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Takashi has always somewhat hated sunsets.
Maybe hate is too strong of a word, but there really isn't any other word to describe his feelings towards sunsets. Don't get him wrong, sunsets are beautiful.
Red and orange hues painting everything in color, as everything that was happening in the day slowed to a stop. As the sky that was blue and bright transitioned into mellow dark through sunsets.
Takashi would find himself just looking up as the sun sets, eyes that were usually dull would light up at the golden lights.
But sunsets meant night was approaching, and that was never a good sign.
At night, youkais came out of their hiding places, revealing themselves. They became more powerful, and nighttime was the perfect time to strike onto unsuspecting mortals.
It also meant that Takashi had to come…back to his relatives' houses he was currently staying in.
(Never a home. Home was where the bells above the sliding doors were chiming. Home was where he was sitting in his father's lap, grinning brightly as his father told stories of his mother, of the flowers that were yet to grow in the backyard.)
Takashi realized pretty early on none of his relatives were particularly fond of him.
Some were more vocal of that fact, some were more…physical. But the little amount that is left doesn't really let that fact obviously show.
(Slammed doors. Locked closets and bedrooms. Shattered plates. Wine and beer stains on the old rotting wallpaper. Scars all over his arms. Bruises all over his back. Handprints bigger than his own face on his neck-)
Some were nicer than others. Takashi truly was thankful to them. To those who still offered their open doors to him even after everything they’ve been told of him.
(And then a week later he was back out the said door with his belongings in a bag, and a crying desperate relative on the phone.)
Takashi doesn't hold it over them. Really, it's Takashi’s fault for being such a difficult child. Always breaking everything in the house, always talking to thin air and about monsters that do not exist. A liar.
(Deep down, a small part of Takashi knew. He knew how unfair the world is to him. He was a child who lost his parents and home too soon. A child who did not deserve anything bad that had happened to him. A child who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality, a child who didn't know any better. A child.)
Natsume Takashi hated sunsets.
“What, in the ever-loving fuck, is that??” Satoru said, pointing at the youkai currently standing at the end of the hallway.
“Fuck,” Takashi cursed under his breath. Atsushi looked at him, bewildered, but Takashi ignored him in favor of focusing towards the youkai instead.
It was huge. Huge as in it quite literally has to crouch to fit in the hallways. Why was it here in the first place was the big main first question, with the fact that Satoru, Atsushi, and Jun were able to see the youkai the second one.
The youkai snapped its head towards them. Takashi cursed again.
“Guys,” Kaname glanced towards them, his eyes locking with Takashi's. “Guys,”
The youkai growled, slowly inching towards them. Takashi spread his arms uselessly, in a sort of attempt to protect his friends.
“Run?” Tooru suggested. The youkai lunged. They all ran.
Bolting down to the opposite of the hallway, Takashi's mind raced with various plans on what to do. The youkai was most likely after the book of friends, safely within his bag across his shoulder. Should he lead the youkai away from his friends? No, it's too dangerous, and his friends were too stubborn to let him do that anyway. Call Nyanko-sensei? The damned cat wasn't even there. Takashi knew that if he were to call him, Nyanko-sensei would probably come in a flash, but still. Exorcise the youkai? Takashi doesn't even know how to exorcise youkais. He was beginning to regret rejecting those offers for exorcism lessons from both Natori and Matoba.
“What if I throw my shoe at it??” Satoru suddenly yelled. Atsushi looked at him incredulously.
“A shoe?? Against a literal fucking monster?? Fat fucking chance!”
“Guys,” Jun wheezed from where she was running beside Tooru. “Let's just find the school exit!”
A couple of staircases later, and they were well on their way to the main entrance and exit of their school, the youkai still hot on their tails. Satoru, who was running in front of the group, practically slammed himself against the glass doors to open it.
…It doesn't budge. Satoru rubbed his shoulder from where he used it to hit the glass doors.
“Fuck,” Kaname cursed from where he was wheezing and catching his breath behind him, probably regretting the fact of him usually skipping P.E by going to the school’s nurse excusing that he was feeling unwell. Takashi was about to sarcastically say something about that, when the youkai screeched and turned around a corner, its twenty-something eyes glaring at them.
