Work Text:
Tamao never felt as inadequate as when Hana came back from school with a frown on his face, which was often enough that a merely blank face made her feel elated. Hana knew his worth, it seemed, from the cradle. That was good, but an unfortunate side-effect was that he often got into fights with his peers and teachers.
Today, apparently, was one of those days: Hana rushed in, aiming for the stairs and the relative safety of his room, and he moved so fast that Tamao almost missed him. She didn’t, of course, but it was still a pretty bad sign.
Her gut feeling was soon confirmed by Hana’s face. He sported a big black eye, and there was a red scratch on his face.
“What happened?”
“You should have seen the other guy,” Hana said, with all the spite an eight-year-old boy could muster.
Tamao pursed her lips.
“Come, we need to get ice on that bruise.”
He made to protest, but she did not let him, dragging him towards the employee kitchen. Ryu, who was hard at work near the oven, raised his eyebrows at the sight. “Upset a cat, did you?”
“No.” And Hana spat more than he spoke. “A pissy kid who wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“Language,” Tamao corrected immediately. She had retrieved a bag of frozen peas and kneeled in front of the child to press it gently against his face. Not gently enough, it seemed, for he yelped.
“You’re too rough! I can do this myself!”
Tamao let him take it from her and gingerly apply it. His eye was badly swollen, and it seemed to be crying. Or was that the ice turning back to water?
The silence got thick.
“You’re going to make a great pirate,” Ryu said, attempting to defuse the tension. “I could probably sew you an eyepatch.”
Hana grimaced, clearly not taking the bait. “I don’t want to be a pirate, I want to be a Shaman! I bet dad never had to sit in class for hours on end!”
“He did. I was in his class when he was your age,” Tamao corrected. But Hana only shook his head, clearly wanting yet unable to express exactly how that idea seemed ludicrous.
“You seem a bit famished. Want some egg before you go do your homework?”
Ryu’s trap worked this time: Hana sat down at the table, still holding the ice to his forehead. The trap gave Tamao ample time to explore the thorny topic with her charge.
“How did your day go?”
“Boring. We did multiplications, hi-how-are-you, and we sang a bit.”
Hana always found three things to mention when he had that question to answer. Fewer, and Tamao would press on; more, and it became obvious he invented half of them.
“And how did you get that?”
She pointed to the scratch. He grimaced, egg stuck between his teeth. “I had him pinned, so he wanted me off, and that was the only way he found,” he said, saying nothing and everything at the same time.
“Why did he have to be pinned?”
Hana gave it some consideration. “He said mean things. So I wanted to teach him you don’t say mean things.”
Tamao frowned. “You can’t… Do you think you can stop somebody from saying mean things by hurting them?”
“You don’t want to know what he said? It was really mean.”
“I’m sure it was, and it was wrong of him to say it.”
“So I’m right!”
“No. It’s never right to hurt somebody else. Why didn’t you go get the teacher?”
Hana grew a bit flustered at that, and searched for the One True Answer, the one that would convince Tamao he had been right to act, but… if there was one, he didn’t find it. He could only consider the vast expanses of childhood and its myriad of rules, and how far removed Tamao was from that gilded kingdom. It would be like trying to explain grammar to someone who didn’t speak the language. So he had to settle for something else. He had to make it personal.
“He said things about you. He said you didn’t belong in the neighborhood, that you were just a yakuza, that you scare everyone. That,” and his voice broke, “that you weren’t my real mom and that my parents abandoned me and that it was obvious why!”
Tamao and Ryu looked at each other. He coughed a bit, and when she nodded turned back to his work, while she cleared her throat and tried to repair a child’s broken heart.
“He seems to have been speaking a lot.”
“He’s not the only one. The teacher got to me before I could deal with the others.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he was disappointed and then he didn’t talk to me. But I don’t mind. I don’t need him to talk to me. I don’t need anyone to talk to me.”
Ah. Well, that wasn’t worrying at all.
“You know your parents didn’t abandon you, right? They love you very much.”
“They haven’t come for a year and a half, though.”
“They’re… concerned for your safety.”
“You would protect me. You scare the bad guys away. You and I, we’re scarers,” he said, all too seriously.
“Is that a bad thing, that I scare bad guys?”
“No, not really,” he admitted, with a mischievous smile as he dropped the bag of peas to the table. “I just don’t want them to badmouth you. They don’t know anything.”
“They don’t. They’re eight.”
“I’m eight.”
“You’re different, kiddo.”
“Am I?”
He looked up with his one good eye and the purple one. Tamao smiled, or tried, and patted his cheek where it wasn’t red. Hana caught her hand, kept it there.
