Work Text:
Nakamura had been limping again today.
Hirose wasn’t sure of the exact timeline of when it started overall, but it had been two weeks and some change since he’d started noticing Nakamura was getting significantly hurt on a semi-regular basis. Some mornings it was limping, others he’d be violently flinching during gym (either from sudden movements or lightly being hit), and last week had the worst incident where his left leg started bleeding halfway through the day. It hadn’t been a few drops leaking out that just stained a sock either, Hirose literally had followed a trail of blood into the boys bathroom during lunch, where Nakamura was trying to patch up an ugly gash on his calf in one of the stalls. Emphasis on that “trying” part- the idiot thought toilet paper would suffice as dressing for a wound bleeding that consistently. Hirose ended up having to retrieve proper bandages and actual cloths from the nurses office-the nurse in question keeping her trend of unavailability mercifully consistent.
The injuries weren’t even the worst parts of his best friends new and disturbing “normal”. For one, Nakamura adamantly refused to talk about how or why he was getting so hurt on a regular basis, not even after Hirose had gone out of his way to patch him up last week. Two, and this was probably the part that messed with the chestnut haired boy the most, nobody else was noticing. Not even the teachers! Nakamura was clearly in pain and Hirose seemed to be the only person who picked up on it, let alone cared!
The cherry on top of todays whirlwind sundae of concern and frustration was what happened once school let out. Nakamura had joined Hirose at the genkan, seeming excited for their routine walk home together as he always was, even with his currently unidentified injury. They’d chatted a bit, taken off from the gate like usual, but not two minutes into the proper walk back, Nakamura caught sight of something over Hirose’s head. His expression twisted into something Hirose couldn’t read, and before the (begrudgingly) shorter boy could ask or follow his best friends line of sight, Nakamura hurriedly blurted out some nonsense about forgetting to pick up some ingredients for his family’s dinner and ran off at a rather impressive speed considering the bad leg.
Nakamura was never trusted to pick up dinner ingredients after school. He’d complained before about how his sister would lord that fact over his head while calling him unreliable. More than once.
Following the taller boys line of sight after he’d left yielded no further insight-just a row of residential streets littered with townhomes. So, like any sane and concerned friend annoyed with a lack of communication from their bestie, Hirose decided to take off after Nakamura instead of continuing his march home, hoping the ravenettes limp would slow him down enough to be caught up with. It’d certainly be adequate karma for blatantly lying to the shorter boys face and expecting to get away with it.
Unfortunately, it seemed luck was not on Hirose’s side today. Despite running until his breaths came out ragged, frantically checking turn offs as he passed them for signs of fluffy black hair, Nakamura was nowhere to be found. Hirose finally skidded to a stop where the street ended, hands on his knees as he took in deep, shuddering breaths to compose himself. None of it made sense-Hirose should have at least seen something of Nakamura before he was this winded, yet there hadn’t even been the faintest flash of dark, fluffy hair or the school uniform. Everyone Hirose had seen were all clearly adults.
Dammit, Nakamura!
After he got his breath back, Hirose crouched down further to scoop up an empty can someone had left on the ground and spiked it off in a random direction with as much force as he could manage. He didn’t understand-couldn’t understand, why his best friend refused to talk to him about anything important now. Sure, Nakamura was the same shoulder to lean on and great listener he always had been, but ever since he started getting hurt he’d become completely closed off about his own problems. Hirose wanted to vent about his own issues? Nakamura would still offer a sympathetic ear, no problem. Hirose asking about the gash in his calf or a wobbly gait? Nakamura became a brick wall, and wouldn’t stop being that wall until Hirose completely changed the subject.
It pissed him off!
What kind of messed up friendship is it when only one party gets support or opens up? The teen barked internally, stalking over to the can he spiked so he could stomp down on the battered aluminum. Hirose didn’t stop at just once either-he repeatedly kept slamming his sneaker down on the can until it was flattened into a fine sheet, in tune with every syllable of his following thoughts. Just talk to me you jerk! I’m right here-I’m all you seem to have! You don’t need to be alone-!
“Mrrow?”
Hirose paused in his assault on the defenseless remains of the soda can, redirecting his attention to the maker of the noise. A sleek black cat had climbed up one of the concrete planter boxes that marked the end of this particular street at some point, and was now staring at Hirose from their new leverage. The creature was rather pretty, its glossy dark fur very well taken care of, with unique dark gray petal shaped markings around its eyes, two dots of white at the crux where ears met skull, and a single, larger white dot dead center of it’s forehead. Their minty green eyes seemed to be studying Hirose, cloudy slitted pupils meeting his own dead on.