“Change of plans! Fucking hide!” Tooru grabbed Jun’s arm—the closest to her—and sprinted back down the hallway, the rest of the boys following her.
Takashi frantically looked around as they moved up a floor once more, his eyes landing on the school library furthest from the staircase. He ran there, his friends following close behind. Slamming the wooden door open, he winced when he realized he’ll probably get scolded by the librarian, before dragging Kaname and essentially the rest to duck beneath a bookshelf.
They all crouched there for a moment, catching their breaths and listening as the screeches of the youkai passed by the library. Takashi let out a breath.
“...Hearing not only Tooru, but Kaname and Takashi cursing was not on my to-do list today,” Atsushi blurted out. Satoru barked out a laugh, immediately shushed by a punch in the gut from Jun.
Takashi quietly chuckled, but paused when he finally fully took in the situation.
There was a youkai, chasing not only him, but also his friends. And his supposedly normal friends could see the youkai.
A growing sense of dread started pooling in his stomach.
“Man, that monster was terrifying though. I really hope we won't die,” Satoru casually commented. Atsushi nodded beside him in agreement.
“Makes me wonder if creatures like this exist everywhere around us everyday,” Atsushi added.
That made the rest of the group freeze.
“Wait-” Tooru held up her hands, waving it around. “How are you guys taking this so…casually??”
Satoru shrugged. “We kinda connected the dots together after a while,” Atsushi explained. “Takashi's whole running from nothing, the rumors about Kaname being able to see weird shadows, the truthfully terrifying amount of books on supernatural creatures in Tooru’s house,”
“Not to mention those weird situations we usually end up in!” Satoru added. “Like when I was passed out from something from the forest, that time Atchan and Takashi were locked in the school, also when we all woke up on the rooftop of the abandoned school building after our test of courage, Takashi's ugly ass talking cat-” His fingers were up, counting. “Some weird shits were already going on here, and the fact they got weirder after Takahi moved here? Yeah right,”
“Not that we blame you, of course!” Atsushi quickly added.
Takashi stared at them, mouth agape.
“You guys don't think it's…weird?” He hesitantly asked. Satoru shook his head.
“Oh no, it's definitely weird. The fact that monsters like these exist around us? Very weird,” He nodded sagely to himself.
“Speaking off, you guys are more experienced with things like these right?” Atsushi asked, “So, what's the game-plan?”
“Yeah no that's the thing,” Kaname shrugged. “We don't have a game-plan,”
Silence fell.
“...So we’re fucked?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Tooru answered Satoru’s question.
Usually, this is the part when the youkai come bursting into the room, killing them all. But even the fates were still cruel like that, as there was only awkward silence that Takashi somehow knew he had to be the one to break it.
“...The teachers would not be happy seeing the school all wrecked,” Takashi finally said. Small laughs and huffs of amusement escaped them all, before Tooru promptly froze.
“Wait,” She looked them all in the eyes. “Were there even any teachers when we ran around before?”
Realization practically slapped Takashi in the face, a low groan coming out of him as he slowly lowered his head into his hands.
Kaname’s eyes widened a second later as he, too, realized what that meant.
“Don't tell me…”
“We're practically in another world? Yeah.”
“Fuck,” Kaname face-palmed. Tooru followed Takashi's lead and groaned in annoyance.
“Is that a bad thing?” Satoru meekly asked. When the three snapped their heads towards him, he concluded to himself. “It's a bad thing, huh,”
“Well,” Jun clapped her hands, drawing attention to herself. “I really want to ask what the fuck you mean by us being in another world, but seeing as the youkai is right in front of the door-” Said door to the library burst open, flying off its hinges, the youkai growling as it looked around for Takashi and his friends.
Ignoring Satoru's “Oh it's called a youkai-?” Takashi dragged—once again Kaname, as his closest victim—and dashed towards another door in the back.
More running, one or two more classes being wrecked havoc later, and they all ended up in the laboratorium, once again catching their breaths.
Takashi stared at his friends, all hunched over catching their breaths, and steeled himself.
