Queenfisher

I just wanted to say something to the readers who might have a slight moral dissonance with reading about a character currently treated as villainous by the story in a lighthearted manner as this chapter does. This is not me tricking you into fluffy stuff happening to a bad person. If you consider this somewhat fluffy, don't worry ^^. It is meant to be read like that. I have your back ^^ -- this book will not treat questionable behaviors lightly, but ambiguities and deeper motivations might change your perceptions of some characters as the mystery plot takes its time to unravel.

Chapter Twenty-One

Bondage!

(Part 2 of 3)

Nekohiko didn't see, but he felt it. The pain cut into his wrist from the strain. And like a spring coil bouncing to its original state, he lurched and bumped into Abihiko when the two of them were drawn back together.

But this wasn't even the worst thing. From how they'd stretched the thread previously, it shortened a few bites right before their eyes.

Abihiko's mouth spewed some pretty rude-looking words at him but Nekohiko was lucky the Hush didn't let a single sound escape Abihiko's throat. In aggravation, Abihiko took hold of Nekohiko's lapels.

Do. Not. Run away from me! Abihiko's lips enunciated syllable by syllable.

No, you! Nekohiko mouthed back at him.

Of course, he understood that they could only survive this trial by staying in the general vicinity of each other but it didn't imply he had become Abihiko's pet on a leash. Why shouldn't Abihiko follow him around instead?

He broke away and glared at the shimmering white thread hanging between them. With rough motions, he gathered his side of the thread in his hands, then looped it around his wrist. Quickly understanding what he was doing, Abihiko followed his example on his side of the thread.

Abihiko snapped his fingers loudly to call Nekohiko's attention to himself. He started saying something but so fast and so confusedly, Nekohiko had no chance to understand it just from the lip-reading.

And that only exasperated Abihiko more.

He stood awhile, rubbing his forehead in deep thought, trying to make up a way to communicate to Nekohiko what he wanted to say.

The thread, Nekohiko pointed. We keep it safe whatever happens.

Whether or not Abihiko understood such a complex sentence, he nodded grimly. Then he stuck his thumb in the direction in which he had been running before.

Let's go, he mouthed.

I want to go there, Nekohiko pointed in the opposite direction.

Abihiko gritted his teeth, instantly pissed. Are you kidding me? he said.

"...I'll have to keep an eye on you so that you won't harass little Nekohiko again," Kotone was saying to Takara all the while.

"Well," Takara replied, arms crossed on his chest. "I'll have to keep an eye on my little Abihiko too because this torture is going to be very entertaining for me to watch, and there's no way I'm missing it."

All of Kotone's patience went into not hitting him. "So we will hang out the four of us? Tsk. How marvelous."

"Yeah baby," Takara said.

Run that way, Abihiko pushed Nekohiko to where Nekohiko had been pointing without further argument.

"Where are you two going!" Two screams followed them close behind but Nekohiko was fast.

He weaved and bolted and slipped through narrow pathways. He'd learned many shortcuts and ways out of the buildings in Izumo this year singly because when people bullied him or trapped him in rooms, or made him too uncomfortable with their presence -- he had to escape. By now, he might not have learned much about Binding or Spiritway scriptures, but he knew how to navigate the Shrine School like the back of his hand.

All of a sudden, a slap glanced against his back. Nekohiko stopped, cold with distress. Abihiko had... hit him? How dare he...

I can't run so fast, Abihiko mouthed at him, shoving his bound wrist in his face. See? I have to keep the thread from breaking, so I have to adjust to your running while protecting it. And you're simply too damn fast!

All of these weren't words Nekohiko read in the other boy's speech -- but in his gestures, and grimaces, and even small impromptu performances of certain actions. But even so, he understood him perfectly. Though still annoyed, Nekohiko nodded.

The two of them leaned against the nearest gallery wall to quieten their breathing. They were out of Kotone and Takara's sight already, so more running wasn't even needed. Yet now that they were alone, the realization that they were alone was itself, such an unpleasant one.

With his side-eye, Nekohiko saw that Abihiko turned to him as though wanting to speak. But instead of trying, he only waited, gathering his thoughts.

Abihiko clapped to make Nekohiko look at him.

How do we cheat this thing? He held the thread up in his fingers.

And really... How?

"...for the midwinter celebrations," a familiar voice of a boy from their year echoed through the small courtyard they were in. A couple of other voices responded to it with hums, and soon, four boys who were usually gathering around Abihiko emerged from a corridor and into the yard, with books and prepared Binding boxes hidden under their furred cloaks.

