(Chapter six. Kinda self-explanatory. More people show up, but not so many of them actually get their names in, because I like ending chapters in something like suspense. Well, not really, but if I got that far, they'd each be at least five thousand words apiece. Admittedly, they're four thousane apiece now, but another thousand would probably push it too far.

I don't own Fruits Basket, any of its characters, blah blah blah, but the OCs are mine.

I don't own Anita. She is Werecat13's.

Enjoy/go away.)


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Chapter 6

Haruka was suddenly aware that she was conscious and so groggy that she could describe how she felt as “dead”. It was a very strange feeling. She opened her eyes groggily to see that she was lying face-down in the school courtyard. There seemed enough light that the sun wasn’t down yet, but she couldn’t actually see it because of the school walls.

“Oh…what happened?” she moaned to herself.

“Well,” Yuki’s voice tried to explain from somewhere next to her, “basically, you choked and passed out…well, it was a bit worse than that…”

Haruka somehow managed to lift her head enough to look to see him frowning worriedly. “How so?” She suddenly remembered the whole ghost issue and gasped. “Nobody heard that, did they?”

Yuki’s frown deepened. “No, that would be pretty hard for most people…”

“So that means I can actually talk to you now?”

“You could before, too,” Yuki pointed out, “but now only ghosts will hear you.”

“Why’s that?” Haruka asked, trying to sit up, with considerably less effort than she thought due to the odd sensation of being lighter than she expected.

Yuki looked away. “Well…”

“What?” At that moment, she remembered that she had just woken up from apparently blacking out or something. “Wait, really, what happened?”

Yuki looked uncomfortable and started pacing. “Well, what do you remember?”

“Uh…” Haruka dug through her memory. “You and Kyo were fighting, and then Kyo knocked me over…he ended up sitting on me, and I couldn’t really breathe, and then he got off of me, and then…I saw Anita…. Oh shoot, did she see me just black out like that?”

Yuki, if anything looked even more uncomfortable.

“Wait,” Haruka added, “I don’t think Anita would just leave me there, she’d probably take me home or somewhere. So why am I here and where did Anita go?”

“Well, you fainted, and then…” Yuki avoided Haruka’s gaze. “Well, I’m not sure you’d understand right now. You don’t know enough yet.”

“What don’t I know enough about?” Haruka asked.

“Your ability,” Yuki answered, still avoiding her eyes, but at least looking in her general direction now. “You know, you don’t know enough about why you can see us.”

Haruka frowned. “It’s getting dark. I need to go home. Can you explain a little faster or save it for later?”

Yuki shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You can go wherever you want tonight and it won’t really change anything.”

“But my parents would probably be mad at me even if I got home even this instant,” Haruka protested.

Yuki thought for a second, then told her calmly, “They think you’re already home and weren’t really noticeably late. Well, technically, you are there,” he added thoughtfully. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“What?” Haruka was now so confused that if he told her that she wasn’t standing on the grass, she wouldn’t know whether to believe him or not. Of course, as she thought of that phrasing, she instinctively looked down to make sure she was standing on the grass, but what she saw only increased her confusion.

The grass was coming through her feet. It was like she was standing on it, but none of it was flattened down, and the tops of the blades of grass seemed to be coming up through her shoes.

“What?!” she repeated before she looked up at Yuki. “Yuki, what the hell is going on? Why is the grass coming through my feet?”

“Oh, that?” Shigure’s voice came from the gates. “You get used to that.”

Haruka looked over and saw him standing in the gate with someone else next to him, but she couldn’t really see who he was due to the lack of light.

“What?” was all she could say. She suddenly wondered that if someone asked what her name was she’d say “What?” Everything was so confusing at that moment, she felt a little faint and rather less coherent than she should have been.

“Being a spirit, you kind of get used to things just going through you,” Shigure answered as though he was explaining something like addition.

“Wha—spirit?” Haruka almost asked what he said, but she finally seemed to remember how to say anything but “what” halfway through the word. She seemed to be getting fainter and fainter.

“Yes,” Shigure answered cheerfully.

“Y-you mean like you?” Haruka despaired. Does that mean I’ve died? When did I die? I don’t remember dying! I can’t die yet!

“Yup!”

“U-u-uh, u-um, c-could you explain th-that a little b-bit more…uh…” Haruka surprised herself, being coherent enough to politely ask him to explain, even if she was stammering.

“I wouldn’t know,” Shigure admitted. “I was just hanging around in the staircase, trying to hold back Kyo, and then I figured that Yuki would have explained everything by then so he could take care of him, and not long later I heard Yuki screaming for everyone to come over.

