Chapter Text
Yongen-jaya, on that day of May the fifth, was witnessing a truly rare sight. In the backstreets, looking lost and exhausted, was a Kyuubigitsune, or rather a very young Fox, with three tails fluttering nervously behind him as he searched for the right place, ears drooping pitifully.
He stopped, frustrated and crouched on the side of the road for a break. The shadows were growing longer and if he had to walk a step more, he would faint, he just knew it. His last real meal had been three days ago, having lost his wallet before coming to Tokyo. So he had walked, ran too, from where he had been and hadn't stopped.
Until now.
He sniffled, tears shining in his eyes. One of his hands went to tug at the collar around his neck. It was digging painfully in his skin and there was no removing it. It had been snapped there a few days earlier and because of it he pretty much was powerless. The whine escaping his throat surprised him. Had he ever sounded even more pitiful before?
Sounds of footsteps made his ears snap up and he lifted his head to see an elderly couple in front of him. The lady was holding a handkerchief to him. He grabbed it with a soft thank you and blew his nose. He would wash it and return it to the woman, said so and slipped it inside a pocket.
"Do you need any help, child?" he was asked by the lady. His tails wagged happily behind him, pleased by their presence.
"Yes, please. I'm searching for Sakura Soujirou-san."
"Ah, you're not far from his place," the man continued as he indicated to his left. "If you continue walking up the street, you will see Leblanc. He is the owner of the cafe and should still be there at this hour."
"Thank you very much."
The fox stood slowly, his legs shaking as he supported himself against a nearby wall. Crouching had been a very bad idea. He readjusted the straps of his bag as it had started to slip. The couple looked at him in worry but the boy nodded to them and soldiered on to Leblanc. Luck was with him as he managed to find the cafe, and cross the threshold before his legs gave out and he fell forward with a startled and very canine yelp. Not feeling any strength in his legs he rolled on his back in time to see the man he had been searching for looking at him in concern.
"Are you Sakura Soujirou-san?" The fox asked with a sleepy voice. Before the man answered, he had passed out in the cafe's entryway. Soujirou picked him gently and had no other choice but to put the boy in his charge's bed upstairs. He didn't forget to put his bag near the shelf, and his glasses on the windowsill.
When Igarashi Yasuhiro came back from the Wilton Hotel from his little celebration with his friends and the official foundation of Lamperouge, their Phantom Thieves group, he was surprised to see his cousin in his bed. It wasn't the fact that his cousin was here that surprised him, since his parents had called three days ago, but that he was a Fox. He certainly would have remembered if his mother had told him, but unfortunately, he was too accustomed to their lies and omissions, made even more evident when he had been framed and they only had the decency to pawn him off to an acquaintance.
Sakura-san had left saying there was enough in the fridge if the fox happened to wake before morning came. Yasuhiro went to sleep after doing his homework, lying on the sofa since his bed was taken.
He was awaken by a sudden weight on his stomach. Looking down, he saw it was his cousin who was once again asleep, gripping at his top and the blanket covering him. He tried to pry the fox's fingers off his shirt but the boy surprisingly held tight. Not wanting to leave him sprawled half over the sofa, Yasuhiro managed to grab him to put him sideways on his lap before eventually deciding to move to his bed.
Sinking into his mattress, Yasuhiro lied back and held his cousin close as the fox grumbled and tried to burrow in his chest. Morgana jumped in just after and Yasuhiro didn't have any other choice than to be cuddled with for the night. He hoped they wouldn't do this every night because summer was too hot to spend it snuggled between two furry friends.
Yasuhiro awoke as the sun rose. He was overly warm and he wasn't sure he liked it. He recognized Morgana's weight on his belly, but the weight on his arm and chest and the fur on his legs were foreign. Until he remembered the night before. Forcing his eyes to open, Yasuhiro looked downwards to see his cousin curled around him.
He was pinned to the bed, and he needed to go to school today. Gently, he kicked Morgana out of the bed, suffering his grumbling for a short while before he was able to leave his bed without disturbing his cousin who only curled back under the blanket.
Yasuhiro grabbed his glasses from the windowsill and prepared for school. Morgana jumped on the table where there was his bag.
"I didn't know you had Foxes in the family..."
"Neither did I... I hope he will wake soon."
Yasuhiro grabbed his school bag as Morgana slipped inside, and went downstairs where he was greeted by a plate of curry for his breakfast as was becoming usual. He didn't complain, he was grateful he was being fed at least once per day, Sakura-san could have left him to his own devices.