"Oh, Abi!" one of them exclaimed, merry. "The Head Priest already let you out?"

The boys hadn't noticed Nekohiko in the shadows yet. And Abihiko didn't miss that fact. He elbowed Nekohiko behind himself, then reclined against him to hide Nekohiko from sight. A bright smile already popped on Abihiko's face.

But with no sound coming out of his mouth, he could only wave at his friends and nod them aside enigmatically.

"Mm?" the boys said, unsure. "Is something wrong?"

Abihiko shook his head, still smiling.

Behind him, Nekohiko could only cringe down lower, afraid to be seen with Abihiko just as much as Abihiko must've been ashamed to be seen with him.

"Who is that, behind you?" Another boy stepped to the side, curiosity clear in his tone. "A... girl?"

Abihiko stomped. Then stomped again, wildly gesturing with his hands for his friends to leave. He even jumped on the spot, so agitated he became from the others not understanding fast enough what he meant.

"Erm... we should be going. The Introductory Nagare class is starting," the first boy told the others, then gave Abihiko another bewildered look. "You're coming?"

With his hand, Abihiko encompassed his dirty, breakfast-decorated clothes and hair, then smiled aggressively, with all his teeth in the open. Leave me alone, his lips said.

"He really needs to take a bath first," the boys agreed, then slowly, glancing back at Abihiko with suspicion after every other step, walked away down the yard.

Abihiko only breathed in relief when he and Nekohiko managed to find an empty classroom nearby where they could stay in away from both the teachers and all the pupils snooping around before the classes began. It wasn't long before the activity outside the classroom died down when the School break period was over. Silence and tranquility of the corridors and the hallways settled in.

Now they could venture out. They had to. The breakfast soup and rice porridge were already solidifying on their clothes.

Nekohiko felt so defeated, so miserable. To hell with Abihiko -- he wasn't so shallow as to continue complaining about Abihiko's presence when it made no sense to go on. What bothered him was the classes he was missing. He was already at the bottom of every Binding subject -- what would happen to him now that he deliberately skipped classes?

Obviously, Abihiko wasn't concerned about this in the slightest. For a boy permanently at the top of every class, there wasn't any real need to go there in the first place, was there?

But more even than that was the oncoming disaster of cleaning up. They both were filthy, but... they couldn't exactly wash in front of each other, could they? Nekohiko wouldn't wash in front of even his male guardians, let alone a strange boy who was supposed to think Nekohiko was a girl!

Ugh, this was all too horrible.

They stalked behind the buildings and stopped and paused whenever a stray teacher passed through the galleries, hiding in the shadows. The snow drifted like weary petals over the floorboards, making them slippery. They had to be very careful skittering over those and a couple of times either Nekohiko or Abihiko lost balance. And it wasn't anything good for their thread.

When Abihiko lost his footing the very first time, faceplanting onto the floor, Nekohiko didn't even flinch to catch him. Why would he?

But as the thread snapped taut between them as a result and then shortened by another bite, the perfect reason to catch Abihiko whenever he fell came to him soon enough. And so it did to Abihiko.

Thus, when Nekohiko almost toppled on the slippery steps of the bathhouse, Abihiko was right beside him, grabbing hold of him so fast and so firmly, Nekohiko couldn't help but choke in revulsion.

Don't. touch. me! he gestured at Abihiko as gravely as he could.

As if I want to! Abihiko answered with his own flurry of gestures. Stop being so clumsy!

Clumsy? You were the first one to trip and fall! Nekohiko already began saying, but--

The subtle lurch from the thread on both their wrists told him that it happened again. The moment they began fighting, the thread shortened as a punishment.

Abihiko wore the sourest expression on his face as he gave the bathhouse a tired wave of his hand. After you.

They didn't even step a foot inside when Kotone, agitated and out of breath, ran out of the doors, searching for something. She almost toppled them again but held herself off just in time.

"You!" she gasped, fear mixing with relief in her voice. "Takara and I were looking everywhere for you two! How dare you run away--"

"Neko, Neko, Neko?" Takara's nasal voice called from somewhere by the galleries a bit aways. "Abi, Abi, Abi? Come on, I'm gonna fiiiind you!"

Both Nekohiko and Abihiko swerved to Kotone, hands in praying positions in front of their chests. They couldn't speak, but they could plead with their eyes. Nekohiko knew he did.