“What do I do now, mom? I can’t let them say these things.”
“Why not?”
Hana hesitated, and his fingers moved across her arm, drawing lines towards her elbow. “If I don’t stop them, they write things on my desk, or my books, or they sing it behind my back.”
Tamao paused at that. It all… went so much further than she expected. “And the teacher…”
Hana’s shrug was as good an answer as she was going to get.
“Okay,” she said after a while. “Okay. Finish up and go do your homework. I’ll schedule a meeting with the teacher and the kids’ parents. I’ll need their names for that, Hana.”
Hana gave them, but he didn’t look all that relieved.
After he was gone, Ryu stopped his fretting and stepped over to put a hand on Tamao’s shoulder.
“You okay?”
“Why would I not be? Who cares about… about what a bunch of kids say behind my back?”
Ryu glanced away.
“Hana does.”
“Exactly. I can’t – I didn’t realize it had come to this, I could never have imagined…”
“It’s not your fault.”
She sighed.
“For letting it get to that point? It is. At least to an extent. I should have put an end to things long ago.”
Ryu and she shared a glance before he went to fetch the phone. She took it with a thankful smile and started dialing.
“Hello? Yes, this is Hana-chan’s mother. Yes, I am aware there have been, as you say, issues. Actually, I would just love to discuss them with you and the parents of the other children involved. I have the names here. Would Friday at six work for you? Good. I will wait for confirmation. Thank you, good night.”
Then she put it away and went back to her duties, as did Ryu, and they spoke no more of it. No thought was given to contacting Yoh and Anna. This was too petty a concern for them to be made aware of; or perhaps it was too great a shame to be admitted.
Tamao and Ryû didn’t notice the Hanagumi slacking off more than usual, didn’t catch the knowing glances. They certainly didn’t see the shimmering presence who snuck in the room when it became empty and picked the phone.
“Hello? No, I’m very aware it is late. No, I am Hana-chan’s father. No, I know she called, but I was not home yet, and now I am. I wanted you to know the meeting will take place on Friday at five-thirty. No, I am pretty sure the other parents will also be free. Don’t worry about it at all. Thank you very much for your time. Oh, and if you could do your job until then – sorry, I meant preventing other fights from breaking out – that would be just fantastic. Thanks.”
Miraculously enough, everyone involved was free at five-thirty. Hana, who did not fancy a trip back home only to come to school again, set out to do his homework as quickly as possible. He wasn’t bad, academically speaking; he just…. Very easily grew bored. This time he stuck it out though, already salivating at the thought of two whole days spent not working when he got home, and soon lost track of time. He became so engrossed that he only realized he was not alone when someone waved their hand in front of him.
“You ready?”
Hana jumped like he had just been hit by lightning. His books and papers flew up into the air, and, more worryingly, did not fall everywhere. Instead, they gently levitated back in his schoolbag.
“Well, well, well,” said the newly-arrived figure, “it does seem like I should visit more often. You look like you’ve seen a ghost, which… is probably appropriate.”
Hao winked, and Hana picked his jaw from the floor. For a split second, he saw his real father. Hao imitated the wavy hair, the atrocious sense of style, and the height. There was no confusing the two for long, though, not when one was a Shaman, and even less when one was the son of the Shaman King’s twin.
“U-uncle Hao? What are you doing here?”
Hao tilted his head, as if asking himself that question for the first time. Then he seemed to find a satisfying answer.
“Playing a prank on Tamao?”
Hana frowned.
“She’s going to kick your ass.”
He wasn’t expecting a knowing smile in return. “I should hope so.”
“Ew.”
Grimacing at his bag, Hana shook the idea away. “So what’s the prank? You whisk me away to a world of darkness and magic?”
Hao chortled.
“Maybe later. For now, we’re going to talk to your teacher and the scum that’s been harassing you.”
Hana’s eyes widened, and for a few moments he did not move, apparently unsure of how to respond.
“You… You’re going to…”
“Yep,” the Shaman King nodded, his smile bright like the sun.
“You think mom can’t protect me?”
“Tamao can protect you from a lot, but the maze of government laws and social consequences of bullying are a hard beast to take care of.”
Hana rolled his eyes. “You’re a god and you’re going to tell me I need to follow school rules.”
“Indeed. So why not let me make sure this gets resolved, hm?”
The two stared at each other. Then Hana shrugged.
“OK. But none of this is on me when she finds out.”
“I can promise you that. As long as I get any cake she makes to celebrate the end of your problems.”
