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Kenma sighed to himself and hiked the burlap sack over his shoulder as he made his way down another mossy slope. Of course his master, Nekomata, would come up short on skullcap mushrooms an hour before he was supposed to let Kenma out for the day.
Kenma had tried, somewhat, to convince Nekomata into letting him go out and find some early the next morning since it was coming dark, but it was no use. Nekomata apparently had several potions due for some noble or another that simply couldn't wait, and that Kenma would be delivering said concoctions in the morning anyways.
So here he was, with sack in hand, filled with a handful of said skullcaps as he trekked further into the brush. He couldn't complain too much he supposed. It wasn't like these mushrooms were really rare and the weather was half decent for once, if not a little damp for his taste.
He reached the bottom of the hill and looked around him, paying special attention to the base of the trees. There were a few patches of moss that Kenma picked at and stuffed into his bag as well. It wouldn't hurt to gather a few other things while it was right next to him at any rate. He continued along like this for several feet and reached a tree with a large hollow a couple feet up the trunk, and inside through a loose tangle of vines, was the familiar golden color of skullcap mushrooms.
“Nice,” Kenma nearly purred to himself. That was a good sized batch and it would likely be enough for his needs. He reached out and brushed some vines aside.
One particularly thick and dark vine shivered and curled away when he touched it. Kenma leapt back with a gasp, his hand to his chest, thinking it was a snake about to strike him. The motion pushed him off balance and he landed on his back with a thud.
“Oya?”
Kenma could only lay there on his back and puff from knocking the wind out of himself. He could see a shape in the growing dark, sleek and long and somewhat shapeless from his view where it was perched on a low branch above him. It turned and two bright yellow eyes peered down at him. The thing he'd touched earlier dropped down again and Kenma realized it was the tail of a large cat.
After a pause, the cat laughed. “I was wondering when you would find me,” it said and shifted. Kenma's eyes adjusted to the black shape as it laid its chin on one front paw and let the other hang limp beneath it. Kenma sat up and thought the cat's foot might have been twice the size of his own spread hand. He didn't answer to the cat's comment for a few seconds and it made some kind of gruff, impatient noise at him.
“I'm Kuroo. What's yours?” it asked.
“Kenma.” He responded automatically, his voice a little wheezy as he caught his breath.
“You didn't hit your head too hard there, Kenma?”
“No,” Kenma replied and tipped his head back to meet the cat's eyes. In the dim light its pupils were mostly round dots in two rings of gold. They stared at each other and Kenma opened his mouth again dumbly. “You're a cat.”
“Yeah.”
“And you can talk.”
“Of course I can,” it replied, and it laughed. The sound had a rumbling quality and some part of Kenma thought it was purring.
“Cats don't talk. And they aren't so big.”
“Yes. I do. And I am a perfectly healthy size by the way.” The cat narrowed its eyes as if Kenma had personally insulted it. Kenma pulled his eyes away and thought to change the subject.
“Why did you want me to find you?” Kenma asked. The cat seemed distracted enough by this and lifted its head, the tip of its tail twitching.
“Cause you're stealing all our mushrooms,” it replied. At that point it stood, turned and hopped down to the undergrowth with a quiet thud. Kenma moved back out of its way, but it only went to his sack where it had fallen at the base of the tree and set one large paw on it. “Bokuto would throw a fit if he came back and found that someone had taken his stash.”
“You know those are poisonous right,” Kenma said. He didn't know who, or what, Bokuto was, or what a cat would want with mushrooms or why he was even talking to it, but the fact that everything in that bag would kill a normal person was the first thing that sprung to mind.
“Why would you think we would eat the same things,” the cat deadpanned back. It flexed its toes and sunk its claws into the burlap. “I was just around and saw you taking them and I really don't care about these things but Bokuto is a different story,” it rambled.
“Is Bokuto another cat?” Now the cat tipped his head and eyed him in a way that made Kenma think it was grinning.
“Wouldn't you like to know?” It asked and faster than Kenma could think, the cat dipped down and took the bag in its mouth. “He'll think these are a nice treat,” it said, muffled around the bag, and started off at a lazy jog through the trees.
Kenma considered just letting it go. It was just a bag, and just a handful of easy to find mushrooms, but he really couldn't just let the cat get away from him so easily. At the very least he could get a good excuse to give Nekomata for coming back empty handed.