“And he still hasn’t explained everything. He just told me to go get Ha’ri, and I was about to ask when he seemed ready to kill me, so I kind of ran off,” Shigure went on. “Speaking of, Yuki, why don’t you explain exactly what did happen? The doctor should know what happened to his patient before he can do anything.”

Yuki sighed. “Shigure, could you please come over here so I don’t have to yell across the school to talk to you?”

“Um,” Haruka cut in, “Maybe we should go over there? I can’t see anything, and there might be some street lamps or something out there…”

Yuki turned to her with a kind-hearted smile on his face. “Why, of course we can.”

“Yuki, are you coming here or are we going there?” Shigure called over.

“What does it look like?” Yuki retorted.

“I don’t know, it’s too dark in there for me to see,” Shigure pointed out.

“Well, you’ll see us in a second,” Yuki told him.

“Okay,” Shigure answered contently.

Haruka followed Yuki out of the school gate, and she was right—it was considerably brighter off the school grounds than on them. She looked up at the person that she had seen from inside the school grounds and immediately recognized him.

Hatori Sohma hadn’t aged a day since she last saw him. Of course, the last time she saw him, he was probably about fifty, and the next day she’d heard from her parents that he’d died in a car accident or something.

He immediately looked at her and began politely, “Hello, Haruka.”

“Uh, hi,” Haruka replied, suddenly wondering what on earth happened that meant that Hatori needed to come.

Yuki began, “I know you two know each other, so I’ll just explain what happened today.”

“How do you know that they’ve already met?” Shigure asked, acting or actually appalled. “Yuki, I didn’t know that you were a stalker!”

“I’m not!” Yuki snapped. “You’re the one who told me that!”

“Oh, I guess you’re right…” Shigure remembered. “Well, anyway, what were you saying?”

Yuki sighed. “I was explaining what happened that means that Haruka is now a spirit like us. But I don’t really understand all of it, so that’s why I wanted you to get Hatori.”

“Go on…” Shigure urged.

“Could you please not interrupt me?” Yuki asked sharply before sighing again and continuing. “This morning, we were talking to Haruka, and the conversation happened to turn to the curse. We decided to discuss it throughout the day, and by the end of school, we had decided to tell Haruka what it was.

“I was explaining the problems related to the curse when a certain someone,” Yuki emphasized, glaring at Shigure, “decided to let the stupid cat go and try and fail again at beating me or whatever he goes on about. And of course, the stupid cat went and fell over Haruka instead, and he’s apparently a fat cat too, because she couldn’t breathe. Then he gets off, and she’s coughing, and who should come around the corner other than Anita. Haruka choked on her cough and couldn’t breathe, so she passed out.”

Hatori by now had raised his eyebrows. “And how did you handle that?”

Yuki turned to Hatori to explain specifically. “I wasn’t really sure what to do, but I thought that maybe I could have Kagura use Haruka’s body long enough that there wouldn’t be so much confusion. I sent the stupid cat with her, because he follows Anita, so he would probably know more about how Haruka should behave than anyone else, and so he could advise Kagura. I had Momiji go with them, too, because there was nothing better for him to be doing, and I sent Shigure to go get you.”

Hatori nodded approvingly.

“Wait,” Haruka interrupted. “Who’s Kagura? And did you just say that she’s using my body?”

“Yes, she is,” Yuki answered. “But it had to be done. Otherwise, your parents either wouldn’t know how you were or they’d know you were unconscious in the hospital. Would you really want that?”

“Uh…” Haruka wasn’t certain whether that would be a good thing or not. It would definitely get her a day or more away from her parents, but they probably wouldn’t know where she was, and she probably wouldn’t hear the end of it from her parents when it was over. “I guess not…”

“It’s only a temporary solution anyway,” Yuki went on. “We need to get you back into your body before your parents realize the difference.”

Haruka personally doubted that her mother would notice, or that her father would really care, but it still wouldn’t really bother them. Nonetheless, Haruka did feel that she probably should get back to her body or whatever, because there still was a possibility that something could go wrong with someone else in her body. She nodded. “But…how do we do that?”

“Well, we have to get you back to your body,” Yuki explained, “and then you just have to get into it. I think,” he added, looking at Hatori uncertainly.

“Yes, something like that,” Hatori agreed.

“Okay,” Haruka said, “So I just need to go back to my house and meet this Kagura person and get my body back?” It felt really weird to be talking about things that she wouldn’t have believed not long ago and actually meaning it.

“I think so,” Yuki confirmed.

“Then if you’ll excuse me,” Haruka said, turning to go home, “I’d like to take care of that as soon as possible.”

When she turned, though, she saw the Momiji was running toward them and waving with a worried look on his face. “Hey!” he called out.

What now? Haruka asked, half to herself and half to the ghost/spirit Sohmas, forgetting that they didn’t seem to be able to hear her thoughts in this state.

