Chapter Text
Goro was falling.
He'd been falling for quite a while already, down a deep, deep well, and yet it never seemed to end, no bottom in sight. In fact, after many miles of just falling, he was starting to get so used to it that it made him muse on the circumstances that brought him here: yes, he’d been in the garden with his mother, reading a book as part of his daily studies while she rested and enjoyed the summer afternoon, when the unthinkable happened.
A white rabbit had run out of their house through the open patio door, carrying a golden pocket watch in its mouth, the very same pocket watch his father had entrusted Goro with! If he lost it, no amount of studying would make his father less furious or have Goro get out of a punishment that would leave him bruised and in pain for days. His mother had fallen asleep in the warmth of the sun, and knowing she was quite frail, he had not dared to wake her, taking it upon himself to stop the pesky thief in its tracks.
Goro had run after it through the entire garden, following it behind trees and bushes until he suddenly came to a halt in front of what appeared to be a rabbit hole. He had squinted his eyes and tried to look inside, but there had only been darkness. Knowing that the watch was more important than life itself, Goro hadn't given it a single thought in that moment before plunging down the hole and following it.
And then he was falling.
And really, in the time it had taken him to recount all this, he had still not stopped falling, his nape cold from how it was no longer kept warm by caramel-coloured soft strands that the wind of his fall blew up, his poor white shirt crumpled already after he had spent quite some time this morning ironing it to his parents’ satisfaction. He hoped he would stop falling soon so he could fix his appearance, apprehend that criminal rabbit and then quickly return home before his mother woke up. Or what if he’d never return home at all…? Goro shuddered at the thought, or maybe it was just the cold breeze.
He decided to look around to distract himself and noticed that the stone walls were lined with shelves and picture frames holding colourful photos he couldn’t make out with how quickly he was falling past them. There were various jars on the shelves and out of curiosity, he reached out to grab one. It was labelled “ORANGE MARMALADE,” but to his great disappointment, it was empty. Goro wanted to put it back, but the shelf was already far, far away, so he simply let it drop, watching it fall faster than he did. If, coincidentally, anyone was standing below him and got killed from a jar falling on their head, he did not care. It was their own fault for standing there, after all. At least they didn’t have to suffer a fate as his, falling forever with no end in sight!
And just as he thought that, he landed in a stack of hay—gracefully, as if lowered in rather than having fallen through the earth for miles. Goro looked around himself, noting that he seemed to be at the bottom of a long, long well. The jar was nowhere in sight. (He did not care.) There was a door in the wall, unnaturally bright red with golden ornaments in a wall of overgrown dark bricks, and he hoped it would lead him out of there and eventually back to the surface. Goro got up from the haystack, shook out his legs to get rid of the wobbliness in them, brushed the hay off his clothes, and tied his hair together with a little hair tie he always kept on hand. It was probably very messy and unsightly after that fall, so he’d keep it together until the next opportunity came to take care of it.
Opening the door by twisting a golden doorknob and stepping through, he found himself in a very long corridor with even more doors of the same style lining pink and blue and yellow walls adorned with red hearts. Walking over the bright purple plush carpet ground, he tried every door, but all of them seemed to be locked. Eventually, he found himself at the end of the hallway with no door left.
There was a little round table here, so unnoticeable he almost overlooked it and went back to trying to open the doors. On it was a pretty little bottle together with a key. The bottle, rather a decorative glass shape than a practical container for liquid, had a little note attached to it, proclaiming “DRINK ME” in bold, large letters.
Now, Goro knew that such an obvious invitation could only mean that he was dealing with poison here, having been raised from a young age to spot dangers such as these with a keen eye. His father had taught him how to know if something was poisoned from smell and sight alone, had taught him a great many things about how to defend and attack as well, yet Goro saw no one in sight who could possibly want him poisoned.
Suspicious, he opened the bottle and tried to fan himself a whiff of the liquid inside the way he was taught to. It smelled a little familiar. Like cherry pie and vanilla pudding and… more really good things he was suddenly itching to determine, but the smell was too faint to make out more.
Seeing as he was stuck here for now… Maybe poisoning himself would be a better fate than being alone at the bottom of this admittedly quite cosy well forever. Besides, what poison would taste like desserts? He had always imagined poison to taste icky. Like the taste of broccoli, or the smell of his father’s cigarettes. Goro scrunched his nose at the memory alone and up to his lips the bottle went, if only so he could get rid of the phantom smell in his nose.
Cherry pie. Vanilla pudding. Oh! Cinnamon apple crumble and tea biscuits...
There was something else, though, something quite strong yet mild that Goro had always really liked the smell of, something like—
Ah. Coffee!
