Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ Withheld Curses ❯ 01 - Nameless Love ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Nameless Love - Part 1 - Destitute Dandelion, Delectable Dandelion

The three figures dressed in the mourning colours of black. One was a full-figured woman with dark curly hair, while another was a child of merely six years who stood next to her, holding her hand tightly in front of the grave. A slender young girl, aged nine, grasped her mother’s remaining hand, mouthing wordlessly, “father, do not blame him for your early death,” after speaking a prayer.

The mother’s face was downcast as she let go of her children’s hands and set a bouquet of flowers along the base of the grand stone. She stood in silence for a while, her son looking up at her expectantly. She knelt down to face him, this young child who already had to experience death. Quickly, she said, “Please! You can’t address anyone by their name. Don’t say anyone’s name at all. Don’t even call me ‘mother’! You’ll do that for mommy, won’t you?”

The older daughter stood back from the scene, hoping that her wish would be heard by someone out there, whatever cosmic force which could hear her voice. ‘It’s not his fault, we didn’t know that it would happen this way. My brother, my little brother, for some reason had always refused to call anyone by their name. Or even nicknames. He always told us, “I cannot. Something inside my soul instructs me not to.” A child who had barely learned to talk at the time spoke so eloquently, and it was not something he had copied from a movie as Mother had initially speculated. I worry about him, but it seems he does not hear the same voices I do...it’s something different. And a lot more powerful than any of my own powers. He has the power to kill.’

She clasped her hands together in front of her face, rubbing her tears away with them as she continued to pray for her little brother’s sake. ‘My father had been teasing him about his strange habit, thinking it was a phase he had been going through. “If you can’t call me father, call me by my first name.” And begrudgingly, my little brother finally did so. He hated disobeying father, you see. And that was very minute my father ceased to live. A mysterious death free of trauma; a quick, clean, and painless death. But please, whoever is listening, do not condemn my little brother. He is young. I’m sure...I’m sure that he will not do such a thing again.’

Listlessly, the little boy looked his mother in the eyes. “You really are scared, aren’t you? Are you afraid that I will become tormented and one day say your name when I am angry with you?”

“What? You know that’s not true. I trust you, Megumi-chan.” She gave him a quick motherly hug. Afterward, she looked at him anxiously, waiting for a response from her child who spoke like an adult.

“Hum.” The child said simply, pushing his long, black bangs out of his eyes. “I will believe you.”

She smiled a little, but was still shaken. “Thank you, Megumi-chan,” she said as she ruffled his hair. “Saki-chan?”

“Yes, mother?” she said with a polite bow.

“The atmosphere is not good for children here. Please take your brother to the park and wait for me. I’ll be a little while longer.” She was trying to be strong in front of her children, but her daughter could sense her mother’s tears when she hid her face by turning back toward the grave.

“Come along, little brother,” she said as she took her little brother’s hand.

Once they were far enough away from their mother, about half way between the park and the graveyard, Saki paused in her step. Megumi stopped alongside her. “Is something wrong?” he asked, almost calling her “big sister” by mistake. A pang materialized in his heart as his soul threatened him with a bodiless disdain.

“Little brother, I prayed for you to be forgiven for what you have done. I’m sure you did not mean for what happened to happen. Let’s pray again right now. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

She knelt down on her knees, right there on the sidewalk, and pressed her hands together again. She spoke to all the voices that flowed into her head, her own personal powers, asking them to look over her little brother once again. An untypical prayer. She fell into a daze as she focussed all of her energies on her task. All outside sounds became a dull buzz in the background of her thoughts.

Megumi stared at her. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I said my father’s name. I.... He begged me to do so.”

Saki opened her eyes, their foggy look indicating that she was still in her electric trance.

He took the moment to start walking to the park on his own. By the time she had recovered from her ‘prayer’, he was a small dot in her vision. She sighed as she slowly followed behind him, keeping her brother in sight but not increasing her speed to catch up with him. He was young, yes, but he could handle himself.

