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Keisuke is an only child. His father went away and never came back, and his mother works too many hours for him to be comfortable at home. His grandmother tries, but she’s old, and for an energetic kid like him, staying still while she knits becomes impossible after five minutes of trying.
That is not to say he’s lonely.
His childhood consists of hours upon hours of playing around in the streets, getting into trouble with his friends, grinning and running away from the old ladies with brooms that scream out loud “troublemakers!” while chasing them, furious about the mess they’ve left in their gardens.
Even now, as a teenager, he likes wandering about, helping out at his mother’s store, taking care no one thinks themselves too clever by half and tries to rob it. His figure, now that he’s grown, is intimidating enough, and if not, well―he’s not been outrun yet, except for that bastard Manjirō, who’s too fast for anyone, really.
Still, he doesn’t usually spend time at home.
“Stop leaving food for the stray animals, Keisuke!” His mother scolds him, angered by the dirty paws all over the tatami. “How many times will I have to tell you?”
Keisuke avoids the kick she aims his way (he’s a master at it by now) and furrows his brows. “I left the door to my room closed because of this, why did you open it?”
“Huh? I didn’t open it.” His mother scoffs. “Don’t blame others for your faults! When did you become so forgetful?”
Yeah, no. Keisuke’s pretty sure he closed the door when he went out today.
“I didn’t!”
Baji Ryōko huffs. “At least clean it up.” Irritated, she throws the cleaning cloth she's holding at his chest, hitting him directly. She starts to walk away, but, as he crouches down, she adds: “It goes all the way to your bedroom!”
He grumbles, annoyed, but starts wiping down the dirt from cat paws. There seem to have been two of them, prancing and squabbling about, by the looks of it. He sighs, fond, wanting to have seen the scene.
He’s cleaning his bedroom’s floor, almost done with it, when a shiver goes down his spine.
There it is.
He doesn’t know exactly since when, but someone―something―has been watching him. It’s unsettling, even though it doesn’t feel malicious.
Keisuke doesn’t know who―what―is observing him so curiously. He stills, and waits, but nothing shows up. He sees from the corner of his eyes, sometimes, a silhouette, but there’s nothing afterwards.
It’s been a couple of months since it’s started happening. He worried, at first, but it―they?―hasn’t tried anything, nor has shown an ounce of vile intent towards him or his family. He wonders what’s so intriguing about the life he leads, in a town in bumfuck nowhere, but doesn’t dwell much on it.
“Oi,” he speaks up, heading towards his window. “Were you the one who opened up the door?”
He doesn’t receive an answer, of course, not even an acknowledgement. Maybe he’s talking to the wind and this is all a paranoia of his, but he doesn’t think so. He huffs, and continues wiping down the floor.
It doesn’t take a long to finish scrubbing it down, and he takes the chance to fill the bowls for the strays that live in the surroundings again―without caring about the strong opinions of his mother on the matter.
He hears the rustling of leaves, and turns to look outside. But, other than the same tree branches he stares at every day―
Nothing.
Keisuke sighs, hand running through his hair. He expected it, but still…
“Hm?” He frowns, noticing something on the ledge of the window. He walks closer, cautious, until he can see clearly what it is, and his eyes widen in surprise.
There’s a wrapped candy waiting for him, still rocking slightly, whoever’s left it fast enough not to get caught. It’s the type of candy he likes the most. A rare find in the store owned by the old lady from a couple of streets down. The type of candy he always fights with Kazutora over, because his friend loves them almost as much as he does.
“What the hell?”
He looms over the street, trying to find out who could’ve left it. But people pass by without any kind of thought regarding the boy peeking out from his two-story window, and he’s left wondering alone.
The presence he’s felt for the last hour or so is fainter now than it was before.
He grabs the candy, examining it, but no, it really is just that peach-flavoured candy that’s so hard to find.
The wind blows his hair away from his face, and Keisuke is left bewildered, looking towards the afternoon sky with a candy in hand and giggles echoing in his ears.
It’s not weird, from then on, to find gifts for him in places where whoever is putting them knows Keisuke will notice.
He tries to talk to it, when he feels its presence and he’s alone―he doesn’t need the scarce population of this town thinking he’s gone off his rocker―to no avail, because the entity doesn’t answer to any of his words, frustrated or gentle.
The gifts themselves are… weird. Some of them, like the wrapped candy, are trinkets and small portions of food. In one memorable occasion, a potato had been left on top of his table for him to find once he was home again.
Other times, they’re just. Dead animals.