Strange…
Hirose didn’t focus too terribly long on the cat’s appearance though, as after a moment, the creature sat up on its haunches and began motioning at the boy with its paw, in an eerily similar fashion to those touristy statues depicting the Beckoning Cat from folklore. Hirose had to blink a couple times to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating, but the cat (whom he could now tell was female…) remained stubbornly consistent in its presence. After being assured of his sanity, the boy saw no harm in answering the cat’s assumed beckoning, taking a few steps forward and offering up his hand for a sniff. The girl dropped down on all fours at the movement, took a cautionary whiff of the teens hand, then pressed her face into the awaiting palm with a strong purr.
“Sorry if I startled you or something with all that stomping” Hirose found himself apologizing, gently following the cats movements as she continued rubbing her face and upper body against his hand. “I didn’t mean to cause a disturbance-I was just venting some frustration I have with a friend”
If Hirose didn’t know better, the disclosure seemed to have garnered the cats attention, as she ceased her nuzzling and opened her eyes once more to stare at him. The teen held her gaze for a moment. Would it be a bad idea to….?
Screw it, a cat can’t exactly tell anyone the secrets you share with them.
“My best friend actually, his name is Nakamura. You might have seen him-yay high, fluffy black hair that falls into his eyes, wearing our school uniform properly, limping a bit?” Hirose described, perhaps in hopes this strange cat had information. When all he got was further prolonged eye contact, the teen sighed and continued on. “Lately he’s been… distant. Kinda-he’s getting hurt in significant ways with alarming frequency, but the second I so much as glance at wherever his current injury is, he’ll shut me out. Then he’ll just… act like this new pattern of pain isn’t the huge red flag I know it is”
Hirose could swear the feline almost looked intrigued by his words, if she wasn’t, you know, a cat. He sighed in resignation, as while venting made him feel marginally better, it didn’t solve the problem at hand. Was it something he did-?
The cat suddenly jumped up in Hirose’s face, badly startling him out of his musing. He felt as she used his head as a counterbalance, landed on top of his bag for a moment, yanking at something around the zipper-
Oh HELL no
Hirose whipped around in an attempt to dislodge the creature from his person, but she’d already hit the ground previously at his back, with his precious crab keychain dangling from her mouth!
“Hey-!” Was all the boy managed to shout before she took off, forcing him to give chase. That keychain was irreplaceable in his eyes, and he wasn’t letting some opportunistic street cat make off with it! Especially not one who took advantage of his frustrated confession to do so!
Hirose’s path back down this street wasn’t as clean as his first pass through, mostly because he was more worried about catching that opportunistic crook of an alley cat than he was in avoiding people and being polite. This led to several disgruntled shouts from collided shoulders, but Hirose wasn’t stopping for any reason outside of getting his precious memento back. He barely even slowed down in his pursuit of the thieving stray as it sharply turned off the residential street and into the shadowed, narrow alleyways that branched off to the side.
He was not losing that keychain!
Eventually, after Hirose completely lost track of the path they’d taken (which probably wasn’t too much time at all given his attention span), the burgling feline veered into the back entrance of a large, closed off parking garage, quickly vanishing into the shadows that awaited beyond the threshold. Undeterred, the teenager rushed in after her, unwilling to lose such a valued gift over his mild fear of the dark.
“Get back here!” Hirose mustered up the breath to shout as the world around him rapidly dimmed into blackness. He barely registered the concerning lack fluorescent lighting breaking through the dark as his eyes adjusted, staying focused on listening to the sound of cat paws slapping against pavement and following the direction it came from. Nor did he take in the other warning sign of an abandoned parking complex-being a distinct lack of cars. Not that the information would have stopped him with something so important on the line-
The sounds of a fleeing cat came to an abrupt halt. Hirose followed suit, his sneakers squeaking as they scraped against concrete. Roundish brown eyes narrowed against the darkness, straining to pick up the tiniest speck of off white or mint-
“Don’t. Move.”
The words were spoken dead ahead of him. The voice was feminine, commanding, sharp. Saturated by assumed life experience-and deathly serious.
That’s when Hirose heard it.
A distorted half growl, half gargle rumbled through the air. Something thick and viscous splattered against the concrete behind Hirose, off to the right, followed by a second splatter to his rear left.
Hirose’s breath caught.
Right. Left.
A little closer
Right. Left.
A little more.
Right…
Then slowly, agonizingly slowly, the boys surroundings started to take shape under a faint vermillion glow. Jagged shadows danced around the edge of this new source of light, slowly shrinking away. Two things came into focus outside of the expected parking garage amenities.
One was Hirose’s crab keychain, the orange acrylic glinting in the sinister illuminance.
The second thing was the cat from earlier, the keychain itself still dangling from its maw, minty eyes blown wide to stare at something over Hirose’s head. He saw her gaze flick briefly in his direction once.