Thanking the man, Yasuhiro left for school. He met with Ann and Ryuuji in front of the school gates. He greeted them with a simple nod, and noticed Ann's curious look.
"What is it?" he asked her, after Morgana greeted her from the top of his shoulder.
"Did you change your glasses, Yasuhiro?"
Yasuhiro blinked and took off his glasses. Which weren't his, though the design was almost the same. They were to his prescription, but they were in a sorry state. How he mistook them for his own pair was a mystery. He shrugged and put them back on. At least he could see.
"Those are my cousin's." he only told the girl as he turned to go inside. "I grabbed the first pair I saw..."
"Your cousin? I thought you didn't have any family in Tokyo."
"I don't... He arrived yesterday. Fainted in Leblanc's entrance."
"The glasses give you a weird look, dude. You sure you can see?" Ryuuji asked, doubting it could be the case.
"Yes. It's a bit blurry around the edges but it's okay."
"How do you do in Palaces, anyway...? You don't wear glasses as Joker."
"I never wondered." Yasuhiro shrugged. "Come to think of it, my vision's perfect in Palaces and Mementos."
They climbed to the second floor together.
"Maybe because Palaces and Mementos are places where cognition has a great impact on what happens there... When I unleashed Arsene, my poor eyesight was the least of my concern. It was as if I was wearing my contacts again..."
"It might have had an effect then." Morgana meowed softly from the bag.
The fox woke up sometime later in the day, disoriented for a short moment. He left the warmth of his cocoon of blankets to sit up and look around. He didn't recognize the room - an attic with much more space than he had had back home - but the scent he caught was instinctively familiar. Stretching his sore body, the fox finally noticed his state of dress - a black tank top with red stars on it and a pair of red boxer briefs - and he tried to remember what he had been doing before falling asleep. The man he had last seen before fainting must have brought him there, he surmised.
The fox's eyes spotted a pair of glasses on the windowsill and grabbed it. He didn't question how they held without the support of his ears, guessed it was because of what little magic he could still do that they held without him needing to consciously cast a spell. However he did question the fact they sat weirdly on his nose and got them off to see it wasn't his usual pair. Since he could see much better with rather than without them, the fox shrugged it off and put them back on before leaving the bed.
Feet light on the floorboards, he took his clothes out of his bag and dressed quickly before following his nose downstairs.
There weren't any clients in the cafe at the moment, so the fox moved to the counter.
"Oh, you're awake. How do you feel?"
"Fine, thank you. I'm sorry for... yesterday, was it? I feel like I slept for days..."
"Only a day passed. And you have nothing to be sorry about. The couple that came in just after told me you'd been searching for this place and looked about to faint when they helped you."
"Still..."
"It's fine, I said. Anyway, I am Sakura Soujirou, and your cousin is living upstairs in the attic. He shouldn't be long, classes should be over by now."
Sakura-san invited him to sit at the counter, and just as the fox curled his tails around his waist, the bell above the door chimed.
"Speak of the devil..." The fox knew the teenager that came in was his cousin because he was wearing his own poorly fixed glasses.
"I will be leaving then. Don't stay up too late."
The fox waited for the man to leave before taking his glasses off and offering them back to his cousin.
"Here, Yasuhiro. Mine must have been horrible to have."
"I could see fine with them," Yasuhiro affirmed as he sat in the seat next to the fox.
"Really? It's kinda blurry when I put mine on..."
"You should see about changing them."
"Yeah... Dunno if I can afford it..." the fox pouted. "Oh, I forgot to give you my name... Well, my new name."
"Your new name?"
"They accepted the change... so from now on I'm Igarashi Kagura. I took your family name... You don't mind, do you?"
"I don't. You do know that Kagura is a girl's name usually...?"
"They said I should take one like that since... since I'm pretty weak looking and with the collar my health is not top notch so... and I read once that weak boys were given girl names when they were born so that they could grow stronger..."
"How do you write it?" His cousin asked, before he could ramble the day away.
"It was all in kanji... So, 'Ka' is 'kami' and 'gura' is... 'tanoshii'? Soul and comfort, I think it was."
"It's a good name."
"I thought so too. There were others but I liked that one better. I also looked up your name. You write it as calm and broadminded, right? Odayaka and hiroi?"
"That's it."
"It's funny when you know you write your family name as 'fifty tempests'."
They shared a chuckle at that before Kagura's stomach growled loudly.
"Sakura-san filled the refrigerator for us yesterday. I've already eaten with my friends, but I can prepare something for you."
"I can cook you know... you don't have to..."
"It's okay. And Morgana can share with you."