Dead mice, dead fish, dead birds.
He’s used to those types of gifts, courtesy of the cats he feeds from time to time, but never so consistently. His mother gives him the stink eye when she notices how frequently the bodies end up in the bin, but Keisuke ignores her the best he can.
Most curious thing of all, it’s never the same gift twice.
One day, late at night, laying on his bed, he stares at the first gift he got, wrapped candy in between his fingers, and wonders.
“What are you…?”
Will you ever let me see you?
A creature that won’t let anybody see it, but can come and go as it pleases. Someone he’s not interacted with before, something that, for some reason, has taken an interest in him and in him alone.
He doesn’t talk about it with his friends. He mentioned it to his mother once, in passing, and all she’d done was stare at him, sceptical, before rolling her eyes and saying, you’d be better off asking your grandmother about it.
When he did ask her about it, her stare became piercing, as if trying to see the veracity in his words.
“A presence? Keisuke-chan, since when? What intent can you perceive?”
It was weird to see her so awake and attentive to a random topic, but he answered, either way. “It's been a few months. It’s not…” Words have never come easily to him, but he tried to explain the best he could. “It doesn’t feel bad. Almost―thankful, in a way. I don’t know.” He ran his hand through his hair, frustrated. “Mum said to ask you about it.”
His grandmother laughed. “Of course, she did.” She stared off in the distance, as if remembering something from long ago. “It doesn’t seem like it’ll be a bad omen. Maybe you helped a spirit without knowing, and they’re repaying your actions.”
A spirit? He wanted to roll his eyes. It’s been decades since the forest by the town had last been regarded as a place where spirits dwelled, legends passing by word of mouth about the apparent mystical creatures living in it, either watching over the people or wishing them ill.
But, in front of his grandmother, he didn’t dismiss her words.
“You think so?” He murmured, fidgeting, puzzling over the situation.
She snorted. “Oh, I know so.”
The more he repeats those words in his mind, the more he cannot fault his grandmother for thinking it might be a spirit of some kind.
Maybe it is.
He honestly doesn’t know anymore.
Eyes dropping from the tiring day, they snap open the moment he feels that familiar stare upon him. He’s got used to it, in the months he’s spent trying to catch whatever it is he’s chasing.
His head turns towards the window, attuned to that presence way more than he would like to be. Curiosity and wariness war inside of him, but he stays quiet, trying not to breathe too loud, not to make any sound, wanting to see if they’re going to do anything else other than watch.
“Hey,” he calls after a while. “What are you?”
There is no answer.
“Seriously,” he mutters. “You’re starting to freak me out,” he says out loud, turning his whole body towards the window, eyes seeking any kind of shadow that stands out against the branches of the tree. “It’s annoying.”
Everything’s silent, as it’s been the past times he’s tried communicating with what’s watching him. Everything’s silent, until there’s a shift in the atmosphere.
There’s―a sense of hesitancy in the air, not something Keisuke has felt coming from them before, and he perks up, waiting.
Waiting, until there’s a faint light, almost like a fire―actually, he’s pretty sure it’s floating fire what the fuck―and an even fainter meowing that echoes through his dead-silent room. He holds his breath, afraid it might make them, it, whatever-it-is, go away if he makes any kind of sudden movements or, who knows, breathes too loud.
A human-like figure appears crouched on his desktop, light-blue fire around them. They appear mostly masculine, a lean, boy-like body, dressed in what Keisuke assumes are traditional garments, white top and blue hakama pants, eerily resembling that of a miko.
Glowing eyes and posture of a predator, what shakes Keisuke to his core are the fucking cat ears that twitch in a very real manner and the two tails that swing behind them.
He sits up, startled, and opens his mouth, trying to say something to the creature that’s invaded his room, not even sure if he’s dreaming or not.
But the other speaks up first.
“Did you not like it?”
What.
Keisuke might need to get his ears checked because he cannot comprehend the words coming out of the―spirit’s?―mouth.
“What?”
“The candy,” his opposite points out. “You didn’t eat it.”
What does that even have to do with anything!?
“Why―” He starts, struggling to make the words leave his throat. His hand trembles, clenched in a fist, heart racing faster than three thousand horses together. “Are you the one who’s been watching me?”
Stupid question, he thinks. Keisuke's too familiar with the weight of those eyes to make such a mistake.
An adorable―no, terrifying smile makes its way on the features of whatever the fuck is on top of his desk right now. “Yeah.”
Keisuke’s so.
Just―
What. What is happening.