Once Megumi arrived at the park he realized that without his sister there, he had no one to play with. Some of the boys from his first grade class were there playing on the jungle-gym, but he was never friends with them. He sat down on a bench right beside the sandbox and swung his feet back and forth underneath him.

“His daddy is the one who died the other day, isn’t it mommy?” A little boy pointed at him and pulled the seam on his mothers skirt to get her attention as they walked by. Faintly Megumi could hear the boy’s mother scolding him for being so thoughtless.

Megumi leaned over and grabbed a handful of sand and let it sift through his fingers, wistfully watching as some girls built a sandcastle not far away. The sand fell in a perfectly straight line, no wind blew a single grain away from its path to its home. He sighed and for the first time tears appearing at the corners of his eyes. He hiccupped.

He felt a tap on his shoulder from behind. He turned around after wiping away the evidence of his tears, and was face to face with....nothing. Puzzled, he went back to his previous position. He felt the tap again, and again, looked back and saw nothing. He looked down a little and saw a mass of blonde hair. Far shorter than himself, when the child looked up he saw a shy little girl, practically hiding behind the bench.

She clutched a dandelion in her hand, complete with roots and some homely dirt which still clung to the rootstock. She reached up and held it out to him shyly.

He recognized her as a girl in her class, but they had never spoken before. Based on his observations, this girl- Momo was her name - rarely spoke with anyone unless they spoke with her first. “For me?” he asked, prompting the quiet girl for a response, after taking the gift.

“You were sad, and dandelions are a happy yellow colour. But this one...this one, was all I could find. The yellow flower is missing, it’s been replaced with fluff already.” She stammered, her blue eyes avoiding contact with his black ones. “Hopefully... hopefully though, you’ll know by looking it at that it used to have a happy flower.”

“It’s beautiful as it is now,” Megumi said instantly. “Old age for a flower to start anew...it’s a wonderful thing.”

“I never thought of it like that,” she said slowly. “Ne, ne, Megumi-kun, have you heard about - ”

“You know my name?” Megumi interrupted in disbelief.

She smiled a little. “Of course. I’ve always watched Megumi-kun at school. Because he is quiet and interesting. ....Do you know my name?”

“Ah, I can’t remember,” he lied, obeying his inner soul which continued its orders to never say a person’s name out loud.

He felt bad for his schoolmate immediately. “Oh.... of course you wouldn’t. Silly me.”

She frowned seriously, but her spirits lifted when he asked, “was it Moo-Moo-chan?” A loophole.

She held a hand to her lips to stifle a giggle. “Close, but the pronunciation is off. It’s Momo,” she was smiling again. “Ah, I got distracted! Megumi-kun, Megumi-kun, have you heard about dandelion fortune-telling?” she tried to conceal her excitement in the company of the serious boy, but failed miserably.

“I don’t believe so...” Megumi said, brows furrowed. Such a strange combination of a quiet and excitable girl. Though how could he judge? He was just as strange himself.

“Since you’re my friend now, I must tell you!” she said, raising a finger to point to the dandelion he still held. The word ‘friend’ reverberated in his head a few times. A real friend. “When you blow on a dandelion’s fluff, it tells you about relationships with the people around you. You should blow on your dandelion and see what it says!”
“Is this true?” Megumi’s voice was somewhat sceptical.

“Yes, of course. Nature wouldn’t lie,” she explained earnestly with a nod.

“I’ll do it then,” he said to appease his new friend. Megumi held the dandelion in front of his lips and blew as hard as he could, unleashing the seeds from their home and sending them out into the atmosphere around him.

“Pretty,” Momo said softly watching them as they landed around them. When they all stopped moving, she shielded her gleaming face with her hands. “Ehhhh, I can’t believe it.”

“What does it mean?”

“We’re going to be together forever, the dandelion says. They didn’t blow outside of arms length. Well, except that small cluster over there.” She pointed to a few seeds which had managed to stick together on the edge of the bench. “That means that there is one issue which can possibly tear apart our friendship. But the chance of that happening, who knows how much it really is?” Momo beamed, hiding her face behind her blonde locks.

