Adult-FanFiction.org : Anime

BOUND	By : OokamiKasumi Category: +M to R > Natsume Y?jin-Ch? > Natsume Y?jin-Ch? Views: 1742 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: ‘Natsume Yuujinchou’ characters, terms, and locations property of Midorikawa Yuki. This story was written for the intent of Personal enjoyment. No money was made from this work.

Chapter List
- 1-BOUND
- 2-Two
- 3-Three
- 4-Four
- 5-Five
- 6-Six
- 7-Seven
- 8-Eight
- 9-Nine
- 10-Ten
- 11-Eleven
- 12-Twelve
- 13-Thirteen
- 14-Fourteen
- 15-Fifteen
- 16-Sixteen
- 17-Seventeen
- 18-Eighteen
- 19-Nineteen
- 20-Twenty
- 21-Twenty-One
- 22-Twenty-Two
- 23-Twenty-Three
- 24-Twenty-Four - END
- 19
- 20
- 21
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Twenty ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nyanko and the goat-horned female spirit rolled around on the ground holding their bruised heads moaning.
I refused to feel the slightest bit guilty for punching them both.
Natori finally rose from the ground where Nyanko had laid him flat, and walked over to stand at my side. "I have to perform an exorcism tomorrow at noon. Would you like to give me a hand, or at least come by and watch?"
I narrowed my eyes at him. "I distinctly remember refusing to be your apprentice."
Natori lifted both hands and leaned back a hair. "I didn't say you'd be one! I just thought you might like to see how an exorcism is done."
Suspicion burned up my spine and my hands balled into fists at my sides. "If this is some kind of stupid trap...?"
Natori's gaze dropped to my fists and he waved his hands before him. "Not at all! It's completely legitimate! In fact it's the reason I'm here in town, to do this exorcism."
I folded my arms before my chest. "I'd need to know more about it first."
Natori nodded and smiled. "I'd be happy to tell you everything." His smile slipped away. "But, all the information is..." His gaze slid from mine. "In my room at the inn." He darted a tenuous smile at me. "If you don't mind coming by?"
It almost looked like guilt.
My eyes trained on Natori, I called out. "Nyanko, we're going."
Natori frowned slightly. "You're bringing your...?"
"Cat." I let a sour smile lift the corner of my mouth. "That's how everyone else sees him."
Natori frowned at the moaning creature walking up to my side. "I don't see how."
I sighed. "Personally, neither do I." I shook my head and shrugged. "But it's easier to just let them think what they like."
Nyanko hopped up onto my back and crawled onto my shoulder. "Ow... Ow... Ow..." He rubbed his head with one paw. "Did you have to hit me so hard, Natsume?"
I turned to scowl at him. "Did you have to start a fight in a public place?"
Nyanko's gaze slid away from mine. "So, where are we going?"
I turned to settle an even look on Natori. "Natori's room at the inn. He's planning an exorcism and he wants me to help him with it."
Nyanko head lifted. "Sounds interesting." He waved a regal paw at Natori. "Lead the way, brat."
Leave it to Nyanko to make me look like I had no protection what so ever.
Once again, I followed Natori through town to his traditional Japanese room at the inn above the coffee shop. However, this time the reason and the circumstances were completely different--and I was far from defenseless.
Natori opened his door, pulled off his shoes, and set his coat on the hook just inside the door. He made a point of closing the sliding doors to the bedroom.
I slipped off my shoes, hung my coat on an adjacent hook, and pretended not to notice.
Natori strode across the main room to step behind the low black table before the lathe covered windows and sat cross-legged on the pillow. He began spreading out papers and maps.
I sat on the pillow on the opposite side. No way in hell was I going to sit next to him.
Still whining about the bump on his head, Nyanko sat on my immediate right.
The two spirits that worked with Natori coalesced into being. Both of them sat neatly and primly to either side of him, the black-haired woman on the left and the goat-horned woman on the right.