“Guys, I may have a plan,”
“This is a terrible plan,” Jun said for the tenth time, and yet she still held up the paper written hastily by Tooru, an attempt for spell-casting.
“You're welcome to tell us a better plan,” Atsushi said back, also for the tenth time. Takashi rolled his eyes, standing center in the middle of the piles of papers laid out on the floor.
The wind on the rooftop somehow didn't move any of the papers Takashi and Tooru laid out, maybe due to the fact that there's an invisible barrier around their school.
“Takashi, are you certain this is going to work?” Kaname anxiously asked, from his position kneeling on the floor right behind Takashi, prayer beads and another piece of paper held up.
“Nope,” Tooru answered for him. “For all we know, we would most likely die, but hey, at least we died in a cool way,”
“Wow thanks for the reassurance,” Kaname sarcastically thanked her, replied by a cheery “You're welcome!” from Tooru.
Booming footsteps could be heard getting closer and closer, and a second later the door to the rooftop burst open, Satoru sprinting across the vast rooftop and grabbing a piece of spell-paper, settling himself on the right of Takashi, just across from Atsushi.
“I may have angered the mons- youkai a bit too much!” Satoru nervously laughed.
“If we die it's gonna be your fault, Satchan!” Atsushi yelled from across the—somewhat—circle. “I swear to god I’m going to fucking haunt you-”
The door flew off its hinges (and isn't that giving a sense of deja vu?) and came the youkai, roaring in anger, before dashing towards the group. Screams of terror, flicking of papers, Tooru's and Kaname's voices chanting a spell- Takashi ignored them all, pulling out a slip of paper with a spell written on with black ink.
As the youkai jumped towards Takashi, and all his friends screamed at him to get away, he closed his eyes.
And prayed to the god that never helped him before.
“I just…want to see the sunset…one last time…”
Takashi blinked his eyes open, and was met with a young…person. Wearing traditional Japanese clothes that somehow were a mix of both the male and female’s garment. The young person turned around, revealing their face with eyes more than Takashi could count.
He ignored everything else, and asked.
“What are you doing in my school?”,
“Once upon a time,” The youkai said, “A girl who loves to watch sunsets with me…”
“...Jumped off this roof,”
“Oh,” Takashi simply said. It's a shame, of course, to hear such a thing happen. And really, Takashi felt empathy towards the youkai.
“She promised,” The youkai continued. “To watch the sunset one last time with me before dying.
Everything around Takashi blurred, and he reached out towards the youkai.
“If we watch the sunset together, would you leave this school?”
The youkai shook their head. “We already had, aren't we?” they looked off into the distance, and faintly, Takashi realized the sun was setting in the horizon.
Takashi felt dizziness taking over him.
“Thank you for watching the sunset with me one last time, Reiko,”
Takashi's eyes widened. Before he could say anything, his vision blacked out.
The walk down from the rooftop was awfully quiet.
Jun brushed off anytime a teacher passed by them and asked if they were okay, concerned as to why a group of students were still at school, looking like they had seen better days.
When they made it to the school entrance and exit, Satoru gave an experimental push, before opening the glass doors wide open.
The sky was a mix of orange and yellow hues, painting everything in golden light. The sun was setting, Takashi realized.
“Well, that was certainly something,” Jun huffed out.
Satoru, Atsushi, and Jun looked back at Takashi, eyes filled with questions that needed to be answered. And yet they didn't say anything.
Kaname was a steady presence beside him, a hand on his shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. Tooru was holding Takashi's hand, her own fingers still black from the ink she used before.
His friends all shared the same expression on their faces; concern.
Oh, Takashi realized.
A long time ago, he would be running from vicious youkais like the one they faced mere moments before all alone, all scraped and bruised and eyes filled with unshed tears.
It was the same now, except he was not alone. They were all scraped and bruised and their uniforms were all torn and ripped. And Takashi was sure Satoru and Tooru were on the verge of crying.
The sun was almost set, the sky already darkening into purple and dark blue. Stars started to fill the sky.
Takashi opened his mouth.
“Let's go look for food while I’ll try to explain what just happened,”
The sunset was never this beautiful.