"Morgana?" Kagura sniffed subtly the air of the cafe and caught the smell of a cat in an unexpected place.
"You keep your cat in your bag? Why?"
"I don't want to leave him alone in Leblanc since a cafe is not really a place for animals..."
"Oh, will Sakura-san have a problem with me? I can't keep my tails under wraps..."
"I thought Foxes could hide them?"
"The collar is preventing any use of complex magic..." he admitted, raising his chin so that Yasuhiro could get a better look at the chunk of metal around his neck.
"Being two legged is the much I can do, well changing forms isn't much of a spell to be honest, and I think they managed to block how much I could change... There's the spells for my glasses, too. I can do other simple spells... but I can't hold too many at once..."
"It seems uncomfortable..."
"It is. I don't think I will ever be able to get it off."
The silence between them stretched, filled only with the sounds of Yasuhiro cooking and Morgana getting out of the bag.
"As for Sakura-san," Yasuhiro continued a while later, "I don't think he will mind. Also, kicking Foxes out of one's household is said to bring misfortune."
"Really?"
"Yes. Though Foxes are a rare sight nowadays... And in big cities like Tokyo, I think only the elder generations know about it."
Morgana interrupted their talk with a loud meow, and jumped on the counter.
"You're going to burn the food if you keep talking..."
"It smells fine to me."
Yasuhiro, who had been turning back to the stove, looked at Kagura with wide eyes. Morgana seemed to be in shock too.
"What? I'm a Youkai, I can hear a lot of stuff." His tails thumped against the chair in slight indignation. "The question would be, what about you, Yasu-nii?"
Yasuhiro turned the stove off and served the curry to Kagura, and gave Morgana a look.
"Well, it all started two weeks ago..."
The story fell from Yasuhiro's and Morgana's lips easily. Kagura's ears were perked up in interest during the whole thing, though they had dropped a bit when Yasuhiro told him about Kamoshida (followed by a growl from the smaller boy).
"So, yesterday, you were celebrating your victory?"
"Yeah. We also decided that we would continue, because Kamoshida can't be the only one that has a Palace."
"Yasuhiro is our leader. And we even fixed a team name."
"Oh? What is it?"
"Lamperouge."
Kagura thought it was an odd name but it seemed to fit the group. The fox focused on his meal for the next minutes while Yasuhiro did the dishes, and Morgana lounged on the counter.
"It was delicious, Yasu-nii!"
"I'm glad you liked it."
"Is there... a place I could wash up? I saw the washroom coming downstairs but..."
"There are public baths nearby. We can go now if you want."
The old man who managed the public baths gave a curious look at Kagura when they entered. Rumors about a Fox in the vicinity had already spread around.
"Won't my fur be a problem here too? And it will be a hassle to dry by hand too."
"Do you know spells for that?"
"I don't know if I have enough power left to do them... Maybe in a few days my magic core will be replenished... Well, as replenished as it can be with the collar choking most of it."
"I will help you, don't worry."
The old man didn't seem to have problems with him being in the baths. It probably came from the fact he was a Fox. Yasuhiro showed him how it was done in Japan since his cousin was a foreigner. He didn't ask about the scars that littered the fox's back or the ones that suggested someone had wanted to cut his tails off. Yasuhiro was sure his ears were scarred too.
He let Kagura clean himself to do the same, and then they went into the bath, Kagura still red-faced. His collar was glinting in the light of the room.
"Do you have school tomorrow?"
"Just in the morning."
"Do you think I can sneak in?"
"I don't know..."
"I can shift into my fox form... It's my natural form and I'm smaller, I could fit in your bag..."
"With Morgana?"
"I can expand the inside of your bag. It's not really a spell... it's runes I can sew into the bag."
"If you think you can do it, then I don't mind. It'll probably be useful when I buy things for our heists."
While Yasuhiro was doing his homework, Kagura took out his sewing kit from his backpack for the runes. Morgana watched, curious, as the runes were sown with a red thread. "Where did you learn to sew?"
"I learned because I had to... with my relatives when I was younger..."
Kagura's tails thumped softly on the floor as he continued his work. Yasuhiro crouched near the fox when he finished his homework.
"How is it?"
"Nearly finished. Your bag will be bottomless and weightless too."
Just as Kagura put his sewing kit back into his bag, there was a soft pop, and Yasuhiro found himself looking at a small fox. He was barely taller than Morgana.
"I guess I used too much magic to make the runes." Kagura approached his cousin. "Now your bag can contain more things than before."
He jumped inside and invited Morgana in.
"Oh, it really is more spacious inside."