Natori set his glasses on his nose and smiled at me. "I'll begin with introductions." He nodded toward the right. "This is Sasago." He nodded toward the goat-horned woman on his left. "This is Urihime." He motioned toward the black-haired spirit -- the one that had very nearly nearly strangled me and Kaname. "They're my bound spirits."
I flinched at the word 'bound', but only a little.
Natori pulled over a local map and tapped his finger on it. "We’ve been living in Sasaki village, which isn't far from here." He tugged over a paper covered in neatly written notations. "I'm currently fulfilling a request from an old family. Their storehouse has been locked for decades because it's rumored that anyone who opens it will be cursed. Unfortunately, they recently hit hard times, so they called in a pawn broker to liquidate whatever was in there." Natori used a dry writing brush to point to a different place on the map.
The name of the street under the tip of his brush looked strangely familiar.
"The owner opened the storehouse and the broker went in to examine the contents without any problems, but ever since then, the broker has been having night terrors in addition to a string of bad luck, including a few nasty accidents.
I frowned. "You're sure a spirit is behind that?"
Natori gestured with his brush toward the spirits at his sides. "According to what they found, yes." He set his elbow on the map spread out on the table and propped his chin on his hand. "Apparently, during the last war when the family sealed their valuable in the storehouse, a spirit took up residence. It's caused quite a hassle for the family." He shook his head. "Spirits always cause so many problems."
I sat back and crossed my arms. "Perhaps, but then we don't always know their reasons, why they're doing what they're doing."
Natori's brows lifted then he chuckled. "How kind... Are you siding with the spirits?"
I gave him a glare from the corner of my eye. "If you want to put it that way."
Natori shook his head and chuckled a bit more while using his last two fingers to push his glasses higher on his nose.
I frowned at the action. "Natori, are your eyes really that bad?"
He blinked me. "What? These?" He tapped a finger against the frame. "Oh, they're fake -- plain glass." He smiled. "It's easier to see spirits through glass or in mirrors than with the naked eye."
My attention was abruptly caught by something else.
The shadowy lizard that wandered all over Natori's body abruptly slipped out from under his sleeve. It scampered around his arm to loop around his wrist completely, bit its own tail, and froze in place.
It looks like a bracelet. A smile lifted my lips.
"That's the first time I've seen you smile like that." Natori's face gentled into a smile that wasn't sly, or fake, merely mildly amused. "Looks like this mark of mine can be useful after all." He leaned back in his seat and his smile bloomed into one that actually graced his face with something close to kindness. "You really are a nice kid; a nice, normal kid."
I very nearly laughed. "Is that so?"
"It's nothing to be ashamed of." He reached out to pat my head.
Nyanko eyed him from where he sat at my side, but he didn't prevent the contact.
Perhaps smiling at Natori's mark was a bit insensitive of me, since it was something that was very likely eating his life away. However, it gave me the chance to see him smile for real. It gave me a chance to see who really lived under that mask of loneliness, fear -- and control.
It was nice.
Shortly after that, I rose to my feet. "I need to go. They'll be worried if I stay any longer." I turned to the doorway to get my coat and shoes.
Natori didn't stop me, or even suggest that I stay longer. Instead, he got up and grabbed his coat too. "I'll walk you through the park."
Out of the inn and through town Natori talked to me about his work as an exorcist, the spirits he'd seen, and the places he'd gone. In the park, we took a lesser used path and his happy chatter continued. He picked up a large branch for no apparent reason and swung it around, rather like a kid.
For once, I felt completely at ease in his company.
"Anyway..." He abruptly offered me a slip of paper. "I'll be waiting for you tomorrow at the storehouse. Here's the address."
I looked over at him and frowned. "I didn't agree to help you."
Natori rolled his eyes. "You don't have to help me. You can just watch if you like." He smiled with amazing sweetness. "But I'd really like it if you did help, even a little."
A wind moaned from beyond the trees. "Natsume..." A breath of power sailed with it.
Every hair on my body rose. Whatever it was, it was big -- and it was getting closer.
"Natsume... Give me the Book of Friends..."