And just as he realised that, he blinked out of his thoughts to the world around him being ten times bigger than it had just been, himself appearing to be merely the size of a critter, a single table leg as big as a pillar before him.
Goro was peeved, for lack of a better word. Yes, the liquid didn’t appear to be poison—at least he felt quite alive and healthy despite his size—yet it still had effects on his body he could not have anticipated. He felt a little… powerless, being the size that he now was. What if someone else fell down that rabbit hole and found themselves here? They would squash Goro under their shoe without a second thought! Oh, he’d kill whoever thought they could treat him like a bug just because he was one’s size now!
As he pondered the best way to make quick work of a giant, his eyes happened to fall on something shiny behind a curtain, glittering at him and inviting him in. Goro closed the distance without a second thought, having always been attracted to little treasures, but he was disappointed to find that pulling the curtain back only revealed a golden doorknob belonging to a white door his size, red hearts painted all over. At least he could get out of here now.
The doorknob did not give, though, and the sound of a lock resisting his efforts was almost mocking to his ears. Goro pouted to himself, then turned away and scanned the surroundings for anything to open the door with, looking up at the table once more.
Ah, of course—the key! Now why had he been so stupid to forget to pocket it first! He could see it through the glass table, golden and inviting, and he mourned that he only had a crow’s instinct for shiny things and not its wings too, for if he did, he could just soar up and get it in a breeze, probably fly out of the well too while he was at it. Then again, as much as he wanted to leave, doing so without his father’s golden pocket watch would be almost worse than staying. But the door was locked and the key was up there, and actually, had those biscuits always been under the table?
Feeling a little fed up with this game by now, Goro walked over to the plate that surprisingly enough was his size. He crouched down and examined the biscuits. Just as inviting as the bottle had been, each one was proclaiming “EAT ME” in cursive fondant lettering of different colours that still looked a little inedible and poisonous with their purple on pastel green, blue on soft yellow, pink on pitch black as if that particular biscuit had been drenched in tar.
Now, the obvious thing to do was to take the gamble for poison once more and see himself growing to the size of giants again—probably the better approach for survival, he did not want to be squashed under someone else’s shoe!—yet Goro was slowly getting more than just a little annoyed at this.
“Why should I ridicule myself and solve riddles for someone else’s amusement?” he said out loud, both to let whoever could be watching him know and to also speak his decision into existence. “I’m not a child to play with, I’m done with these stupid games!”
Kicking the plate of biscuits away just to warm himself up, Goro stomped back over to the door and didn’t hesitate before delivering a powerful kick to the lock that had the door rattle in its hinges. He let out a frustrated shout, then kicked it again. And again. And again!
It sprang open on the seventh kick, door shooting back to let Goro through, and he couldn’t help but let out a victorious little laugh. “That’s what you get for daring to stand in my way!”
Ducking his head and stepping through, he made his way forward, leaving behind the hallway of many doors and its magical treats enticing him into falling prey to their changes.
Goro soon found himself on a hill looking down into a beautiful garden, the meadows green, yellow, purple, pink, so bright the colours reminded him of candy, rather. Even the clouds looked soft and edible, bouncing off each other and tumbling across the sky, painting over its azure blue with their many pastels. Birds flew past, their shape foreign to Goro as well as the occasional noise he could hear from a critter below.
A glittering cobblestone path wound through small trees shaped like candy floss, but patterned like red and white candy canes. At its end waited a small hut the kind Goro had only imagined in fairytales previously. It looked like the only sensical place to approach, so Goro did exactly that.
It didn’t make sense to him. Wasn’t he at the bottom of the well? Or did he perhaps hit his head during the fall and this was all a dream? Well, if it was, then he at least didn’t have to worry about father’s pocket watch anymore and could enjoy his time here until it was time to wake up and practise schoolwork again—he still had lots of classic literature to read and even more poems to learn to recite to his father correctly when the time came.
As he walked down the cobblestone path, he began to recite one such poem, if only because he had been taught that leisure time always had to be used productively, even if he found it quite hard to recall the subject of the poem—was it the little busy bee, or was it the laughing crocodile? He might as well put in his own words at this point, maybe then his poems would appear in the newspaper as well one day and his mother would be very proud of him!
“How doth the little cunning crow
Improve his feathery dress,
And add the stars’ ethereal glow
So that he shall impress!”
He jumped over a fallen log, squeezed between two trees that grew to almost intertwine, tripped over a stray pebble and looked down at his shoes—huh, he didn’t remember his mother purchasing a pair like this, so shiny and polished and almost the shoes of a gentleman! Had he perhaps been asleep when he put on his shoes this morning? He must have been, because his stockings were terribly mismatched, stripes on one, diamonds on the other, both at least black and white.