Hana squinted and gave another shrug. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Mom doesn’t like it.”
“Let’s go, spider.”
The room was too big for the number of them. One of the three other parents was already there, sitting upright in a chair, while her daughter stood near her. The eyes of the kid widened as she discovered Hao, but neither opened their mouths. The teacher, who was currently chatting with the other adult, straightened up a little and took in the sight Hao and Hana made.
“It’s – it’s nice to finally meet you,” he began, forgetting to offer them a seat.
“Yes it is. Who wouldn’t want to meet the parents of such delights?
Hao’s smile was unnerving at the best of times, but right then Hana found himself worried. Would he blow his disguise? Sure, the teacher did not know Yoh at all, but… Hao might be so bad at pretending to be a fully-functioning adult that the others would become suspicious….?
The others did not even offer him a nervous laugh, just uncomfortable silence, so Hao just sat, and dragged a chair over for Hana.
“Sir, we…”
“I don’t see any reason why our children shouldn’t be comfortable,” Hao cut out evenly, his eyes telling Hana to sit down.
Hana did.
“After all, we are still just waiting, and haven’t even established who was guilty of what.”
The woman looked like she was about to say something, for she had gone red in the face, but it was at that moment that the other parents appeared at the door, so she said nothing.
Hana stood back up. First crisis, averted.
The teacher welcomed the newcomers warmly before falling into the kind of uneasy silence of those who sensed that Something Was Not Right in their classroom. He had enough sense to decide it had to be Hao, for he was the only one she did not know; he didn’t have enough sense to know how to deal with it.
Everyone else glanced at each other.
“Hm, could we…”
“Right. Hm. So, this meeting aims at resolving an issue that has been popping up a few times lately. It involves all of your children. They…”
There was a cough.
Hao’s stare didn’t break.
The teacher went on.
“They disrupt the class and there have been fights. I cannot watch them all the time, so hopefully we can put this all behind us from this point on.”
The kids bowed their heads, save Hana, who drew confidence from the way his uncle sat.
Hao was staring right at the teacher. Right at him. Like his eyes could reach through the skull and poke at the soul, and it looked like the teacher felt it.
“Perhaps we… perhaps the children could recount the events themselves,” he said after a while. Hao gave him an encouraging nod, while the others murmured among themselves.
Then one of the two boys cleared his throat. “Hana’s always been weird. He – he makes everyone uncomfortable in the class. He’s always telling tall tales.”
The girl nodded. “When we try to have him cut it out he – he just gets angry, and he uses his fists. He hit me so hard I saw stars once.”
Hana gritted his teeth. “And you just forgot that you cut my hair before that, didn’t you?” He turned to show the side of his head, where a tuft of his hair sat decidedly shorter. The parents looked variously unimpressed, but surprise did show on the teacher’s face, and Hao realized he hadn’t noticed it. Hadn’t known about that interaction.
The girl sneered. “It’s not like anyone can see it.”
“So what you’re saying,” Hao interrupted pleasantly, “is that she laid a hand on my son, assaulted him, and no one told her this wasn’t acceptable? I assume this wouldn’t be her answer otherwise.”
“Her actions do not warrant a punch,” the mother protested.
Hao smiled.
“It doesn’t? Shall I cut off your hair right now and see how you react?”
Her face fell; the teacher grimaced. “I think we’re getting off-topic…”
“No, this is particularly on topic. If we only consider very specific actions to be worthy of judgment, we are never going to get the full story, and none of the children will learn anything. So what do we see? A punch, or a series of attacks that led to one? A thousand flies will drive a cow mad, you know.”
“Violence is not the answer…”
“It is if you are not here to stop the bullying occurring beforehand. I am not particularly proud of my son punching somebody else. I am proud of my son defending himself when nobody did. This is already assault.”
A pause.
“Were there other incidents?”
“The most recent one is the most egregious,” the lone other father said, as if happy to be moving away from a thorny point. “Hana threw my son to the ground. He bled.”
Hana lowered his head, because he had.
“He insulted my mother.”
“Childish answer to a taunt,” the adult sneered. “I am sure you will not defend…”
He trailed off, and Hao straightened in his chair. “No, no, finish that sentence. What is it you hope I defend? My child’s actions, or the mother behind him?”
“Well, now that you’ve mentioned it, where is lady Tamamura? Shouldn’t she be here? She is the one not raising this child properly.”
“No, she shouldn’t, and no, she isn’t,” Hao said sweetly. “Not when you seem to have such stark opinions about her and her place in your society. I have elected that I should come in her stead, to spare her the humiliation of being judged in front of her son by good-for-nothing insects like you.”