I looked to the thicket on my right. Something was definitely there--and it was coming in fast. I glanced up at Natori. If I don't leave now, he's going get involved in my mess. I pasted a grin on my face. "Well, I'll be going now!" I turned sharply to the left to lunge into the opposite trees.
Natori grabbed my arm. "Wait! You don't have to keep these things from me."
Jerked to a halt by his grip on my arm, I turned to look at him. "Eh?" That's when I spotted the yellow paper sutra speared on the end of the stick Natori was carrying.
That was also when the huge black-haired spirit came tearing through the trees to grab for me. "Natsume...!"
Natori stabbed the stick right through its left eye -- while grinning.
Blood sprayed. The spirit screamed.
The sound pierced right through me, nearly stopping my heart with horror. That spirit was in pain -- real, horrible, excruciating pain.
Still grinning, Natori raised his stick with both hands, clearly planning on stabbing the spirit again.
"Wait! Stop!" I threw myself in front of Natori to block him. "You hurt it enough!"
Weeping and clutching its bleeding eye, the spirit took that moment to escape back into the trees.
Natori looked at me with the nastiest, coldest, most hateful smile I’d ever seen on anyone's lips. "What for?" His voice practically frosted the air. "It's after you, isn't it?"
I bared my teeth and shouted at him. "I said, that's enough!"
With that glacial smile still in place, Natori looked at me with almost unseeing eyes. "You're far too soft. You can't just let things like that go around attacking people, right?"
People? Defending yourself against an attacker -- spirit or not -- was perfectly sensible, but that spirit wasn't targeting him. It was targeting me -- only me, and for a reason! White hot fury boiled up in me. "It that how you exercise spirits? By hurting them?"
Natori's glacial smile didn't shift one bit. "But you can see them, right? With spirits harassing you like this, surely you understand why...?"
I did not understand -- not at all. He wanted to hurt that spirit, in fact he enjoyed hurting it. All of a sudden, I began to wonder if this was his true face -- how he really was under all that sunlight and fake glitter, under all that loneliness and need for control -- frozen to the core with hatred for spirits.
It made me so...angry I shook with it. What he had done to me was controlling and extremely selfish, but this was pure cruelty. It was barbaric. I shouted right in his face. "That's right! I can see them! I can hear them too!" I pointed at his stick which was dripping with the spirit's blood. "If this is how you do your exorcizing, then I can't help you! I won't help you!"
Natori's eyes widened in open surprise. His icy smile cracked and melted.
The steam abruptly ran out of my fury and my voice dropped down to an almost pleading tone. "Sooner or later, that hateful attitude will come back at you! Hate only makes things more hateful!"
Well, it made sense while I was saying it.
I looked away, somewhat embarrassed by my outburst. "Anyway, that's how I see it." I glanced back at Natori.
The coldness was completely gone from his expression. He looked almost...lost--abandoned.
Despite my best efforts, a pang of sympathy wrenched my heart. He apparently thought -- was convinced -- that what he was doing was right.
But it wasn't! It wasn't right to cause pain beyond reason -- not to anybody, or any thing! I was not going to apologize or take back what I’d said. Sensible or not, I meant it.
But I hated to see anyone suffering--even him.
I took hold of Natori's arm and looked him in the eye. "Thank you, for helping me." Then I walked away. With a silent Nyanko toddling at my side, I left him standing there in the middle of the path, alone.
I felt so...hollow.
I'd finally met someone who could see the things I saw, who knew the things I knew, who straddled both worlds yet was truly part of neither just like I was -- and I couldn't understand him at all.
Nyanko huffed at my side. "The moment he touched me, I knew he hated us spirits. I could feel it."
Us? Was I included in that statement? I almost cracked a smile, but the very thought that Natori might actually see me as a spirit was bitterly depressing. It would mean he hated me too.
Nyanko looked up at me from the corner of his eye. "The spirits must have done one hell of a number on him over the years."
It made me wonder. Would the same thing eventually happen to me -- the coldness, the hate?
Dear god, I hope not.
~ * ~
- 19
- 20
- 21
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

BOUND