network - he’d done it before. Therefore, there really wasn’t much to lose.

“...My diligence is the price.” At least, he thought, she didn’t say his attitude. “All right, Ichihara-san.” A mocking smile appeared as he bowed then, and asked, “What wish can I fulfill for you?”

---

Tamaki didn’t know what he was doing here.

Well, he did know what he was doing in this town (to experience the commoners’ way of life!), in this particular part of the town (a commoners’ supermarket is so different from a normal one!), and on this street (not really, as he was lost, but these were just details and semantics).He just didn’t know what he was doing here, standing outside this small, antiquated house surrounded by high-rise buildings. However, he knew, somehow, that he was supposed to be here, although the reason why eluded him.

“Um…” he called uncertainly, stepping into the house cautiously. “Excuse me?”

Silence. Tamaki blinked, walking further inside even though it was very polite for him to do so. It was as if his feet had gained a mind of their own and were completely ignoring his own will.

“Is anyone here?” he called again.

“This is a shop for wishes.” A voice came suddenly from his right, a soft, low whisper like the sound of rice paper fluttering in the wind.

Tamaki spun around, nearly losing his balance due to the grocery bags in his hands. He gaped at the sight that met his eyes, unconsciously tightening his grip on his bags so they would not fly out of his hands.

The speaker was a woman, tall and pale and willowy, with flowing black hair streaming from a loose bun at the top of her head to her calves. But what surprised him and now gripped his attention was not her exactly. It was her dress: a crimson silk kimono with a phoenix embroidered in golden thread, with long, billowing sleeves that reached her thighs when her hands were resting atop her breast, decorated with shining silver sakura petals. An obi adorned her waist, dark emerald leaves and bronze branches twined around the cloth.

Tamaki had never seen anything so very beautiful in his life.

“Wishes?” he could only echo her words unthinkingly, as his mind was still far too occupied by the sheer beauty of the kimono.

“Yes,” she spoke again, and there was half a note of amusement in her voice. “I can grant any wish you have… if you can pay the price.”

“Any wish?” Tamaki asked, curious now. He dismissed the latter part of her words off-handed; his family was wealthy enough to give her any payment she wanted from him, surely.

She nodded, stepping forward, a hand reaching out. Long fingernails (‘like a witch’s,’ he thought idly) dug into his chin, and his head jerked upwards involuntarily, eyes forcibly turned away from the phoenix in her kimono to meet her dark, enchanting ones.

Tamaki bit his lip, eyes turning downwards until he realized that he was staring straight at her chest. He jerked his head away quickly, squeezing his eyes shut. Well… he did have a wish…

“Only those who have wishes that I can grant will be able to see and enter my shop,” she crooned lowly to him, sleeves swaying in the sudden breeze. The effect was hypnotizing.

“I…” Tamaki took a deep breath, “I wish for… a best friend.”

There. He had said it.

“Oh?”

“It’s not that I’m ungrateful for the friends I have now!” he shook his head frantically. “I mean, there’s Michiko-san, Chihiro-kun, Chizuko-san, Chihime-chan, Tatsuya-kun and, and all of my other classmates!” he waves his arms recklessly, scattering packets of dried ramen everywhere.

“But it’s… I just feel that there’s something missing. It’s like an itch that I can’t scratch and it’s odd, really odd! Because I already have so many friends and they’re all so nice, but…” the bags dropped from his hands, collapsing messily on the floor. “Everyone… they’re all my friends, but I don’t have a best friend! Someone, someone… someone who, who…” he threw his hands into the air, flailing helpless as he searched for the right word, “who completes me! Yeah, that’s it! That’s my wish, uh…” he realized, with a start, that he didn’t know her name, though he had a feeling that he should.

“Ichihara Yuuko,” she supplied. She was definitely laughing at him now; the small smile and those sparkling eyes told him that.

“That is my wish, Yuuko-san. I want a best friend - someone who can complete me. I’m willing to pay the price… oh!” Tamaki’s eyes widened as he spotted the mess on the floor, bowls of commoners’ ramen, packets of snacks and dried foods and plastic, unskillfully-made commoners’ toys strewn everywhere. “I’m so sorry!”

He squatted down, grabbing anything within his reach and stuffing them haphazardly back into his bags. Hearing a soft peal of laughter, however, he looked up to see Yuuko-san smiling down towards him, a pale hand only managing to half-cover his mouth. Small white teeth glint in the afternoon sun.

“Oh, I know exactly what I can do for you, Tamaki-kun,” her smile widened and, before Tamaki could ask how she knew of his name when he didn’t give it to her, she turned her back to him to face the inner confines of the store.

“Kyouya! Come here and clean up this mess!” she shouted gaily.

Tamaki blinked. ‘Kyouya?’

In the hallway outside, the black-haired boy had to school his face out of an irritated expression before he could enter and deal with the annoying people in the room. Attitude was all right with Yuuko, but he'd seen the clothes on the customer who wandered in, and stopped to listen. Kyouya recognized quality goods when he saw them. Whoever Tamaki was, he was rich, and therefore useful. Coming into this shop probably meant he was more than a bit obsessive or eccentric, but then...

Kyouya had a pleasant smile on his face when he opened the door. He looked around, gave the people in the room a greeting nod each, and then kneeled to gather up the blonde boy's items.

"Ah!" Tamaki blinked when he saw the other boy start to pick up his things. “You must be Kyouya-kun!" still squatting down, he reached over and grabbed Kyouya's hand, shaking it vigorously. “I’m Suoh Tamaki! Nice to meet you!" he smiled widely.

Tamaki's other hand grabbed a few ramen bowls and stuffed them into a bag, accidentally crushing a few snack packets, but he didn't notice. His eyes were fixed on Kyouya's, and, somehow, that name seemed rather familiar to him.

‘Suoh? As in the prestigious Ouran Academy's superintendent's family? As in the school I would have gone to if I hadn't been disowned?’

Kyouya never heard that the superintendent had a son. What happened?

"Nice to meet you, too," he shook hands firmly, but was now hesitant to reveal his full name and feeling incredibly curious. And this Suoh Tamaki...wanted a best friend...

One best friend coming right up!

He almost smirked.

"If you're calling me Kyouya, then does that mean I can call you Tamaki-kun?"

"Of course!" Tamaki exclaimed, and his smile brightened. “We’re good friends now, then, Kyouya!" he picked up his grocery bags and stood, offering a hand towards the other boy without waiting for an answer.
Behind the two boys, out of their sight, Yuuko smiled. “Such a beautiful thread of fate..." she whispered to herself before shaking her head. “Kyouya, Tamaki-kun," she called out to them, "go buy me more sake. Top quality, mind, and three crates! Tamaki-kun, this is the price, for I have already fulfilled your wish." she turned away, disappearing back into the shop before either boy could speak

End Prologue