“No idea.”

“Well, let’s try our best!”

“Momo-chan!” a voice spoke through a mouthful of lollipop. An older child in a skort and a t-shirt came up to them jabbering away in a strange combination of German and Japanese, giving Megumi only the gist of the conversation. The person took her hand and led her away. “ You wouldn’t believe how many lollipops I bought for my cute little sister! Oh yeah, and Mama’s been super worried about you, why did you run off?”

“Eh? Really?” Momo said, as she was pulled away. “I thought she knew, Momiji-chan!”

“Your sister must be worried about you,” Megumi said flatly as he was left behind. “Until next time.”

“My big brother!” she corrected quickly over her shoulder. “Bye bye!”

“Who was that?” Saki asked, appearing out of nowhere behind him.

“A girl in my class. And her cross-dressing brother.”

“They seem nice.”

“Yes.”

They sat on the bench and awaited their mother’s return from the graveyard. Juxtaposition is a strange thing, isn’t it?

Nameless Love - Part 2 - Ravenous Rose, Ruptured Rose

“I’m so glad this is almost over, ‘Gumi-kun!” Momo said as sank onto the edge of Megumi’s bed. “Just think: we’ve gotten through all of highschool successfully, and as long as we can get through the next four days of exams, we’ll be free.”

He closed the door behind them, giving them their privacy. Momo looked at the thin screen door for a brief second before reverting her gaze back to him with a smile; being alone with him still made her a little nervous. They had been ‘dating’ for almost a year, but they rarely “interacted”, so to speak. Sure, they shared slightly-chaste kisses, but sometimes she worried about what he thought of her. He was so quiet and the opposite of forward, and the latter fact always tugged at her insecurities, even after all these years of friendship.

“Yes, and studying will be over and done with until we go to college in the spring,” he agreed, pulling out some of his school books onto the bed beside her.

“I hope we both get into K University. I would hate for different schools to tear us apart.” She leaned over and pulled a notebook out from her knapsack on the floor. “Let’s study hard for our final exams, okay?”

When she righted herself, she smiled with a textbook in hand. It fell back to floor with a thud from her surprise; she received a soft kiss that deepened, causing her to close her eyes. They fluttered open with the grace of butterflies when he drew back to examine her acceptance of this abrupt change of atmosphere.

She smiled at him, the blush visible on her cheeks. He was never one to initiate a kiss. She kissed his nose then each cheek. “I love you, Megumi-kun! I’ve loved you since we were children.” She was not embarrassed to admit this feat; this was something that they both understood about their childhood friendship.

“I love you too,” he said, his voice completely steady.

“Say my name,” she breathed into his neck as they held each other.

He stared at the calendar on the wall behind her, still holding her. “...I can’t.”

“Please!” she pleaded. “Not once have I ever heard you call my name. It would mean the world to me to hear those simple words. A natural, modest request; I’ve never asked for anything from you, but please, this one thing...”

“And if I refuse?”

“Wh-what?” Momo released her arms and pushed on his chest, leaning against the embrace. “What are you saying?”

“If that is the one thing that you want, that is the one thing that will keep us apart.”

“You can’t be serious; why, Megumi-kun?”

He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say that he had killed his father. He couldn’t tell her how he had drifted away from everyone except her over the years since his death. He could not do it!

“I’m sorry, I have no explanation,” he lied.

Momo’s eyes gathered with tears, and blinking them away as her face grew red in upset. She gathered her books and walked down the stairs of his home, stumbling at the last few steps. She rushed out the door after sliding on her shoes without doing up the laces.

He walked outside after her. His unkempt lawn was home for weeds of many types. He absently kicked the stem of a dandelion as he watched her run across the lawn and away from him. A flurry of seeds spun around in the wind, floating up into the distance. He stared up into the unfittingly cloud-free sky, but the seeds did not return to him.

“Momo-chan....” He exhaled.

The sky grew dark as his curse set in.