Chapter Text
If there was anything Yamaguchi particularly prided himself upon, it was his perseverance.
Sure, he’s been pushed around through elementary, middle and high school, but over the years he developed thick enough skin that eventually the tough guys lost interest when they realized he had no lunch money to steal, and that their biting remarks went in one ear and out the other.
Speaking of school, he was still managing high marks, despite losing homework assignments or being forced to throw them out after dad spilled his drinks on the pages, and for the most part people left him alone now, save for one or two persistent guys in his class.
Not to mention, when mom passed and he found himself in a consistent state of “staying afloat” while dad spent his days working, gambling his wages away and drinking what was left. Yamaguchi got especially good at finding hiding places where his dad couldn’t find their rent money and extreme couponing and sale hunting was built into his grocery shopping routine by the time he was sixteen. Yamaguchi was especially proud of his latest hiding spot (in the rotting floorboard under a rug in the living area, three months strong!)
Lest he forget, when he turned the lock to his very, very humble abode to find the most eloquent note left by his father, who departed on an incredible, exciting journey. He’ll never forget those words. . .
Tadashi,
Luck’s finally run out! Gotta scram now, debts are too high !!! Be good, stay in school, and if you have any spare cash feel free to send it to your old man
(He didn’t even have a forwarding address, let alone any spare cash!! Get lost, pops!)
Yamaguchi didn’t even find homelessness quite as bad. Sure, his hair and face felt terribly greasy, he could only shove a few handfuls of clean clothes and his school books before the landlord threw him out, he only had a good two-hundred yen to his name and he was making himself comfortable on the best park bench he could find, but he was a survivor. Yamaguchi could handle whatever life threw at him.
So when Yamaguchi had this whole land god responsibility dropped into his lap without even a copy of Godhood for Dummies, he thought he could manage.
What he didn’t account for however. . .
“Wow, Sir Yamaguchi, that’s the fifth white talisman in a row that’s sputtered out. You’re setting a new record for most godly failures in one sitting?”
Was a sour, foul mouthed kitsune that just so happened to be in eternal servitude to him as a familiar.
“I don’t see you doing anything productive, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi bit back, the brush in his hand nearly about to snap as he watched the useless white talisman float from the wooden dummy in front of him to the floor.
You were supposed to make it bloom! Was the character wrong? Should I have written ‘flower’ and not ‘bloom?’
“I’ve done plenty, Sir Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima said, and Yamaguchi rolled his eyes. He could feel the smugness in Tsukishima’s voice. “Unlike you, O Amazing Land God, I am a lowly familiar. I tend to the shrine and do what is asked of me. Which one of us is still struggling to charm a silly bonsai?”
Yamaguchi could handle bullies. They said the exact same things over and over since he was nine. That he was lame, his freckles were ugly, he was weird and that nobody wanted to be friends with a freak. He wasn’t the pushover he was when he was little now. They would repeat the same actions too, pushing him into lockers and tripping him in the halls. Yamaguchi got used to it. Kids could just be assholes, and he had bigger things like rent to worry about.
But for whatever reason, Tsukishima set an angry fire in his gut that he couldn’t smother no matter how hard he tried.
“Please keep trying, Sir Yamaguchi,” Tsukishima said. The fire flickered. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after-
“Watching you struggle is just too amusing to let the show end. Go on, go on!”
Nevermind.
“Won’t you SHUT UP FOR ONCE?!”
With a swift kick, Yamaguchi sends the kitsune tumbling to the floor. Tsukishima, the silver ears flattened angrily against his head, turned to retort, and found himself unable to do so. Instead, he grumbled to himself.
The sacred word binding thing was pretty cool, Yamaguchi decided.
“I’m still new to this, okay?” Yamaguchi huffed as he pulled a strand of hair out of his face and secured it with a hot pink hairclip. “Not everyone has been alive as long as you, and I just started my godly thing or whatever two weeks ago.”
Tsukishima didn’t reply. Probably because he couldn’t.
With an exaggerated sigh, Yamaguchi carefully printed “flower” onto his talisman,and flung it at the tree with a snap. The paper immediately clung to the bonsai, and a faint light and rumbling was heard from the talisman. Yamaguchi and Tsukishima shared a wide eyed look of surprise and fixated on the potted tree.
Then the talisman slipped off of the trunk, floated to the ground, and did nothing but shrivel up into a tiny pile of ash.
Tsukishima’s laugh erupted throughout the living area and was silenced with an annoyed chop in between his ears.
Sixteen white talismans, three hours and one plain, bloomless bonsai tree later, Yamaguchi crumpled onto his futon with a miserable groan. If he knew that this whole god thing would be passed onto him that night, he would have said ‘no, thanks’ and left Sugawara up in the tree to fend off the little dog himself. Park benches weren’t that bad. They were pretty comfortable compared to sleeping in a heap on the pavement even if he couldn’t stretch out on them. What wood were they made of? Oak? Pine?