Please.
“Why?”
The blond―because that blob of hair on the mystical being’s head is blond―frowns at his question, tilting his―their?―head without blinking, taking time to answer.
“Baji-san saved me.”
Baji-san? Is that supposed to be me? What the fuck?
It’s the only explanation he’s offered, though.
“When? How?”
The creature pouts and one of his ears twitches. It’s menacingly adorable. “You don’t remember?”
Keisuke gulps. “I don’t.”
“Even though you took care of me?”
The question catches him off guard. Because he’s pretty sure he would remember taking care of a pretty boy with fucking cat ears and cat tails and are those claws? attached to him, but he doesn’t. So.
He frowns. “I didn’t.”
The other does, too. “You did.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did!”
“Well, I don’t remember it!”
Why are all of this creature’s gestures so adorable. Why. He puffs up like a cat, and a glimpse of his mouth reveals fangs. Small, baby fangs.
What the fuck is happening.
The cat-boy growls, and Keisuke grips his sheets with a strength he didn’t know he had, almost ripping them out.
But he doesn’t attack, or throw that weird fire at him. Instead, the cat-like creature turns even more cat-like, because he turns into a fucking cat.
A cat Keisuke actually knows.
A meow echoes through his room. He watches as the fire hovering in the air disappears and the cat comes crawling towards him, jumping on his bed, rubbing on his legs like Keisuke’s experienced him doing a million times.
“Wait, wait―you’re…?” Automatically, he raises a hand and pets him, inciting a purr from the cat-whatever-he-is-boy.
He guesses it’s true, then, that Keisuke saved him. He did rescue this particular cat after he’d appeared wounded in an alley, surrounded by growling dogs that Keisuke chased away himself.
Despite the protests he knew his mother would put, he’d taken the cat home, taking care of him for two weeks, treating his injuries and feeding him through it.
Usually by a black cat’s side, he’d been untrusting and reluctant at first, although too weak to oppose his care. And, with patience, he’d managed to get the cat to lean into his pets, and he’d even ended up following Keisuke around, rubbing against his legs like an affectionate house-cat.
Then, one night, he hadn’t come back, and Keisuke figured that was it.
Clearly, it wasn’t it.
What. The actual. Fuck.
“Believe me, now?”
The voice startles him, coming from the cat―the fucking cat―and he stops petting him, frozen in his spot.
“Baji-san, don’t stop! I like it when you pet me.”
Why is the cat talking. Someone make it stop. Please.
Tentatively, Keisuke raises his hand again, caressing through his ears the way he knows he likes, minutely relaxing by the familiar feeling of fur under his fingers. He keeps at it, he doesn’t know for how long, but when his consciousness comes back from whatever dreamland he’d stepped in, he finds the cat-creature curled up in his lap, purring under his ministrations.
“What are you?” He whispers, the green-blue eyes of the cat opening, lifting his head at the question.
“A nekomata.”
What the fuck are those? Brain, come on, remember grandma’s stories, what the hell is a nekomata and why on Earth do I have one in my lap, please don’t fail me now.
It takes its time, but Keisuke’s brain does manage to remember a few facts about them, learnt throughout his childhood in an attempt from his grandmother not to let him get too bored, lest he burned down someone else's lawn again.
Huh. “Aren’t you guys supposed to be pretty violent?”
The cat hisses. “I am!” He proudly proclaims. “But Baji-san is the coolest, so I don’t mind being treated like this.”
Question marks fly through Keisuke’s head a lot faster than he’s used to, understanding absolutely fuck all about the situation he’s landed himself into.
“So I saved you,” he tries to sum up what’s happened in order to make sense of it. “And you… stalked me?”
The cat in his lap deflates. “I wanted to thank you properly. But I don’t know much of human customs, or what you’d like the most as a gift…” His ears flatten against his head, bashful, and Keisuke shouldn’t be finding it so damn adorable. He absolutely shouldn’t. “Baji-san, you humans sure are a handful. It took me weeks to find that sweet thing you like! And you didn’t even eat it.”
Just then, the cat starts to lick off Keisuke’s fingers, raspy tongue and all, and Keisuke’s brain is two seconds away from breaking and never functioning again.
“Right. Sorry about that,” why the fuck am I apologizing to a cat, “I’m… going to sleep.”
And forget this happened at all.
Keisuke’s pretty sure it’s all a dream.
The cat paws at his chest, nose scrunching up, and it’s too fucking cute. “You won’t eat it? At all?”
