Chapter Text
返送 (hensou, lit. return to sender)
It sat atop the growing pile of envelopes, a dissident with crooked stamp and crushed corners. While its compatriots adorned themselves in curling scripts and flattered addressees—“to the Esteemed Master of the Hikari estate,” “to the Honorable Hikari-sensei,” “to the Finest Artist of our time,” with increasing passion—this one instead bore the lazily scrawled words “to Whom It May Concern.”
“Whom It May Concern” happened to be the garbage pail in the master’s private study, though the master himself was as unaware of and disinterested in this unusual delivery as any batch of fanmail.
A study was a place of business and learning, neither of which were needed by a talented artist such as Hikari Fukami. His slippery and efficient broker had unofficially acquired the space some years ago to deal with so-called unnecessary distractions. Neither financial nor social gain would be found in an envelope that couldn’t bother to name its famed recipient.
And so the man known to most as, fittingly, “the Broker” resumed prying apart hard wax seals on elegant envelopes with a dull silver knife, saving the ones whose contents promised future sales, or at least whose materials suggested wealth to waste. The rest joined their unopened black sheep brother at the bottom of the bin with scarcely a sound; their heartfelt words of admiration skimmed once and promptly forgotten.
***
A pink tongue peeked out of the wide smile as he hunched forward, covering his handiwork with both lean arms.
“Come on,” a boy with short black hair hissed to his left, half-smothering a grin with an impatient scowl. “What’s taking so long?”
“A real master’s work is never done, only interrupted,” Niwa Taize intoned in a perfectly reedy imitation of his great-grandfather—minus the bald head, peacefully droopy eyelids, and kimono that looked like it’d survived the Genroku period. The old man would have been proud of how far he’d come. Probably.
“Master, my ass!” Someone snorted from behind.
“Would any of you boys like to explain why you’re interrupting my lesson?” A deeper and extraordinarily tired voice said from the front of the room.
“I would!” Taize’s hand shot into the air at the same time his other covered the desk’s contents. “We’re debating whether your sideburns are real or glued on.”
“Glued,” their teacher, Ichikawa, answered without a change in inflection, peeling one sideburn away, to the surprised laughter of the class. His bored expression remained fixed on the preening redhead; there was a fifty percent chance at any moment he was counting down the days until spring, when Taize would finally change classrooms.
“Yes yes,” he said, pressing the fake hair back in place. “Now pay attention to the board. You’re two weeks late for your assignment, Niwa-san.”
Taize pursed his lips. “You already graded my essay—”
“The letters, Niwa-san.” A seventy-five percent chance.
“I sent mine!” He hunched forward over-dramatically under the injustice, sparing a glance at the more interesting work still hidden by his arm, which he’d actually never stopped working on despite the attention upon him.
“And the reply?”
“Uh...” He spied his disloyal deskmate snickering behind his hand. “Mail’s been slow.”
“You’re the only one who hasn’t started the second round of letters. You don’t need to tell me all the private details in your report; simply explain the nature of the conversation and how you’re employing proper epistolary etiquette.”
That sounded like way too much work. Taize’s perfect grades could absorb the dent of a failed assignment. As if any of the subjects in middle school were hard anyway. His gaze flicked towards the window. It definitely wasn’t an eyeroll, if just barely; his ears had taken enough abuse from family for those signs of “impudence”.
His first year had been a breeze so far! What were they all so worried about? But for appearances—
“What do you mean second round? There’s more?”
Ichikawa pinched the bridge of his nose. The tension in his brow loosened earlier’s famed sideburn, making it dangle precariously off his temple. Ninety-one percent chance.
“The goal is to learn how to write and respond to missives, of which you will no doubt handle many when you enter adult society.” Something told Taize that phantom thieves didn’t communicate like the rest of the world. “And in the process, you’ll potentially build a unique and amicable relationship outside of your immediate surroundings.”
“What if I don’t get a response?”
“You were given a list of willing participants and their addresses. If one isn’t responding, let me know and I’ll reach out.”
Ah yes, there had been a list. But Taize knew better; his choice had been the funniest one.
That was before he knew he’d needed to make real contact and not just send a stupid message out into the wide, wide mail system. Too late to go back now.
Yep, failure was the obvious choice.
“I’ll get right on that, sir!” he chirped with the youthful deference that had long since stopped working at home. Ichikawa stared for enough seconds to suggest that it might be wearing off at school too, but then he returned to his unfinished chalkboard. The rest of the students resumed scratching notes with chalk onto their personal slates.
Taize flipped up his slate and spun it twice with one finger, grin spreading as his handiwork came to a stop in front of his friends’ widening eyes.
