Chapter Twenty-Four
Punished
The crickets whirred in the tall pond grass in the garden. Nekohiko stirred in his cat body, coming back to awareness.
He'd spent a good hour just hiding beneath the main house's room in which Kataji, Aomi, and their Aunt and Uncle talked about all the myriads of necessities and troubles and "oh Spirits, the dangers!" that the siblings would deal with in the oncoming few days. At first, the Auntie was too reluctant to even entertain the idea but the longer the conversation went, the less certain she had grown.
Nekohiko had coiled around one of the warm wooden foundation posts under the floorboards and boiled with worry and shock over everything he was hearing from above him. He couldn't wrap his mind around it yet. It was too soon, too sudden...
Too suspicious.
Did Kataji just save him again? Now from the investigation and the persecution of Lord Okinaga's Binders? But why? What did Kataji suspect about him that he decided to take such drastic measures and flee the peninsula so soon?
The staggering fact that Nekohiko was going to meet Abihiko in about a week from now didn't even register in comparison. He was too riled up to even realize.
Kataji's feet padded down the steps above Nekohiko's head as the young man was leaving the mansion and Nekohiko immediately knew.
He was coming back to the workshop. Nekohiko had to return, too. More than that -- he had to act as though nothing had happened and nothing had changed in his life! All while knowing well he wasn't a great actor. Not at all. Especially when his insides were tremoring so hard at the mere idea of talking to Kataji.
Or Aomi. Both siblings set him on edge after all that had happened tonight!
He twitched to life as a cat, abandoning his weary snake body under the mansion. Drawing back to full consciousness, he checked that all his limbs could move freely and that the glue had dried. It took some minutes to adjust but he could move. He raised his head and listened, hushed, to the faraway sound of footsteps drawing near. Without meaning to, he pressed his ears back to his head and sat up, waiting for Kataji's arrival with a guarded tension in every wooden speck of his body.
The evening chill breathed into the workshop as Kataji slid the door open and closed.
The young man looked worn-out and somehow ill. He'd dressed appropriately in order to have a grown-up conversation with his old relatives. Nekohiko had to admit that when, once in a blue moon, he did that -- he appeared a completely different kind of person.
He was taller than Abihiko the last time Nekohiko had seen him, which was only understandable. Abihiko had only been fifteen at that moment. The current Kataji was two years senior of that strange boy from Nekohiko's past life. Moreover, Kataji didn't carry the many signs and haphazard marks of a professional Spirit Binder. No ritual paint under his eyes, no creased, singed, or sometimes even torn clothes from the constant scuffles with malevolent Spirits. Kataji was dressed clean and immaculate. A picture of a fine gentleman from a noble family.
All those potential bride matches from the capital might start fighting for him if they saw him now.
Yet Nekohiko eyed him with suspicion. He didn't know how to fake the fact of not knowing anything, so he preferred to keep quiet and wait for Kataji to speak first.
And Kataji took a mighty long time. He shrugged his outer robe off his shoulders and hanged it carefully on the rod along the wall. He grabbed his cleaning brush from the shelf and began dusting off the surfaces of his carved animals around the room. Casually, as though meaning nothing major with it. He even attempted to reorganize his knife and chisel drawer inside the bench Nekohiko was sitting on but gave up as he usually did when he encountered wire tangled all around his tools.
The intent of his ignoring of Nekohiko was so obvious, Nekohiko felt like barking at him or maybe biting his hand as Kataji leaned close to dust the surface of the bench. But no. He wouldn't stoop so low. He could wait.
Couldn't he?
Kataji sneezed at the swirling sawdust and Nekohiko couldn't take it anymore.
"Bless you," he said.
"Thanks." Kataji stopped dusting and met eyes with Nekohiko for the first time this evening. His expression was unreadable. Distress, disappointment, doubt, sadness? All of these?
"What took you so long? Did something happen?"
"Nh-mm," Kataji answered, noncommitting. "Everything's exactly as it was. Why? Do I look like something happened?"
What the heck, Kataji?
Nekohiko shook his head. Silence covered them like a blanket again.
Abruptly, Kataji kicked over the working seat to lean on, then lifted a whittling tool off the bench pensively. "I should work on your future human doll parts tonight."
"Isn't it a bit late for that?" Nekohiko checked the blueing night creeping in through the window slits. "We've been in this workshop the entire day already. You must be exhausted..."