“Haruka!” Momiji went on, approaching a good deal faster than Haruka would have thought possible. “It’s terrible, it’s terrible!”

The bottom of Haruka’s stomach lurched. “What happened?” she asked fearfully, imagining all the bad things that could possibly have happened: Kagura, in Haruka’s body, could have been run over by a car; Haruka’s parents might have met Anita; her mother could have been arrested or something…although she thought about that again and realized that was probably one of the better things that could have happened.

“Haruka, it’s terrible!” Momiji repeated. “It’s terribly awfully horribly terrible!”

Her fear, for some reason, was starting to fade now; his repetition somehow made her think that he might have been joking or exaggeration. However, she still couldn’t help asking again, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s terribly terribly horribly terrible!”

Haruka paused a bit, hoping for him to explain, before she sighed, annoyed and with all fear gone, and asked, “So what happened?”

“Oh no Haruka, you don’t want to know what terrible horrible awful—”

“Yes, I do!” Haruka snapped.

“Oh,” Momiji said, as though she just had to say that and he’d say it. Then he immediately took up his worried expression again and went on, “But it’s still horrible! It’s terrible! It should never have happened to you!”

“What shouldn’t have happened to me?” Haruka fumed.

“It’s too terrible to tell!” Momiji moaned. “You’ll have to go home and see it for yourself!”

Haruka sighed irately and ran toward where her home was, going a lot faster than she really thought she should have. Must be a ghost thing, she figured as she kept on running.

About halfway home, she realized that Yuki was running next to her. “You should at least say goodbye before you run off like that,” he scolded gently.

“Hey,” Haruka objected, “if someone was repeatedly telling you how horrible something is at your house without saying what exactly it is, then you’d be pretty quick to run, too.”

“Terrible,” Yuki corrected.

“Huh?” Haruka asked.

“Terrible,” Yuki repeated. “Not horrible. Terrible.”

Haruka thought for a second before she laughed quietly. “Well, yeah, I guess. But he called it horrible at some point.”

“I don’t think so,” Yuki argued. “He called it horribly terrible, but I’m not so sure about just plain horrible.”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Haruka said before she returned her attention to the sidewalk ahead of her. She was a lot further than she thought she was or could be. I guess I haven’t gotten used to this whole ghost thing, she figured. Which is just as well, because I shouldn’t be like this for too long, anyway…

Just as she finished these thoughts, she turned the corner and saw where her house stood—or used to. Now all that was left were ashes and charcoal and other burnt things.

Haruka was absolutely paralyzed at the sight of it. “Wh-what?” she managed to get out. “What happened here?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Haruka saw Yuki shake his head, presumably to say he didn’t know.

She stared at it a moment longer before she really thought of anything, and when she did, she started panicking, thinking of her younger brother. “N-Noburu,” she mumbled. “Where’s Noburu? What happened to Noburu? A-and Dad,” she added. “What about Dad? Where’s my family?”

Yuki shook his head again.

Haruka realized that she had no idea what happened to her family, and that nobody else knew—but she wouldn’t accept that. She scoured her mind to think, before she remembered Momiji.

She turned around to run back to the school when she saw that Momiji was already coming, and that he was almost there already.

“I told you it was terrible!” Momiji reminded her.

“Where’s my family?” Haruka repeated.

“Oh,” Momiji began, “I guess someone called the hospital, because there were ambulances, and a fire truck, and then everyone was taken off to the hospital…”

“Which one?” Haruka asked hurriedly.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Momiji admitted. “Probably the one closest to here…”

Haruka started trying to think of where the hospitals were in the town when she realized that she didn’t know. “Wh-where is it? The hospital—where is it?”

“Um…” Momiji looked at Yuki, looking for an answer.

“I don’t know,” Yuki told him. “I just went to Hatori.”

“Uh…” Momiji looked at Haruka helplessly. “I don’t really know either. I mean, I guess I remember seeing one somewhere, but I can’t remember where it was.”

“I remember that, too…” Yuki added. “Where would we both go to that we would see it from?”

“Uh, the Main House,” Momiji began. “And…school…”

“I guess you went to Shigure’s house a few times, too, right?”

“Yeah, I used to visit Tohru all the time. Maybe it was somewhere near there?”

“No,” Yuki murmured, thinking, before his face lit up. “Tohru! It was near where she worked!”

“Hey, yeah, that’s it!”

“Where?” Haruka’s chest was gradually filling with panic, and at these words, it disappeared for a second before coming back even worse than before.

“Oh, it’s right this way!” Momiji answered before turning and running. Yuki was already ahead of him, having gone before he said anything, and Haruka sprinted to catch up with and follow him.