Goro saw a bridge coming up that led over a small stream and decided to walk to the bank first to examine his reflection, because what if the rest of his clothes were just as chaotically put on and he looked like a bum rather than the son of his father? If he was not in a dream after all, then that would make a terrible impression on the people he might come across and oh, how that would reflect on his family!
So he continued down the path, improvising the second verse of the poem all the while.
“How lovingly he seems to coo,
How neatly spread his wings,
To steal what’s most beloved to you
One freedom traded for his!”
Arriving at the edge of the stream, he leant down, his youthful face blinking back at him in surprise. There, on his cheeks, were two small symbols. Somebody must have played a prank on him, because they didn’t even bother to match them! He knew those symbols from the card games he sometimes liked to play by himself. One cheek had a blue diamond, the other a red heart. He knew of the spades and clubs as well, but was relieved to not find any more strange drawings on his face past those two.
But oh, what the rest of him looked like! He couldn’t lean over the stream too far, but his shirt, his pristine white shirt, its sleeves now held the same hearts and diamonds that were on his cheeks, and his little black vest now had the same patterns as his stockings on them. Stripes and diamonds, half-half, a corset mahagoni red and decorated with black belts that had golden studs. It explained why he had felt just a little tighter than usual around the waist since he arrived down here. Goro reached up to pry it off, fearing it would clash with the light blue of his pants and the strange veil added to his backside, yet he discovered a black satin ribbon at his back upon trying and decided that it was much too skilfully bound to try and open it—he feared destroying a craft he himself would have to spend hours on perfecting.
That, and he was starting to find that all the disorder and mess in the colours and patterns of this outfit actually worked surprisingly harmoniously with each other, making for a rather beautiful ensemble, a costume found only on theatre performers usually. Maybe he could stand wearing this for just a bit more until he figured out who secretly put him into this to make a fool of him and when they even had the opportunity to do so. Goro remembered his mother having slept in the garden, not him!
Leaning back up and stretching his arms and legs, he continued over the little arched bridge and found that he was all out of poems to recite for the moment and thus good on his studies. Right on time as well, for he reached the door of the quaint little hut that had seemed a lot bigger from afar than it actually was up close. Maybe whoever lived here could educate Goro on which country and continent this was—perhaps he had fallen through the earth itself?—and then provide him with clues for the white rabbit’s whereabouts. He liked to think that an animal with such snow white fur and an expensive piece of jewellery in its mouth would make for quite the unforgettable sight.
He grabbed the ring on the door and energetically knocked it against the wood, both pleased and nervous when he immediately heard shuffling on the other side of it. “Coming, coming!” rang out from inside the hut, the voice surprisingly young and boyish to Goro’s ears, maybe belonging to someone who was just like him? It was hard to say.
The door swung open, indeed revealing a boy his age immediately bouncing away without taking even a single look at him as he hurried around the house. Blond, smaller than him, a little bit the type Goro would watch play on the streets and both admire and despise for stomping through puddles and ruining his clothes simply because it was fun to him. The outfit he wore was similar to his own, although not quite as beautiful, in his humble opinion, with the olive green vest, the khaki trousers and the— huh, the same black and white stockings, but only with diamonds, how curious! This could maybe be whoever played a prank on him…
The boy wasn’t even looking at him yet as he grabbed some things around the house, his hurry properly evident in how he jumped around like a rabbit, and wait—were those actually white rabbit ears on his head?
“Okay, Akira, got the stuff, no problem, no biggie, you know the drill, fan and gloves as always,” the boy rattled off like a waterfall, indeed grabbing both an ornamental fan and black gloves off a shelf. “Guess you’re all set too if you’re here already— WHOA!”
The sight of Goro was enough to make the other freeze as if he was an actual rabbit in the face of a predator and not just costumed as one. The confusion on his face as the boy looked between Goro and the fan back and forth was so intriguing that Goro was simply staring at him in disbelief for a moment, trying to figure out what it could mean.
The boy’s lips shook. Goro arched an eyebrow, silently nodding at him to continue.
“Dammit,” he sighed at last, making Goro grimace with his bluntness. “This wasn’t supposed to happen and you’re kinda not supposed to be here either. You’re, uh, a little… small. No offence.” He gestured from Goro’s head to toe awkwardly, and okay, now that was insulting, but what did he expect from a rude puddle-hopping rabbit boy such as him?
“I find that I am quite the right size to tower over impudent people such as you,” he scoffed, crossing his arms and turning up his nose to look down at the smaller boy, which wasn’t hard.