Someone should remind Keisuke this creature has been stalking and leaving him dead doves and trash finds in his room for the past few months. Really. Before he kisses him or something.
He takes the candy from atop the bedsheets, where he’d accidentally dropped it, and unwraps it, thoughts of why am I doing this? on loop. Meanwhile, a larger part of him has given up on understanding what has been going on since the start of this whole scene.
“Happy, now?” He asks as he munches on the peach-flavoured sweet.
The cat purrs, and rubs against his chest, Keisuke’s hand gently going up-and-down his back.
You know what. Okay. Whatever.
He falls down on his bed, and ignores the sensation of the cat stepping on his chest and curling up on it.
It’s a dream. It’s all been a fucking dream.
When Keisuke wakes up, he’s warm. That’s the first thing he feels. Then, he registers the sunlight hitting his eyes, and the breathing coming from next to him―
The breathing coming from next to him―
The what―!?
His eyes snap open, body rigid and tense, and that’s when he notices the fact that there’s another body sharing his bed with him, and that last night was not a fucking dream.
The cat-boy-creature with cat ears and cat tails and cat claws sleeps by his side without a care in the world, blond hair falling on his features, too fucking pretty, really.
He stares, and stares, and maybe he should go back to sleep.
It’s too early for this shit.
“Baji-san…?” The being calls out, sea-green eyes blinking awake. He smiles at him, sweet, sleepiness clinging into it. “Good morning.”
Automatically, he answers: “Good morning.”
They stare at each other for a long ass time. Seconds and minutes pass by, and Keisuke lifts his hand, ruffling through the other’s hair like he’d done when he’d been a cat.
He purrs.
Right.
Keisuke doesn’t know how to go from here. Does he say thanks, and tell the nekomata to move on? Is the cat even coming back, after this? Will he eat Keisuke, now that he knows what he is?
He stops the petting, trying his best to ignore the whine that leaves the mouth of the other.
“Are you gonna eat me?”
The blond startles before laughing out loud, so much so that he worries his mother will hear him.
“Eat you, Baji-san?” He asks, laughter still leaving him in puffs. “Why would I do that?”
Keisuke shrugs, blush rising in his cheeks. “Aren’t you a nekomata? Isn’t that what you do?”
The creature huffs. “If you were anyone else, maybe,” he ponders, ignorant of the way Keisuke shivers at the casual way it’s said, suddenly aware of the claws he can see from the corner of his eyes. “But I like Baji-san, so I won’t. I already told you, I was thanking you,” he pouts. “But Baji-san didn’t accept my gifts until last night, so I kept trying, and…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, blushing, ears flattening against his head once more, embarrassed.
This feral, deadly mythical cat is going to kill him.
His pout, the way the sun rays make of his hair a golden halo, those beautiful cat-slitted irises―
“Ah,” he acknowledges, hand awkwardly hovering between them. “What happens now, then?”
Keisuke doesn’t know what he wants the answer to be.
The blond tilts his head, eyebrows furrowing, as if confused at the question. “I stay, of course.”
“You… stay?” He repeats. “Here?”
As mischievous as he’s seen other cats can be, a sudden movement from the nekomata leaves him with his back against the mattress, lean but strong arms on either side of his head, the boy on top of him.
Tails swinging behind him, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. Keisuke gulps, keeping still, heart in his throat at the other’s smirk.
“My name’s Chifuyu,” he purrs out, tongue poking out, licking his lips. “Baji-san must take responsibility for me.”
Responsibility? What the fuck―?
But he cannot think more, for Chifuyu lowers himself down and aligns their lips together, kissing him full on the mouth. Keisuke reacts almost without wanting to, kissing back, letting himself be led by the enticing creature that’s interrupted his peaceful life.
When they separate, Keisuke still cannot process whatever has just happened.
Did―? No, no, no, wait―
“Since it was Baji-san who made me fall in love with him.”
The murmur reaches his ears, and his eyes widen in surprise, and he gets stuck looking at the satisfied happiness radiating from the cat―from Chifuyu. He’s staring at Keisuke with something close to love shining through, a wide smile completing the picture.
Keisuke is sure he’s blushing, regardless of how much he shouldn’t be.
When the nekomata lays against his chest, content and resembling a cat that’s found the perfect spot for a nap, Keisuke resumes petting his head, instinctively, ears and hair soft to the touch.
The purr that builds up and echoes through Keisuke’s ribs is endearing. Too cute.
What the hell is happening.
He stares at the roof, predator docile under his ministrations, brain broken.
What.