The silence that spread then was absolute.
Then the other father started gathering his things.
“Wait, where are you…”
“I don’t think a discussion can be had with such a rude person. Your son should be ashamed of you. No wonder he can’t learn to be a functional person. We will be pressing charges…”
“No, you won’t be doing that, and you won’t leave, either.”
A chill spread across the room. The adult instinctively sat back down, and so no one tested Hao’s little threat display. Even then, he found reason to rise.
“Now, Hana, if you were very young and stupid, you might need me to tell you frightening your peers is not the way one should usually resolve conflicts. Some people prefer to talk it out. In this matter, however, I’ve elected to do it my way,” Hao said genially, stopping near the teacher’s desk. “You understand?”
Hana gulped and nodded. He wasn’t really scared, no, at least not for his own sake, but… This was going down a rather slippery slope.
The air seemed to grow heavy. The sky darkened behind the windows, putting them all in a relative but definitely paranoia-inducing darkness. And Hao smiled.
“Good. Now, for the slow learners, I will say this once. Me being here instead of Tamao is a mercy. She could squash each of you like a worm and the only thing she’d worry about is how that could impact Hana’s education. I don’t share that issue. So the only reason I am not squashing you all is because she wouldn’t approve, as she is a decent person. We opened the inn when she was nineteen. She taught herself budgeting, hosting, marketing. She made your neighborhood all that much alive and prosperous and this is how you thank her? She is setting the best example your kids could dream of: she is a self-made businesswoman who built and manages it all with her own two hands. You should be kissing the ground she walks on.”
Tamao could hear nothing over the sound of her heartbeat. She was a little in advance, surely, but they could not have started without her; the sound of voices drifting from the classroom had her stop a little way away, and she just listened.
Just listened as Hao defended her and made very sure no one would mistreat Hana again. The latter part was easily explained away: he cared for his brother, cared for Anna, and didn’t want them to come home to a broken and angry child. But he didn’t have to go to such lengths to defend her and to compliment her. This was gratuitous, as none of the people present, Hana perhaps excepted, cared much for her character.
There were a dozen ways to go about this meeting, and she wasn’t sure why he had chosen this exact way. Wasn’t sure why her heart ached at the thought, why blood rushed through her brain at such a fast pace.
Before she could really react, one parent stormed out of the room. They held their son’s arm like he was a criminal, and when they noticed her they stilled in their tracks.
“My son and I are very sorry, ma’am. I can promise you nothing of the sort will ever happen again,” the parent blurted, and bowed deeply. Their hand had moved to their son’s head, forcing them into an equally deep bow. And then they almost ran away.
Tamao stared after them. A part of her, the rational one, knew this was a rather bad sign. If Hao terrified the entire neighborhood, she would never be considered one of them, let alone a normal person.
Slowly, like moving demanded all the energy in the world, she walked to the door of the classroom, and broke the spell by opening it.
“Mom,” Hana said, looking relieved. “You came!”
He broke free of the little circle he and the others made and came running over to envelop her in a tight hug. Tamao glanced down as she instinctively patted his head before her eyes swiveled back to Hao.
He didn’t have the sense to look contrite. Instead he looked smug, insufferably so.
Tamao hoped she wasn’t beet red, because she didn’t want to be beet red. And because this wasn’t something to become beet red over. She and Hao needed to talk.
Her eyes said it, and she knew he got the message.
Not now, he seemed to reply, and she had to say he was right. This was not the place.
Her voice rang clear and true when she was ready: “Can I trust that the issue has been laid to rest?”
The teacher gave him a nervous nod. The parents looked both appalled and nauseous.
“Good.”
And then, keeping Hana’s small hand in hers, she left the room.
“Mom, you can’t be holding my hand! That’s for babies!”
“Fighting with your classmates is for babies.”
“Uncle Hao didn’t seem to think so.”
“Uncle Hao doesn’t have to get you to school tomorrow. Uncle Hao doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of his actions. That’s what he earned: a consequence-free ride. We’re all just the unfortunate passengers.”
Hana blinked.
“You’re angry at him?”
Tamao paused and looked down. Gave him a tired smile.
“Not really, but I am angry. I’m angry that you had to resort to fighting because you didn’t have anyone to turn to. I’m angry that I didn’t manage to teach you other ways of dealing with these issues – or perhaps that there is no other way, not when the people on the other hand are this bad and there is no impartial mediator. I don’t know what the true answer is. I just know that… there are rules, and he breaks them.”
“He defended you. You can’t be angry at him for protecting you!”