After a moment, the cat’s mouth opened, careful not to drop its prize-
“Lucky Cat can sense it’s close to me. Help is coming. Do. Not. Turn. Around”
The voice from earlier spilled out, much more subdued, barely audible at all. If not for the terror currently keeping Hirose frozen in place, he’d have certainly made some sort of strangled noise in response to the insanity that was a talking cat-
The splattering noise went off again.
Right. Left.
A little louder.
Right. Left.
A hot breeze brushed against Hirose’s back.
The lighting sharpened.
Hirose felt his head shakily turning to look over his shoulder. The cat made no noise to stop him.
He wished she did.
Something dark towered over the corner Hirose had accidentally chased the cat into, the entire beast made of inky blackness barely holding itself together properly, the edges of its frame occasionally warping. The “elbows” of its four “legs” scraped against the ceiling. Its “body” was kept at a lower angle, halfway down its forelegs in a spider like manner. The main section had a tail that trailed off into the darkness behind it, and on the other end?
The “head”.
A gaping, upside down maw with rows of jagged “teeth”, slowly forcing itself open to reveal a singular, blazing eyeball inside the crevasse. The pupil of which choosing that exact moment to meet the brunettes own-
“Get the HELL away from my Hirose!”
The short teen barely had time to register what was clearly Nakamura’s voice before the nightmarish abomination towering over him let out an agonized screech and toppled over, some of the concrete on the wall in the direction of its fall exploding in deep, segmented gouges.
Hirose was then promptly swept off his feet. The teen would later deny the startled squeak he let out as he frantically wrapped his arms around the neck of his rescuer, who took off back in the direction of the entrance with an impressive starting jump. Hirose screwed his eyes shut, pressing his face against the neck of the other boy and trying to suppress the tremors uncontrollably wracking his body. The nightmarish sounds of the creature from hell quickly grew distant, and within moments they were overtaken by silence, occasionally broken by his saviors boots scraping against the ground between their bounds.
Finally, light danced on the outside of Hirose’s eyelids as the boy screeched to a halt, taking a few shaking breaths of his own.
Hirose only dared open his eyes again when the other boy helped him stand back up in his own legs, worry etched into every bit of their face.
Nakamura’s face.
In the dim lighting, near the edges of the sun that still streamed in through an open door, the resemblance between his savior and best friend was undeniable. The same eye shape, same features, same fluffy hair that fell partway over his eyes.
Hirose hand cupped Nakamura’s cheek before he’d even registered the movement required to do so. The faces were identical, but there were additional features on this version of Nakamura, who was dressed in some sort of cosplay. A pair of dark blue stripes marred his cheeks, the sclera of his eyes now the same minty color as the thieving cat he’d been chasing. Realistic cat ears were affixed to the sides of his head, a slightly darker shade of black than his hair, with a fake tail to match-
Nakamura flinched away from Hirose’s touch before he could inspect the craftsmanship on the ears, before forcing complete separation with a decently forceful shove. The brunette stumbled back a few steps in surprise, but stabilized himself quickly enough to watch his friend back up further, away from the light, with his arms wrapped tightly around himself and still favoring the same damn leg.
“S-Stay out of the dark-that being and it’s kind can’t manifest without it” Nakamura spoke after a moment, voice slightly trembling. Hirose took a cautious step forward, motioning like he was going to reach out and touch the other boy again, but Nakamura quickly scrambled back, disappearing almost entirely into the shadows. “Stay away from me too… I’m not a safe thing to be around”
Boots scraped against the ground, and Nakamura vanished, any sound he made in his flight following soon after.
Hirose didn’t move from the little patch of sun, mind reeling from his brush with death. Did Nakamura… go back to fight that thing-? A familiar creature padded out from the dark as Hirose shuddered at the implications of that possibility, and didn’t really register the animal at all until the item in its mouth clattered against the ground, the sound deafening against the ambient silence.
“I think that friend of yours needs you now more than ever” the cat mewed softly, pushing the keychain a little closer with a paw, the crab’s cartoon eyes almost mocking with their goofy, empty gaze. “It’s frustrating, but you need to show support wherever you can. It’s the only way he’ll feel safe enough to eventually open up”
A beat passed, then she too returned to the darkness, leaving the brunette alone with his prize. Hirose leaned down and collected the returned object, holding it close to his chest as he stood back up. Darkness stretched out before him, but he dared not leave the light to chase after friend or feline, the harsh realization that Nakamura was in way more danger than Hirose could’ve fathomed weighing heavy oh his shoulders.
The crab charm felt like ice against Hirose’s palm when he finally turned around to resume his trek home, helpless tears pricking the corners of his eyes.