When Ichikawa turned around once more at the sound of raucous laughter, he found its source from both boys and girls who sat at desks adjacent to one dutiful and innocently smiling Niwa Taize.
The teacher’s sigh was so heavy, Taize could almost hear the words: how many months until spring?
***
Whom It May Concern—the plain iron garbage pail wore its name with pride—did not receive another unopened letter immediately. It did not receive much of anything lately, as the room’s main occupant had once again left to travel beyond the borders of Azumano for business opportunities elsewhere, as he often did when the months grew hot. The dense wooden desk nearby, with its carved grape vines winding up the sides, heroically bore the weight of a growing stack of envelopes and documents.
Visitors shone light into their domain every day, opening the shutters and windows at daybreak when the sky wore more blue than grey, and in the evenings with a candlestick. They all wore the same simple, purple dresses throughout the Hikari estate.
One peculiar day, the same time the Broker exchanged pleasantries at a gallery in a neighboring city and the master of the house returned from a shopping trip for supplies in his own city, a young maid tended to her usual task of dusting the furniture, bookshelves, and any other surface her short stature could reach with a stick of feathers. She paid no mind to the wavy blond hairs that brushed her cheeks as she bent forward to wipe the wooden desk, carefully placing each item onto the floor.
The garbage pail was lifted and emptied into a large sack she’d dragged into the room prior. Delicate fingers plucked a blackened cloth from her waistband and wiped each item as it was returned to its rightful place atop the shiny desk. Ink bottles, an abacus, and seal stamps filled the nooks and crannies, in the exact locations their owner, with strict organization, had left them a week prior.
The maid paused upon placing the tray of mail, her hand brushing over the envelopes in that way particular to household servants—with curiosity and plausible deniability.
Until she eschewed any deniability and flipped the unopened envelopes one-by-one, eyes scanning the names as if they meant anything to her.
After the briefest pause and a nod to no one, she picked up the tray and braced it against her hip, other arm scooping up the sack of garbage as she left.
***
“Fukami-sama, you have mail!”
Brass tweezers snapped closed at the unexpected sound and sent the tiny screw flying off into the nether where a large chunk of his materials liked to sojourn lately.
The universe knew he should be working on his latest landscape for a “highly regarded patron” rather than toying with mechanics.
The universe was more forgiving than his broker when it came to unprofitable endeavors, believe it or not.
“Yuu, where have you been?” Fukami barked.
She hadn’t been in the studio when he started working, which was all well and good. He needed to make progress on this before the pushy family guardian returned, and she was a noisy distraction where focus was key for fine metalwork.
“Here are your letters, sir.” She didn’t answer the question, of course, though he could see them on the tray in her hands! Fukami raked fingers through his fine blue hair with a scowl, which somehow prompted her to continue. “They must have been piling up in your study. Broker-san said he would be gone until next Tuesday, but if any of these are urgent…”
“That’s not my problem.” He paused before his blue eyes narrowed. “Why were you in the study anyway?” It was Fukami’s in name only, but he didn’t bother to explain that to her.
“I help the others clean when I’m not at your side,” she answered as if it were obvious, with a tilt of her head and wide, attentive gaze upon him.
His face heated with frustration at the frankness this maid always showed. He tossed his tweezers onto the table with a bit of extra force to add some authority to his next order. The universe, ever balanced, replied by scattering more screws and bits of metal onto the floor and into another dimension. Still, he said, “Well, I’m here now, so stay nearby!”
“Yes sir.” She bobbed a bow. Her voice rang as clear as usual.
He cast his eyes to the tiled floor around his little worktable. Of course none of the pieces could be recovered without undignified crawling. That had been stupid. The last thing he wanted was to return to the supplies shop after less than a day. Oh yes, the owner would be delighted; a shopping Hikari brought a lot of renown (and money) to even the most decrepit store, which then brought a lot of nuisances in the form of new customers and nosy clerks.
He jerked back in surprise as a hill of letters appeared under his nose. Yuu had stepped closer, holding out the tray with polite insistence.
“What are you working on today?” She leaned forward to peer at his project, whose outer wood, burned with elegant black roses, hadn’t even been varnished yet.