He knew he was, himself. He'd gotten used to being whetted and carved and chipped as time went by. He even begrudgingly accepted sawing and blocking as a necessary part of his existence. But after he'd received the cat body, such pain and maintenance happened rarer and rarer. There simply wasn't much need to rush it. So both he and Kataji took long, pleasant rests in between the carving and cutting sessions.
Today, they'd already spent too much time working. Kataji's elbows and phalanges had been creaking with tiredness a couple of hours ago.
Now -- work again? And so soon?
Kataji cut a thin smile. "I'm fine."
Then he snatched a particularly misshapen, rough block of Nekohiko's wood from the prepared box and reached for the small chipping knife.
He'd always asked Nekohiko if he was fine with having this done to him. This time, he didn't ask.
"Switch to his block," he said, matter-of-fact. "So that we won't lose it as dead matter."
Nekohiko switched as he was told and found himself looking straight up at Kataji's face through the freshly-sketched eyes. Kataji checked that Nekohiko was fully aware and conscious within this block and then... he plunged the knife into it.
Nekohiko told himself he'd experienced all ranges of agony at Kataji's hands through the arduous process of sculpting and carving of his wood. But tonight, something changed.
Kataji was still working methodically, to a plan. He wasn't making unnecessary motions and wasn't abusing his power to do whatever he pleased with Nekohiko's body. But he wasn't holding himself back either.
In a way, Nekohiko felt like he was being very thoroughly, very slowly castigated for misbehavior. Schooled.
Punished.
The block of wood Kataji was cleaving through with a small pressure knife had the full set of human features doodled on it. Eyes, ears, mouth. In case the pain became so unbearable Nekohiko could ask Kataji to stop at any time. Tears pooled in his eyes and trickled down onto Kataji's fingers but Nekohiko didn't dare to voice out a complaint.
Kataji had to wipe his fingers too often for his liking. He tilted his head. He'd been biting the inner lining of his mouth all this time and had worn the same blank, uninvolved face that reminded Nekohiko so much of his brother as he'd murdered him in cold blood.
But unlike Abihiko, Kataji also looked quite a bit sickened with what he was doing.
"Do you want me to stop?" he asked Nekohiko coolly. "Take a break, maybe?"
"I'm all right," Nekohiko wheezed through strain. "You can go on."
"Are you sure?" The instruments clanged as Kataji threw them into their box. His nostrils quivered as he drew his breaths in. "Please, feel free to speak up if you aren't. I'm listening very intently."
Spirits, was he pissed. Because of Daichi? Aomi and Kataji had both been closely acquainted with Daichi and seemed to like the man. Of was Kataji more mad about Nekohiko's lying? Because he felt used or betrayed?
Oh, Nekohiko understood the sentiment perfectly. But there was little he could do about it, wasn't there? His vengeance upon Abihiko had nothing to do with Kataji...
His desire for revenge wouldn't change. It wouldn't dissipate. It didn't depend on him at all however guilty that made Nekohiko feel.
"The pain will pass. I can take it. My body would still have to be carved one way or the other," he said, giving up. "Does it matter how or when?"
"So you'd just accept whatever I do to you, even if I don't warn you or consult you?" Kataji's eyes gained a weary, dull gleam to them. "Or if I hurt you without any regard for how you feel about it? It will all still be fine. Is that what you're saying?"
...
Nekohiko thought that Kataji wasn't talking about carving but only about himself and Nekohiko having betrayed his trust so gruesomely.
If so, then fine. Nekohiko could also talk ambiguously, dammit.
"Some things have to be done whether we like them or not," Nekohiko said. "But I know that if something truly bad happens and I can't bear it anymore, I can just ask you. To stop. Or to explain to me why you do what you do." His voice dropped so low, even he himself hardly heard it. "And knowing that is enough for me."
Kataji scoffed, gaze stubbornly directed toward the lightless corners of the room.
Nekohiko gathered his courage. "Is there anything you want to ask me, Kataji? If you do -- I promise I will explain whatever you want me to. So just... ask."
"It's late." Kataji shifted in his seat, spreading his arms out of his rigid posture. "We should go to sleep. Tomorrow's a very big day."
It had taken Nekohiko so much of his will to give Kataji an easy way to approach him about Daichi's murder -- but nooooo. Kataji had to be all petty and indignant, as always.
Nekohiko seethed. "Is that all? Nothing else that interests you in regards to me?"
"Not quite." Kataji pulled a very polite expression on. "Do you want to switch back to a cat or should I just carry this block to bed with me?"
The answer was cat, by the way. But not because Nekohiko had so many bodies to choose from. Yet somehow this wasn't even the most frustrating interaction he had tonight.