He stared up at the ceiling as thoughts of spells, yokai, wood types and the craziness of this new world he stumbled into plagued his mind.
“Sir Yamaguchi?”
The little spirit Yachi called out to him, and he grunted in acknowledgement. He could hear the quivering in her tiny voice as she took a deep breath.
“P-please do not let Tsukishima get to you. He’s your familiar, but at heart he is still a wild fox. You are doing a splendid job as the Sugawara Shrine god.”
“Mm. Yachi, what kind of wood do you think would make the most comfortable park bench?”
The squawk the little spirit let out pulled Yamaguchi out of his thoughts and into a hearty laugh.
Fantastic. Fan- freaking- tastic.
The first day Yamaguchi finally showed up to class after narrowly avoiding attendance probation, he’s rewarded with a yurei in a third floor classroom.
Now that he thinks about it, there’s always been that urban legend about Hanako-san floating around. He always dismissed it, but now he thinks it holds at least a smidge of truth there.
The classroom swirls darkly with miasma, murky and almost sticky at Yamaguchi’s heels. The yurei, who Yamaguchi thinks resembles a young boy around fifteen or so, thrashed wildly as desks were strewn about the room. The land god had to duck as one soared across the room in the direction of his head.
Yamaguchi crouched behind the teacher’s desk as the yurei’s wailing echoed across the room. He only had two talismans on him, and with how upset the spirit was, he doubted that he could stop its rampage with just the scraps of magical paper in his hands.
Still, he had to try something. This was his responsibility. Hastily, he scribbled the characters for exorcise on the talisman and flung it towards the ghost. The yurei roared out of anger rather than pain, and Yamaguchi gulped and tried to shrink underneath the desk. He heard another angry roar, and felt the wood just above his head splinter as the yurei swatted the furniture in half. The spirit glowed in the room, the putrid shade of purple thickened as it approached Yamaguchi. He watched the talons elongate in front of him as he sputtered in fear.
Ah, Yamaguchi thought. So this is how my godly reign ends. The yurei reaches out with claws outstretched. The god wondered, will he get a normal mortal headstone or some marker in the shrine? Could the shrine pay for a funeral service? Though, his guests would be very limited to the shrine goers anyways, so maybe they won’t have to. Yamaguchi scrunched his eyes shut and braced for the yurei to tear him apart.
Before it can, a hot ball burning a deep blue bellowed into the yurei, the impact sending it spiralling into the classroom wall. Yamaguchi’s eyes shot open, and widen as he’s met with a furious Tsukishima in the doorway. Fox fire burned intensely in his raised palm as his cold, piercing eyes fell upon the ghost. Then they drifted to Yamaguchi.
“Seriously?” Tsukishima barked. “You can’t even exorcise a yurei? What kind of land god are you?!”
“Not now, Tsukki!” Yamaguchi snapped back as he lurched to his left to avoid yet another chair launched in his direction. He needed to think, and quickly. Ever since he became land god, he studied as much about the yokai as possible, there had to be something he knew about the yurei that he just needed to wrack his brain for! What were yurei, again? Yachi had told him they were spirits tied to the earth because of something , but he couldn’t remember for what reason.
“Not fair!” The spirit yelled, speaking for the first time since Yamaguchi confronted it.
“Why won’t you look at me?!”
Tsukishima flung another orb of fox fire towards the spirit, and it howled in pain, and the god felt some pang of sympathy for the spirit, even if it did just try to kill him. Yamaguchi paused, and squinted at the ghost, now cowering with its head tucked in its hands and the desks around it unmoving; Yamaguchi confirmed his suspicions as the silhouette of an old, tattered school uniform clung to the figure.
There was a tug in his gut, and Yamaguchi pulled himself off the ground.
“Tsukki, stop firing at him this instant!” Yamaguchi shouted, and Tsukishima grunted as his hand stopped mid-fling. The fox fixated on his god with a look of shock.
“You idiot! W-what are you doing?!”
Yamaguchi ignored Tsukishima’s protests, and crept towards the spirit shimmering in the center of the destroyed room. He knelt and, surprisingly, placed a hand on its shoulder. The spirit flickered as if it flinched, and Yamaguchi could make out the tiny frame of a boy. The yurei looked up into Yamaguchi’s eyes, its own swimming with tears. The boy’s mouth gaped open at Yamaguchi, and without a second thought gripped his own hand with so much force that the land god yelped. Miasma swirled around the pair as Tsukishima cried out for Yamaguchi, falling on deaf ears as the two became totally enveloped in darkness.