“Nothing!” He said reflexively. “An experiment. It’s not even worth finishing.” He leaned back further, growing more and more agitated with the invasion of his personal space. It wasn’t the first time Yuu had expressed interest in his art; she gave more quick and honest assessments than a maid should when this work paid everyone’s salaries. But the would-be music box she currently examined was still in its sloppy infancy and—
“Put the mail on the desk,” Fukami bit out and slumped in a fleeting moment of relief when she did just that. He snatched the beige cloth from the back of his chair and draped it over the table’s contents. Arms crossed across his chest, he stalked forward to the unused desk by the window. The summer breeze tossed sheer curtains around them and tossed Yuu’s long blond locks that stubbornly refused to stay pinned with the rest of her hair. Her small hand smoothed the topmost envelopes, revealing the multiple layers beneath. He sighed loudly. This was well and truly not worth his time.
Yuu held one letter out to him when he made no move to grab any. He glared down at the folded envelope instead of her expectant smile. Whatever. Work on the music box had already been interrupted; he’d deal with this if it meant getting his peace back.
On the envelope, his address and name swirled in ostentatious script. As he pulled at the wax seal, bits of supple cotton paper ripped away with it. The letter itself was normal enough, save the perplexing odor of strawberries. He numbly held it out the sheet for Yuu to have a sniff. Her raised brows and lips curved in amusement somehow said the same as his twisted frown. It read: “Dear Hikari-sensei, many a year have passed since I entertained a certain historian and professor of the name…” He skimmed further down. “…upon laying my eyes on its supremely crafted surface, I fell into an enchantment of which there is no escape. I must express my heartfelt wishes to see more works of similar bewitchment with mine own eyes so that I too may…” Fukami dropped the sheet and its envelope beside the tray, the first member of the “garbage pile”.
Said garbage pile grew up fast, with similar beautifully scribbled rants and buttering up of the great artist. He’d heard them all before at galleries which insisted on his presence (unenthusiastic or not), unnecessary reports of pleased customers by his broker, and even today by a crowd of amateurs in Basho and Son Supplies.
Yuu tugged the tray closer to her end of the table to make room for a much smaller “might be important” pile that the Broker would be gifted upon his highly anticipated return. His ruthless rhythm of opening, reading, and discarding sputtered to a stop when he mechanically took from Yuu a coarse envelope bound with cheap twine rather than richly colored wax pressed with family crests. An infuriatingly stubborn knot almost led to the whole thing being dumped into the garbage pile unopened, but with a masterful technique called “bending the damned thing” he slipped the loop of twine clean off.
The contents were worse.
It was barely a letter at all. Not fanmail. Not business inquiries. Not even unsubtle requests for endorsements by the most famous clan of creators for Azumano’s newest supplier of art materials.
“Dear Hikari,” The poor excuse for a message began well enough, employing proper markings and greetings. Then it plunged off the cliff of coherency. “I’d wager all the money to my esteemed name that you couldn’t draw a masterpiece more handsome than this. I’m thinking of loaning a similar one to the Le Garre Museum as I hear they’re desperate for fresh talent. Until then, I look forward to your heartfelt apology for making me endure your dusty Hikaris year in and year out.”
“What the hell…?” he said, not registering for several seconds that he ought to lean back when Yuu moved to get a closer look.
Below this declaration of war was the worst “drawing” Fukami had seen in his life. It might have been a man, initially, but its head was too big and some kind of growth dangled from the back of its head. Its rake-like hands bore eleven misshapen fingers on each. A giant spiky ball with the smiling face of a cat floated in the air beside the monstrosity.
It was politely and messily signed:
“Yours heartily and affectionately,
Rabbit.”
Fukami had never been so insulted and nonplussed in his life.
“What the hell is this!?”
He flipped over the envelope in his other hand. It bore only a stamp and two addresses, his own and one that belonged to a district across town. It too was written in the sloppiest characters he’d ever seen. Truly a testament to the dedication of Azumano’s postmen.
“Will you respond to Rabbit-san, sir?” The hand in front of her mouth did nothing to hide the restrained laughter in her voice, nor stop the angry red creeping onto his cheeks. Was she making fun of him too? Did she agree with that drivel…?
Absolutely not. He slammed the letter into the garbage pile where it bounced unsatisfyingly atop the papers. Fukami had better things to do than… whatever the hell this was. He had a duty to his family name and household to produce fine art worth more than a prankster would ever earn. And he’d continue producing that while he forgot all about the letter that managed to out-stupid every piece of fanmail read in the past half-hour.
That's what he’d do.
But Yuu was here. And the music box’s pieces were still on the floor. And those horrific rake fingers burned behind the fingers currently pressed into his eyelids.
“Yuu!” When he opened his eyes, she turned away from the pile of papers and snapped to attention, not even bothering to hide her smile anymore. Fukami straightened his shoulders and ordered with regal dignity, like the previous outburst had never happened, “Bring me paper, ink, and a pen.”