Right about the time Kataji was carrying the cat up the steps of the mansion and to his bedroom, Nekohiko felt something poke him in his snake form. He snapped over there to check if he was being attacked by some small animal or another of the ever-present Spirits -- but why would he hope?
The whirr of a Seeker device greeted him the moment his mind settled in the snake body. Kataji had already used it today to find Nekohiko's nonexistent tail. And now somebody else was looking for him. This time, successfully.
The tiny apparatus was made of a metallic carcass, four legs forming a table-shaped body. It was covered entirely with sea-anemone tentacles. The Spirit Binders who made these things chose the most bizarre and bright colors to Bind onto the dummy's shape. Thus, these mechanisms always looked like cute toy animals that marched around with an almost insect-like rigidity, sniffing, and caressing everything around them with their colorful tentacles to gain a better understanding of their surroundings.
It was now poking Nekohiko rudely in his head, all the pink tentacles stirring in agitation as it exuded a glow to call the attention of the one who had given it the command to search. The more evolved models could make annoying shrill noises, too. Thankfully, this was an old one, like most Bound dummies in Red Stone estate.
"Found him, mm?" Aomi's voice regained its usual cheery overtones but Nekohiko didn't trust them one bit.
Not after how Aomi had behaved earlier.
"There you are," she said as she pulled Nekohiko from under the foundation and into her arms. The dirt, grass, and rotted leaves he was swaddled in didn't bother her. "Such a bad boy, aren't you, Itsssu?"
Nekohiko wanted to preserve his dignity by not being so flaccid and drowsy on her lap but he soon realized that, compared to the cat form, the snake was just so terribly slow and lethargic. He couldn't move fast even if he wanted.
Had he been pumped full of a real snake's cold blood when the Binder made this body? Arghhh. So he was actually a reptile? Not a shallow mimicry of one but fully reptilian with everything that came with it: the good and the awful.
"I'm all right," he slurred because he couldn't muster a longer phrase.
"Nah. You should be punished, and punished hard for what you did," Aomi told him as she clambered to her feet and set her way inside the nearest room. "You scummy serpent."
Punished?
What was it with tonight and him being punished? Of course, he knew he was guilty of the most heinous crime known to people. Murder. But, deep inside, he didn't feel wrong for having done it.
He'd simply returned his debt back to Daichi. Daichi had helped murder him first, so how was this not justice served? Moreover, he had at least announced his intentions to Daichi before killing him. On contrast, Daichi had not graced Nekohiko the same respect.
Neither Kataji nor Aomi had any right to chastise him for being fair. What could they prove? Neither of them could even be a hundred percent sure he'd done it in the first place!
So Nekohiko sulked in the girl's arms, refusing to be bullied into guilt. "Punished for what? Enlighten me, Aomi. Have I done anything wrong lately?"
"Yes?" She sounded outraged. She even stomped her foot on the floorboards. "You dared escape from the basket I put you into. And then you snuck out here, to crawl in mud and dirt and get yourself so messy, too? What kind of gratitude is this for me paying my own money to make you this body, huh?"
Ah. Exactly like Kataji. Pretending nothing weird had happened.
Nekohiko could play this game, too.
"I am a person. Should I have wallowed in your basket like a Bound toy patiently waiting till you came back to me?"
She propped him in her hand to give him a very narrow, very intense stare. "But it's like I can't trust you anymore, can I, Itssu? Where will you go next? What will you do there?" Her lips thinned in a predatory smile. "Am I not responsible for your actions if I am the maker of your body? Should I not know at all times where you are, with whom, and why?"
...excuse me? So she did see him as nothing more than her own private toy!
"If I'm so inconvenient to either you or Kataji -- I don't want to be a burden," Nekohiko said, his voice ringing. "I don't exactly understand why you two help me at all if I give you so much trouble all the time."
"Ah." She sighed. She spotted a mirror nearby and was now preening herself in front of it, fitting Nekohiko across her shoulders and neck in the most stylish ways. "You see, here's the deal. You need us much more than we need you. That's just how it is. And, in its own way -- it's addicting."
He didn't see where this was going.
"To have someone so needy and vulnerable and... powerless," she whispered, smiling at her own fabulous reflection, "in my hands. So perhaps I cannot trust you and cannot rely on you. But I have you. Without you, I would be so bored with my life. And without me or Kataji, you would be next to nothing. You probably would be dead already. Mm?"
Nekohiko let her have her way however she wanted. Not like he could resist, being so cold-blooded and sleepy as it were. But his thoughts weren't sleepy at all!