Yamaguchi whimpered as his eyes attempted to adjust to the newfound darkness, the faint glow of the yurei being the only source of light in the miasma surrounding them. Even though he was relatively unharmed, Yamaguchi could feel his energy begin to wane the longer he stayed in the void. He had to get out, and quickly.
“. . .Senpai,” The yurei began. Yamaguchi turned and his gaze fixated on the spirit, who now glowed just a bit brighter.
“I-I’m sorry I had to bring you here. I didn’t want anyone else to see us and start to gossip. It would be bad for your reputation to be seen with me.” The yurei sounded almost pitiful, the voice wavering as it took a steady breath, though Yamaguchi didn’t really think it needed to, being a spirit and all.
“B-but. . . there’s something I wanted. . .I needed to tell you.”
Yamaguchi tilted his head. He was positive that he’s never met this boy before. He had only just been going to school regularly this past semester, and besides some boys that were in classes with him before, not many people spoke to him. The spirit let go of his wrist, as if he forgot he was holding Yamaguchi in place, and hesitated before sliding his cold hand into Yamaguchi’s own, squeezing gently.
Immediately, it clicked. Yurei are bound to the earth due to an earthly regret, one they left behind before becoming a spirit. This was its regret.
“Senpai. . . I know that we’re both boys, but. . .” The yurei gulped and shone an even brighter, otherwordly blue. “I’ve never forgotten the kindness you’ve shown me. Even when everyone else said terrible things about me, you would be there to get me to my feet. T-that’s why. . . I. . .”
There was a pause, before the spirit yanked its hand away as if Yamaguchi was suddenly burning hot.
“. . .I’m sorry. . . I can’t do it. Forget I said anything.”
Yamaguchi reached for the spirit’s hand this time, smothering the urge to flinch against the coolness of its palm, and leaned forward to meet the yurei’s shocked expression.
“Hey, now, don’t be scared,” He said. “You can tell me anything, y’know? So you don’t have to be afraid. I’m here to listen.”
The yurei had an indecipherable look on his face. Yamaguchi felt sweat break off in bullets. Its face wilted into a cruel scowl.
“You’re not senpai,” He flatly responded. “Your personality isn’t crude enough.”
“W-what do you mean crude?!” Yamaguchi said, the yurei’s hand being flung back and forth in Yamaguchi’s own. “Didn’t you just call me kind and your hero or whatever?!”
“Senpai is kind, but not like, gross and sappy,” The yurei made a face. “He’s kind in his actions, and inbetween his words. If he cares, he does it in a way that actually makes you feel cared for, not shallow, superficial things he spits out.”
The yurei set his hands in his lap and stared down at them, a smile ghosted his lips as he recalled his upperclassman.
“That’s why. . . I love him so much. But it’s wrong for me to. He would be disgusted if I told him. That’s why I couldn’t say goodbye to him, when I. . .” Its voice drifted off and Yamaguchi nodded, the implication lingered in the air for a moment before the boy continued.
“So now, I’m stuck here. I wish that I at least said goodbye.”
Yamaguchi studied the ghost; this poor kid, haunting a school like this with no way out.
“When. . .when did this happen?”
“. . . Last semester. Senpai was going to graduate and go to university in Tokyo. I didn’t want to bother him anymore. He’s probably there now, and I’m here for eternity.”
“He’s probably glad I’m gone, anyways. . . I think. . . even if he was so kind to me, I was a burden to him.”
Yamaguchi’s heartstrings tugged. “You’re wrong.”
The yurei’s head snapped up, his expression torn between confusion and anger. Yamaguchi grabbed his hand again and met his eyes.
“Take us out of here, to the courtyard behind the school. I’ll prove you’re wrong.”
“Why. . . ?” The boy mumbled and shook his head, but stood up in the miasma.
“Fine, I don’t know what you’re trying to prove.”
Yamaguchi and the spirit, still embedded within the miasma, walked side by side through the darkness. The land god trekked forward confidently, but it faded the longer the pair walked straight into the void of miasma. He had no idea as to whether or not they were actually heading in the direction of the courtyard; the yurei could kill him and leave him there in the emptiness. His spiritual energy was already near to depleted, so he doubted that he could defend himself should he have to. For once, Yamaguchi missed Tsukki and his cruel remarks. He could get them out of this mess, but he wasn’t here now. All he could do is trust that the yurei wanted to entertain him before he killed Yamaguchi.
The yurei in front of him stopped; with a crack, the shroud of miasma lifted, and the pair stood in the courtyard. Yamaguchi squinted and rubbed his eyes as they adjusted to the sudden abundance of light, and took in the scenery of the carefully tended flowerbeds. At the furthest edge of the courtyard stood a marker, a tiny pillar with a plaque. A vase with a shriveled flower was placed next to the stone marker, obviously having been placed long before.