***
Taize blew on the drying ink until it lost its shine and stacked the floppy paper atop its brethren. His reports were coming along nicely.
Who could have predicted that skipping a few assignments might lead to a certain not-actually-sideburned teacher and principal visiting his family for dinner? Those two could never have known what would happen after they left, but the sight of their coach rolling up to his home had been a clear omen of doom.
One must experience it in person to believe the deafening scolding that came from the eldest Niwa nobleman.
His flighty parents had sided with his grandfather, of course. Ruining the family name, shirking responsibilities, all-around childishness, it was the usual spiel. After his daily training avoiding deathtraps set by his loving relatives, Taize sat at his desk pushed against the window and wrote. And wrote. And then wrote some more. The new long con provided some entertainment at least. He tapped the hot glass of the oil lamp perched on the corner of his desk and watched the flame dance around the wick. His parents had seen him mail the past two envelopes, so that part of the story was corroborated. They hadn’t seen where or whom he’d sent them to, and for that he might have to thank his lucky stars. Hidden under a false bottom of a drawer on his desk sat a batch of envelopes “from his pen pal”.
He rolled his left hand, soothing the muscles still sore days later. The replies to his own letters couldn’t resemble his real handwriting, after all. He had all the evidence he needed if anyone questioned the legitimacy of his reports and sudden and beautiful friendship with a fellow teen he’d never met. With that in mind, he lifted the glass to blow out the flame and dropped his head onto his pillow with a contented sigh. His fake report and letters were flawless. He could steer the story whichever direction he wished and shift course to believable waters at the drop of a hat. Come tomorrow, he’d be back in both his teacher’s and family’s good graces and, most importantly, they’d be out of his hair.
Thus the next morning started like any other.
His bag rested against the wall in the corner of the dining room as he sat between his father and grandfather and ate breakfast.
“Sit up straight at the table. You’re a Niwa, not a barn animal,” the old man chided. After all these years, he hadn’t tired of this daily routine.
“Taize, eat more meat. You need to build muscle,” the slightly younger man supplied while holding out a plate. Taize recognized the concern to mean “today’s traps are extra-deadly.” His father just liked worrying; after all, Taize never so much as got a scratch from traps these days despite the Niwa clan’s best and brightest attempts.
Two knocks on the door perked With up from the top of his spiky red head. The white rabbit flapped his ears and floated to the window, kyuu’ing happily at the man in a brown hat who waved through the glass. In one fluid motion, his mother removed her apron, opened the door, and greeted with bow.
“Mail, ma’am,” the postman said, bowing in return and lifting his hat. He should have just kept it on to save them the sight of his sweaty hat hair. “And ‘morning, With.” He reached into his pocket and plucked out a single grape as he had for the past three years. No one had had the heart to tell him that With preferred other fruits. Still, an immortal animal had his own cons to play and kyuu’d from his spot on the floor, reaching up adorably for the big hand to pet him. Which it did.
Taize propped his chin in his hand, earning a warning grunt from his grandfather, and watched a grown man kneel just outside the door, all but ignoring the lady of the house, to pet the family rabbit.
“I’ve got something else for you too,” he chuckled, with no small amount of awkwardness.
“For... With…?” Taize’s father voiced everyone’s question.
The postman did, in fact, hand a letter, stamped and everything, to With—who, for his part, nibbled on the corner and dragged it back into the kitchen. Taize’s mother scooped up the forgotten grape and thanked the bemused postman warmly.
Shut inside once more, they all stared at With. When With finally lost interest in his not-food present, Taize made the first move towards the discarded mail. A lifetime of phantom thief training stopped him from dropping it in surprise.
Above his home address, in dark blue ink and stately calligraphy, were the words: “To Rabbit.” There was no sender information, no return address, and no doubt about who sent it. This was for him.
“Ah, Tai-chan! Is that from your pen pal? What a pretty envelope!”
Oops, he hadn’t meant to say that last part aloud.
“Why did the postman think it was for With? I swear, he’s becoming more besotted by the day…”
His mother sidled up without a sound, hands clapped in front of her in delight. Taize pressed the soft cream-colored envelope against his chest, mentally preparing a gift basket to his lucky stars for working overtime. He might not have made it out unscathed if there’d been any obvious Hikari trademarks. For all his devious planning, he’d never accounted for the possibility of a real reply. He needed to get away before his stunned face said too much.
“Yes, and it’s private!” He sprinted up the stairs, taking them four at a time and pretending he couldn’t hear his grandfather’s demand to come back and show them.