The other yelped in fear, a reaction so immediate and expressive that Goro couldn’t help but grow more confident from it. “Sorry! Just surprised is all! Okay, so, introductions, introductions… Dammit, don’t mess this up, Ryuji…”
“Have you seen a white rabbit carrying a golden pocket watch?” Goro interrupted the boy’s inaudible murmur before it could annoy him even further, this time with redundant smalltalk. “I have no business on your land and merely wanted to inquire if you know about that pesky animal’s whereabouts.”
A realisation Goro was all too eager to find out about crossed the stranger’s face and he leant back, his ears standing up straight as if they weren’t simply fakes, but mechanically controlled ones.
“Oh, that old thing? Don’t worry about that junk.”
Goro’s face fell. “Junk?! I’ll have you know that pocket watch is more than just some junk—!”
“Whoa, chill!” The boy held up his hands in defeat. “Didn’t know it’s yours. It’s with Akira now, okay?”
“Ah, so that thieving rabbit is your responsibility?” Goro’s voice turned sharp immediately as he was barely able to keep his voice polite and not let the searing anger he felt through. “Where is this Akira? I’d very much like to obtain that pocket watch from your pet and return it to its rightful owner.”
The boy looked confused, but seemed cooperative enough once Goro took a threatening step inside the house, if only because he didn’t know what else to do for intimidation other than draw a weapon he didn’t have.
“Chill, man. I guess if it’s that important to ya, Akira’s gonna be here any minute, it’s not like I actually care about the thing…” He suddenly froze, eyes widening in shock. “Wait. If you’re here already and don’t even need the fan, then—” Shock turned into panic. “Dammit! I’m way too late, I gotta go, uh, see you around!”
“Wait!” Goro reached for the boy running past him, not satisfied having gotten no answers, but he was as fast as a rabbit, and for a moment, the ridiculous thought that this was the same animalistic thief he was after and not just apparently its owner crossed his mind. “You forgot your fan and gloves!” he shouted after the blur disappearing between the trees in an effort to get him to turn around, yet once again was unsuccessful.
Sighing, Goro bowed down to at least pick up what he had dropped in his hurry, curiously examining both the fan and gloves. The fan was of a beautiful white and red, adorned with hearts, while the gloves were plain black satin. He put them on without much thinking, being used to protecting his hands, considering how he had been taught to not touch things directly for fear of germs. His mother was far too frail to risk infecting with some random illness from the streets, after all! And even here where she wasn’t, he preferred to not dirty his own hands.
The fan looked a little too unspectacular for his tastes, but perhaps it would come in handy down the line. After all, the rabbit boy had acted as if Goro’s appearance was not just surprising, but downright impossible. Had he been expected? Would he have gotten escorted into this strange land? Goro didn’t remember getting any invitation recently that hadn’t been to a dull teaparty one of his father’s friends wanted him present at.
Casting just a single glance inside the house, he decided he would not invite himself in, for if anyone caught him snooping around, it would reflect terribly on his name just like his costume probably already did. There was an exceptionally tempting plate of biscuits on a table in a corner, and Goro felt quite hungry by now as well, but he refrained from indulging in his desires, if only because he did not trust food here to not turn him much smaller or much taller once more. What if he’d get stuck inside this house forever? The idea was dreadful, considering how much of an eyesore the ivy furniture and the rabbit-related items in here were. Who’d want to sleep on a bed shaped like a large carrot? Certainly not Goro!
He closed the door behind him as he left, but not before pocketing an amount of biscuits he hoped would not be noticeably missing. Making his way back over the bridge, through the trees and up the cobblestone path, Goro wondered where to go now. Around him was nothing but trees of all colours. Still the candy cane trees with candy floss crowns, but also delicate and slim white trees that grew tall only to hang its branches full of pastel green leaves down like a weeping willow, trees with strong purple stems that had intricate patterns running through their bark and bare as if it were winter, and bushes shining petrol blue in the shadows of large oaks of all colours except those Goro had learned to actually associate with oaks.
Everything in this land looked as if right out of a children’s book, flora and fauna everywhere that Goro had never even seen in books before. He wondered if the plants here were poisonous, if the animals would eat him as soon as they set their eyes on him. Ah, but then again, with how childish that boy had behaved, if the environment was truly hostile here, he’d likely not last a day. And even if—Goro was prepared to hold his own. Not that it mattered in the face of losing his most prized possession he had to get back at any cost.
The person he wanted to find had the name of Akira, and judging from the rabbit boy’s behaviour, he might have set out to be on his way to them. Goro’s best bet was following after, as much as he did not like to be in this strange boy’s presence, the way he talked having sounded not just uncultured and impolite, but downright idiotic, even. They weren’t kids anymore, after all!
So he went after the rabbit through the trees, hoping that whatever strange place he had fallen into, he could leave it behind and return home as soon as possible. He didn’t want to go mad here, after all.