The plaque read, Hanazawa Tori. Golden light reflected across the skyline, causing the spirit to shimmer in and out of view. The yurei stared hard at the marker, his mouth folded into a thin line.
“This is you, isn’t it. . .” Yamaguchi mumbled, and the yurei- Tori nodded shortly.
“That’s why it’s here. I jumped off the roof after classes that day. Senpai had just left for university the day before, and I was just told I would be held back because my grades were so poor,” Tori said. “Not like it matters now.”
Yamaguchi’s heart pained for the spirit. He was still just a kid, burdened by the weight of the world with no one to turn to. An idea spurred in his mind, and he pulled out his final talisman. The ghost glanced at his quizzically for a moment as Yamaguchi carefully printed the charm, but said nothing.
Inspecting his work, Yamaguchi took a heavy breath and uttered a silent prayer.
Please. I may just be a new land god, but please work. For Tori’s sake.
The talisman was flung into the wind and sailed off in the breeze. Yamaguchi watched it go and then turned to Hanazawa, placing a hand on his ghostly shoulder.
“. . .Like I said, it doesn’t matter anymore,” Tori mumbled. “Senpai is off at university, he has a future. I didn’t even have that when I was alive. He probably forgot all about me.”
Yamaguchi said nothing, and the pair stood in total silence for a few brief moments. The sound of footsteps soon reverberated through the air, and Yamaguchi smiled.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Tori.”
Confused, the spirit glanced over his shoulder and gasped gently. A tall young man approached the marker, a bundle of pale blue flowers in his arms as he studied Yamaguchi.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t expect someone else to be here.”
Yamaguchi dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “No worries. Are you here to pay your respects as well?”
The man responded with a bitter smile, “I suppose I am. I was in town this week, so I thought I should stop by.” As he spoke, he gently replaced the previous flower arrangement with his own; Yamaguchi noted that the flowers were what he believed to be called forget-me-nots. “This was someone dear to me, and it’s been a while since I’ve been able to leave any more flowers. I’m glad that someone else is here to watch after him while I’m away.”
“Someone dear to you?”
“Yes, he was an underclassman below me. He died shortly after I graduated,” The man said. Yamaguchi watched the man as he worked. He wasn’t similar to Tsukishima as the boy described, but more mellow and genuine. Perhaps he had changed since that semester.
“I see. You must have really cared for him.”
“I did. I can only hope that he’s at peace now.”
Yamaguchi nodded, “If you’d like, we can say a prayer for him together.” The man agreed, and the pair clasped their hands together as they offered their prayers to the marker. The upperclassman bid his farewells, leaving Yamaguchi alone save for the yurei.
The boy glanced over at the spirit, a sobbing heap in the glass below him. Yamaguchi felt a tang of bittersweetness in his veins.
“Please, be at rest now. You’ve suffered so long in life, you deserve peace now.” Yamaguchi patted the spirit’s head one final time, as Tori’s tears began to subside and he faded with one final ‘thank you’.
Yamaguchi collected himself and gazed down at the stone marker and the vase contents for a bit longer. Ah, it’s late by now; Tsukishima probably freaked out when he disappeared there.
“You idiot! What the hell were you thinking calling me off back there?!”
Speak of the devil. . .
“What!? It worked, didn’t it?!” Yamaguchi gestured wildly. “The yurei is gone now thanks to me, so it’s fine!”
“You could have gotten yourself killed! ”
“Wouldn’t you enjoy that?! You’d be free of being my familiar!”
Tsukishima huffed. “Just because I loathe serving a human god doesn’t mean that I can simply let you go out and off yourself. Otherwise, the Sugawara shrine would fall into disarray.” He was silent for a moment. “So, you used your final talisman to urge that boy’s upperclassman to the shrine.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say urge. I just hoped it would get where it needed to go.”
The kitsune grunted.
“Tsukishima?”
The kitsune grunted again.
“I’m about to pass out, so please catch me.”
The shrine was a bit busier than usual, Yamaguchi noted. While still not as many patrons as they were hoping, there were a few couples praying for a bountiful relationship, which Yamaguchi happily complied to the best of his ability. Even Yachi, with her anxious demeanor, seemed to relax. Tsukishima as well, though the kitsune still continued his provoking and the pair continued to bicker.
Yamaguchi smiled. Though he wasn’t anticipating the sudden godhood bestowed upon him, maybe it wasn’t as bad as it could be, after all.
Behind the kotatsu where Yamaguchi diligently prepared his talismans, a bonsai delicately bloomed flowers of various, shimmering blues.