His back fell against the locked wooden door inside his bedroom, Taize pried the envelope off of his chest and held it out with two pinched fingers. His mouth tried to twist into a triumphant grin but fell closer to a grimace. He crossed the room, dropped it onto his desk, and stared it down.
In a drawer down below sat all the letter replies he’d worked hard to forge. Did he really want to open this can of worms?
Oh, what the hell, of course he did.
He flopped into his hard chair and, ignoring the white wax seal, slipped a finger into the open corner that hadn’t been nibbled on. With a slight pull against more resistance than expected, he ripped one side of the envelope. There was no poison inside, so far as he could see or smell, only regular—supremely high quality—paper. As if Hikari himself had actually written a response to one of his pranks. To Rabbit.
Pulling out the folded stack of papers, Taize threw back his head and laughed.
Naturally, of the two he’d actually sent, Hikari would pick that one.
Still chuckling, he spread the paper flatter with his palms, fondly recalling his “work of art”. It returned from the battlefront with many deep wounds; someone had covered the page with marks of red ink. (How many colors of ink did this guy own?) Arrows of various lengths pointed from flawless script towards his beautiful self-portrait, remarking on everything from the simplistic style to scratchy lines caused by incorrect pressure and loading of the pen. One bold arrow pointed at Taize’s adorably fluffy drawing of With with a simple note: “???”. There even was an intricate illustration of the bone structure of a human hand.
Taize whistled and held the page up, staring at the dark red lines backlit by the blue morning sky. It was almost impressive, if one were impressed by boring, clinical renditions. More like it was too perfect, if that was possible. The guy was totally showing off. But it was a genuine Hikari artwork, and Taize had gotten it without even trying. That should count for something in Niwa history!
“Artwork acquired via doodle exchange. He was the cleverest Niwa ever,” the books would say.
Thievery was about to become passe. His great-grandfather, rest his soul, would’ve coughed a single laugh along with him here.
The head of spiky red hair tilted far back, double-checking the door’s lock upside-down, though it was more decorative than effective in his family. No one else got his sense of humor. This letter might be the final straw that chained him up at home with private tutors like they’d always threatened. Then he’d finally croak of boredom rather than just drowning slowly each and every day. None of this had really been his fault anyway. No one could have predicted the mysterious Perfectionist Hikari would actually respond to a letter addressed to him!
And unpredictable was the opposite of boring.
As the source of “wares” that the Niwa family business “dealt in”, the Hikari estate’s address had been drilled into his head since he could write his own name, and he’d had far too much time to think in class when the pen pal assignment was first announced. By the time his teacher had written out a list of acceptable addressees, the temptation had already ballooned beyond what any mortal man could endure.
Things only got better on the next page. Taize blew a few strands of red from his face, and his grin grew wolfish. Two Hikari artworks for the price of one. The Niwa family business was about to become a Niwa empire. It opened without any honorific attached to Taize’s pen name or even a date.
“A calligrapher’s penmanship cannot make up for poor etiquette,” Taize monotoned in the voice of Ichikawa. He’d say something like that. In his head.
“With careful study, over the course of three-to-four decades, a buffoon such as yourself may yet catch a glimmer of hope in reaching this level of mastery. Compare with your failure and rectify your mistakes. Until such improvement is achieved, I recommend you submit your art to a stove or the floor of a horse’s stall.”
Below that, Hikari had actually attempted to redraw his self-portrait.
He failed horribly. For one, Taize’s ponytail was missing. He didn’t mind the muscles or taller stature though. Broad shoulders ran in the family and he’d get them someday too. He noted with a great dose of relief that the artist had tastefully covered some of his body with a draped cloth, because a nude portrait of himself from his “dangerous and destined” rival would have been… wow, he actually didn’t know how to finish that thought.
Poor With had lost his face entirely and was now a white sea urchin! Or… a sun? The delicately hatched shadows on Older Taize’s figure suggested a bit of light. Whatever, it wasn’t With and was therefore wrong.
The closing at the bottom was equally pretty—and blunt: “Do not contact me again.”
No signature, no declarations of eternal pen pal devotion. This guy really didn’t know how to format these things. Or Ichikawa was spreading lies about adult society.
A pounding on the door and his grandfather’s booming voice slammed Taize back down to earth. “Taize, don’t you dare skip school again! Get out here, now!”
“I’m coming!!”
He tucked the stiff papers and envelope into his shirt and sprinted out of the room faster than the old man could follow. He’d read them over in class for a good laugh.
This didn’t change the original plan one bit, he decided as he snatched his bag from the kitchen corner. Taize still smirked as he effortlessly dodged the traps that had sprung up around the house like mushrooms during his few minutes of distraction.