They thrashed, they boiled. They set his mind on fire.
These... people!
"You have no idea how lucky you are that I'm not an evil person who would abuse a pure little needy soul like you," Aomi told him brightly. "You should be grateful. And not run away from me and go out and do random, potentially dangerous stuff I don't know about -- ever again. Don't you agree?"
***
He only switched back to his cat form when Kataji was already in bed, having laid the cat body beside him on the pillow, as always. Silence, chill. The lights in the room were dark and Kataji's profile paled nearby only faintly.
Nekohiko had actually been fine remaining a mere snake in Aomi's bedroom. He had a fluffy basket there, and he'd already decided yesterday that he didn't want to sleep in Kataji's bed anymore. But at the same time...
He came back here. As though he had no other choice.
He thought that Aomi was right when she said Nekohiko needed the two of them much more than they needed him. So why were they helping him? Was it truly only because having power over him was so addictive or exhilarating to them? Somehow he doubted that.
Somehow he couldn't stop trying to warm up his way back into their hearts, even if they were wary of him for the time being. Not to use them. Not to manipulate. Just because he wanted it so.
He turned on the purr-box and tried to go to sleep. But Kataji opened his eyes to peer at him sourly and Nekohiko couldn't leave it at that.
"Aomi told me we're leaving for Nara in two days?" he said as if wondering.
"We?" Kataji arched his eyebrows, then sharply turned around, his back to Nekohiko. "I'm getting married there. Who said I'd need her -- or you -- with me for that?"
"You are getting married?" What a shocking information! "Why didn't you tell?"
An aggravated huff. "How is me marrying any of your business?"
... of course, Kataji. Of course.
"Congratulations?" Nekohiko whispered, only to be hissed at in return.
"You wish."
Spirits. This... person just... Raaaaaaaaagh!
"Good night to you too," Nekohiko replied and, in a fit of meanness, turned his purr-box off.
Just because. He was all for fair returning of other people's behaviors right back at them, and passive-aggressive was seemingly the way to go in Red Stone Estate.
Which lasted the next day and the day after it, too. Nekohiko refused to talk to siblings other than general smalltalk about the weather. Kataji responded in a similar fashion while Aomi -- the great actress that she was -- managed to revert back to her old behavior frighteningly fast. Even when Kataji eventually found out the deal with the snake Aomi was carrying around all the time, he didn't become angry.
Only disappointed.
And yes. Kataji was being petty for no real reason. When the time came and packing and taking care of the trip essentials passed by fleetingly, all of Nekohiko's lumber parts were packed, bagged, and stamped. Ready to go along with the rest of the luggage.
Toward the capital.
Toward Nara.
***
That same day -- many leagues away, inside the Nara's Emerald Palace, Nekohiko felt his Kitten's Paw seashell finally arrive at its destination, too.
A young letter carrier's voice came through all the layers of paper and silk in which the seashell was wrapped.
"...for his Supreme Divine Emperor. Personally. From his family members."
The world dipped as the boy must have bowed while passing the package into someone else's hands. An old woman's, judging by the voice.
"How wonderful," she said. "His Majesty has been waiting for this package for so long!"
Trust me, he has no idea, Nekohiko thought, himself dying of anticipation.
All his roads led only toward Abihiko.
His enemy, his nemesis, his... everything, in this pathetic new life.
Funny, wasn't it? From people who had made each other's lives warmer and lighter and jumped in front of one another to shield from harm -- to a hunter and prey with no real chance for it to ever become something as positive, or as endearing as it once had been.
What else could he call it other than Bound for life with some invisible thread of fate?
Also question:
Does it come across in the text that Kata&Aomi are not mean to him for no reason but really just upset about the whole murder/lying thing? They are, but they also both refuse to talk about it (Kataji is proud and stubborn and Aomi is too angry to want to discuss this yet). So I am afraid it might seem as though they don't have any deeper motivations at all and might even feel antagonistic without much justification?
Aomi likes to portray herself as an evil witch because that makes people dismiss her due to the cognitive dissonance ^^.
Then they make surprised pikachu faces every time she shows them a different facet of her personality, which cracks her up
@Queenfisher
Asami hugs Aomi. "Are you my Onee-san? I like your kimono. And your fragance."
@Assurbanipal_II *_* just realized that Aomi would indeed be Asami's onee-san. Strange, but it had never really registered before!
Aomi: Yes. I am your onee-san. The best onee-san.
I like your Susanoo. A LOT 
. So pretty... so huggable... so fiery *_*.
@Queenfisher