Please, Kotone -- hide me away from that terrible man! Please don't let him come near me again!

Kotone must have had exactly the same thought. She grabbed the two boys by the shoulders, swiftly pushing them into the bathhouse and down the warm, humid corridor to the farthest hot spring room.

"The bean paste is starting to smell, you know," she whispered, prodding them into the murky room. She made a few rapid Binding signatures in the air and the Bound firefly glow woke up along the walls, bringing the room into soft, greenish focus. "And it's all in your hair, ugh! We'll have to dunk you both into the water to soak!"

No, no. No! Nekohiko had an irresistible desire to flee again. But, bound as he was to Abihiko, he knew he shouldn't even try. Abihiko already began undressing like it didn't even matter to him.

Nekohiko gripped Kotone's sleeve, twisting it in his fingers in desperation. Kotone, Kotone, please!

She didn't hear him, of course, but she understood well enough.

"Oh Nekohiko, don't you worry. We'll wash this foul paste out of your pretty hair soon enough. And I'll even go bring clean clothes for you two while you soak. All right?"

Abihiko had doffed his outer shirt by now, and -- lo and behold! -- it came off him without any resistance from the cruel thread. The clothes simply phased through it when they were taken off. But the thread still remained, circling Abihiko's white, slender wrist without even the slightest tinge of red underneath it. From how taut and painful the thread sometimes felt on Nekohiko's skin, it was unbelievable that it left no marks at all.

As though it, indeed, was more metaphorical than physical.

Nekohiko got so carried away by these thoughts that he almost missed the fact that Abihiko was stripping even further like the whole world didn't exist in his eyes!

Even Kotone hurried to catch Abihiko's hands that reached for his trouser ties. "What! What are you doing?" she laughed nervously. "Don't... undress! You are a boy and Nekohiko is a girl. What if she sees your... unmentionables?"

Abihiko's face only revealed endless apathy at this idea. So? his lips moved. I don't care.

"'So'?" Kotone sputtered. "That's not appropriate! You would be vulnerable--"

But these clothes stink so much, he mouthed. They disgust me.

Kotone hurried to the shelves coffered within the walls and brought back a couple of roomy adult towels that could cover either of the boys head to toe. "All right, undress. I'll hold this in between you two. Then you can cover underneath while Nekohiko undresses as well. Reasonable?"

Abihiko nodded but Nekohiko didn't. Too bad no one was paying him attention because Abihiko and Kotone proceeded to do exactly what they said they would and all Nekohiko was left with -- was waiting, sweating with fear and chills all through his dirty clothes.

The thread tightened a couple of times as Abihiko moved around, yet Nekohiko was so staggered, he missed one of those times. And the thread shortened again. Abihiko, emerging from beyond the towel-screen, looked ever more deadly, examining the remaining length of the thread as if it was all Nekohiko's fault and none of his own.

Nekohiko had never been in the same Izumo School bath room as other people. Not once. Even though Kotone cooed and pacified him as he crawled out of his clothes, mortified down to his marrow, he still felt like crying. Neither Kotone, nor Abihiko watched him, so of course his secret hadn't been busted. Yet still...

Sinking down into the hot spring water, wrapped in the towel from the knees up and to his neck, he bit down his lips, keeping himself from melting down on sheer will. Abihiko sat only a few steps away, also in his towel, but as a much looser wrap over his shoulders and back. They didn't speak. Not even with their gestures or their eyes. Each looked solely before him, sulking until the end of times.

Only after Kotone brought them new sets of clothes and helped them brush all the icky breakfast bits out of their long hair, did they feel even a little bit alive. A faint gleam returned to Abihiko's eyes as he smiled at Kotone's awkward, bumbling monologue while she listed to them all the things she had done while they sat in the pool waiting for her.

Nekohiko couldn't understand why she acted so differently around Abihiko until she got to the most important part.

"...and so I took care of all the things regarding your clothes and your items in your dorm," she told Abihiko, still busy with Nekohiko's long, silky strands she combed through with her fingers. Unlike Abihiko's hair she'd brushed before and let loose however he desired, even without asking Nekohiko's opinion, she was already braiding his hair, twining ribbons and fused petals into it as she went. "And in the girls' dorm, too. I carried either of your things to my room, just so you know. So that there is no issue with your sleeping arrangement. Don't you worry. An adult will be sleeping with you two every night until your thread dissolves. We'll keep an eye on you."