“Yes, he did. And I – I don’t know what I think, okay? He and I have to talk about it. I’m not angry at him for doing it. Maybe for doing it without asking me first?”
“It really sounds complicated when you say it.”
“It is, kiddo. But you shouldn’t have to worry about it.”
They walked in silence for a little while and got to the front door. A boy was waiting outside.
Hana squinted. It wasn’t the worst of them, no. It was the one whose mother had stormed off in the middle of Hao’s quiet telling-off. Should he feel bad that he named that boy alongside the others? He wasn’t the girl who pulled at his hair, or the boy who gave him bruises and scratches.
Things felt… different now. This boy felt different now. And maybe unleashing Hao on him felt a bit disproportionate.
Hana wasn’t sure what he thought of his uncle’s little show. He meant it as a nice thing, Hana knew that much. But it was bad that he had to go behind his mother’s back to do it, or at least it felt bad. But seeing him find this serious enough to step in, to disregard all potential consequences just to make sure that Hana felt safe in the classroom, that the teacher and the other parents wouldn’t twist it on him? That… felt nice.
So it was both bad and good.
Hana wasn’t sure what he thought of his uncle’s little show.
Hana wasn’t sure he wanted the other boy to be terrified of him forever.
“Mom,” he said, very seriously, “wait. I have something I need to do.”
Tamao let him go, though she was pretty wary of what, exactly, he wanted to do. “Please don’t break his nose again,” she said, softly, half in jest.
He turned and winked. “I won’t need to.” And then he skipped over to where the young boy stood.
“Hey,” he said, and the other boy nearly jumped. Hana grimaced and raised his hands in appeasement. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat you. And my dad won’t do anything.”
“He’s super scary,” the other child countered, his little arms crossed. “My mom got so scared she forgot her bag. Now she went to retrieve it and told me to wait here.”
There was a short silence as Hana considered the gravity of it. A mom forgetting her bag of wonders seemed very serious indeed, at their age. She had been seriously scared, and, well… she didn’t know the half of it.
“Yeah. I think he worried about me.”
“No one had ever scared my mom like that.”
“No, I don’t think anyone would have. He’s a little extreme, that’s why mom comes to most of these things,” Hana said cautiously.
“Life at home must be really extreme.”
“A bit. You haven’t seen my cousins.” And Hana thought of Mathilda who practiced throwing knives at his head when he was two, Kanna who had taken care of any and at all yakuza interested in taking over their inn, and Marion who had filled her room with dolls creepier than he had ever seen elsewhere.
He didn’t explain anything.
The other boy contemplated the idea and nodded. “Can’t imagine, I don’t think. But…”
“But you think we’re weird.”
He started. Then shrugged.
“Maybe, ya. Doesn’t mean… doesn’t mean… Look, I wish I had an awesome dad like that. Or a mom like yours. Even if they’re weird. I think I just… I was kind of jealous, and when they started saying stuff about you…”
Hana didn’t blink. He knew for a fact the other two were not jealous. Jealousy was not the be-all end-all on the playground. Attention and friendship were resources, and it just so happened depriving one of it got you more.
But he could believe the boy in front of him was just jealous. It was petty, sure. Pettiness felt outrageous. But it wasn’t worth fighting over.
The boy sighed. “I’m sorry I was mean.”
“I heard you in the classroom.”
“In the classroom your dad was there. Now you know I mean it.”
There was a pause.
“Friends?”
Hana grimaced.
“Maybe not yet. But non-enemies?”
They shook hands on that.
“Adorable,” Hao chuckled. Tamao glared at him from their little hide-out near the entrance before returning her gaze to the kids.
“You didn’t have to, you know.”
“I didn’t. That’s how you know it’s an act of kindness, or haven’t you heard Pimple face?”
“His name is Takuo, and his parents are on the neighborhood association. I can only hope we are not barred from any and all festivals this year.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t dare.”
“Willing to bet your place at my New Year’s table?”
Hao pretended to have been shot right through the heart.
“They are right, you are scary! How will I ever survive not having your lovely treats to tide me over to the new year…”
Tamao shook her head, pretending not to be amused. Her smile betrayed her.
“We will have to see, won’t we?”
Hao sighed in deep pretend-pain.
“So, I won’t get a kiss for my hard-earned victory…?”
That earned him an eye-roll. “Bravery is its own reward, don’t you know?”
He pouted.
“I prefer rewards of the tangible kind… but if you’d rather I send Marion next time, I can –“
No one knows how his sentence would have ended, because Tamao had drawn him to the dark corner of their dark corner, and was giving him the reward he o-so desired.