"Wait -- we have to sleep together as well?" Abihiko blurted and then froze with his mouth hanging open. He turned to Nekohiko, stunned. "I can speak again?"

Kotone beamed as well. "Evidently so. The spell must have run its course."

Excited like never before, Abihiko and Nekohiko raised their wrists to check if the thread was perhaps gone as well, but... No. Of course no. Why would they even hope?

They trudged on through the greater snow piles strewn across the garden now that the evening had come and the snowfall had never stopped through the day. Kotone ran behind them keeping her hands on their shoulders to help them not lose balance in the high snow.

Abihiko grumbled all the way to the novice girls' dorm. "Seriously, at least let us sleep by ourselves. What purpose does it serve to keep us bound together all the damn time? That Head Priest is sure some kind of a perve--"

Nekohiko snapped an elbow at him before thinking. Pure reflex. Pure shock at anyone being so low as to insult the Head Priest Suminoe himself!

"Hey!" Abihiko roared, pointing at the thread that had shortened another stretch because of this.

"Shh, shhh, you don't want all the novice girls to hear that you're here, do you?" Kotone pushed open the door of her separate room next to the entrance to the dorm. The phantom pink glow spread from the mushroom lantern Nekohiko had already gotten used to. It stood the corner of Kotone's room. It reminded him of all those times he and Kotone had sat here together studying Spirit Binding texts for his classes. This small space that didn't belong to him was the closest thing to a home he had in Izumo shrine.

And now his "home" was invaded by the person he hated most in the entire School. And this person's overabundant, disparate piles of stuff.

"My things!" Abihiko exclaimed, though to be fair, he did try to keep his volume down. "You actually brought all of them here, didn't you?" He winked at Kotone, then dashed to the closest stack of gaudy garbage and started rummaging through. "Respect, Big Sis."

"Dinner first, homework and toys later," Kotone told them, already setting down a makeshift table for a proper meal for two. "Fried fish dipped in crumbs and egg wraps!"

She and Abihiko started rubbing their hands and exchanging the most mundane, giggly news and gossip from around the School that had happened during this long, terrible day. Abihiko attacked his half of the meal almost instantly, never shutting up even as he chewed. On the opposite side, Nekohiko couldn't swallow even the smallest chunk.

The news passed him right by. The cozy warm glow of the room only filled him with dread.

"...you two missed the first class on Nagare Binding method, though," Kotone was saying, nudging Nekohiko in the side to pick up his speed with the meal. "And Nekohiko already is on the bottom behind everyone else in the Royal Family's method..."

Even though he didn't comment, Abihiko rolled his eyes eloquently enough.

So everyone knew about how much of a failure he was, huh. Knew so well, they didn't even need to talk about it. Nekohiko only grew quieter and more sullen.

Kotone sighed. "She'll have to study with Kumikata and Shirogane in private to be able to finish this year. Otherwise, she won't pass!"

"Sucks to be Nekohiko, I guess," Abihiko said softly, starting to discreetly pick vegetable slices from Nekohiko's full bowl.

"Well, you are the top pupil, Abihiko," Kotone stressed, content with her little scheme. "Don't you think your lending her a helping hand would be a great way for you two to bond positively and free yourselves from the Fox Thread?"

Abihiko shrugged. "Sure. Whatever."

Nekohiko's heard ached from the humiliation and even more so from his inability to do anything about it. He cleared his throat, hiding his burning face beneath his hair.

"Kotone," he whispered, pained. "Will we actually have to sleep together tonight?"

He hadn't ever slept with one person so close to him. Now he had to sleep with two?

In embarrassment, Kotone bit the inside of her cheek. "Don't worry. I won't let you feel threatened by a boy's proximity. I'll protect your honor."

... honor?

A disgusted huff escaped Abihiko's lips. "Protect? From whom? From me? Trust me, I am not interested in that in the slightest."

"In any case," Kotone went on, steady. "I'll sleep in between you two, so you won't ever have to touch. See? Solved it. Now eat, eat, Nekohiko! Or Abihiko will eat everything before you can!"

"Let him." Nekohiko turned aside, bitter. "I'm not hungry."

"Aww, thank you, honored maiden." Abihiko's voice exuded the most velvety sweetness. "Can I have the bigger half of the bed, too? And the majority of the blanket as well, if you're so kind to me all of a sudden?"

This night would be a long one, wouldn't it?

Nekohiko closed his eyes, preparing for the greatest trial of his life.