Everything around her blurred as she focused on Yuki and following him. She was so concentrated on seeing her brother as soon as possible that she didn’t even really realize that they were just running straight through buildings, passing through rooms of people eating dinner, in the bathroom, reading, writing, studying…

Before she knew it, Haruka was running across a busy street alongside Yuki, running straight through the cars without being phased in the slightest, toward a building with automatic glass doors that didn’t open for them; they just ran through the doors and into the hospital lobby, where they skidded to a halt in unison and tried to figure out the next step.

The lobby was full of other people, some better off than others, but none of them seemed able to tell anyone how Haruka’s family was, much less a pair of ghosts—or so it seemed, until someone did talk to them.

“So, Yuki,” an unfamiliar male voice began, “this is the wonderful Haruka I’ve been hearing so much about, right?”

Haruka looked around for the speaker and saw him; a boy about her age, wearing street clothes in green and khaki colors and cargo styles, with brown hair framing his smug expression.

Yuki sighed, annoyed, and asked, “Hiro, what are you doing here?”

“Why should I answer when I don’t know why you’re here?”

“Why do you think?” Yuki snapped.

“Because your girlfriend wants to be here?” Hiro (assuming that was his name) taunted.

Haruka’s panic grew and mingled with annoyance. If she hadn’t just become a ghost a little while ago, she might have been able to back up and make some kind of observation, but a bad mood is a bad mood, and it rather spoiled any patience that she could possibly have had. She reached for his collar, somehow actually grabbed it, and growled into his face, “Shut up and take me to my brother.”

Hiro seemed a little surprised, but not particularly offended or scared. “My, I guess you are Haruka. You just had to say so.”

He turned and strolled casually through a door. Haruka followed, walking briskly enough that she passed by him in half a dozen steps, then stopped and ordered, “Take me there faster.”

Hiro stopped, too, huffed, looked away defiantly, and began, “If you’re just going to order me around like some pampered little brat, then why should I even do anything for you? Here I am, offering kindly to take you where you want to go even after you handled me roughly, and all you can do is order me to go faster. Why should I do this for you, anyway, when I’m not getting anything in return?”

Haruka almost lunged at him, but instead controlled herself at the last possible second and tripped from a stationary position, and would have fallen on her face if Yuki hadn’t caught her around the waist while she was still basically vertical and if she hadn’t reacted for herself.

“Hiro, stop fooling around and get us there,” Yuki snapped uncharacteristically. Haruka only just realized how short his temper had been for the past…however long it had been since she became a ghost.

Hiro sighed and went on through the hall, almost trotting this time. Yuki helped Haruka straighten herself before they followed; Hiro noticed that they were coming and broke into a run that wasn’t really slow but wasn’t particularly fast, either. Yuki and Haruka broke into sprints and caught up before he turned the corner.

Hiro kept the same pace for the whole walk, which seemed to take at least a year, and Haruka didn’t particularly notice anything around her until he turned on his heel to face them and stopped, hands on hips.

“Do you want to get back to your body and be alive again, or do you want to see your family first?” he asked gruffly.

Something about the way he said it wouldn’t let Haruka shake the feeling of a role-playing game. However, she restrained herself from giving him some comedic remark, and instead thought for a moment before answering, “I’d rather go back to my body.”

Hiro frowned, seriously instead of critically. “Okay, you asked for it.” He turned to the door he was next to and walked through it. Haruka followed with Yuki right behind.

Haruka looked at the interior and wondered, Am I really that popular? Anita was sitting on the edge of a chair next to the hospital bed, hovering above the patient—which, of course, was Haruka; oddly, that wasn’t quite such a strange thing as Haruka would have thought. There were other people there, too: Kyo was standing behind Anita; and standing on Haruka’s other side was Nanami; Akemi stood next to Nanami, closer to the foot of the bed; Saburo stood on Akemi’s other side, his arm around her shoulder.

The strange thing was that there were other people that Haruka didn’t recognize; a girl with long, dark brown hair stood next to Kyo, worriedly holding her hands to her mouth; two other girls with orange hair, one probably in middle school with a shy expression that made her look a bit younger, the other about Haruka’s age; a woman in stylish, form-complimenting clothes with long silver hair running down her back; another girl Haruka’s age with light brown hair that shaped carefully around her face in curls and bangs; and a little girl, probably not six years old, with black hair and a green oriental-style dress.

A few heads turned; Kyo, the worried girl next to him, the younger orange-haired girl. Haruka counted the people; only three people noticed her and Yuki’s entrance, and she knew the names of only four people, but she didn’t know six of them. She really didn’t like how this day was coming out.

The girl next to Kyo tensed. “I-I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “I did everything I c-could, I don’t know why…”

Panic rose again. “Wh-what happened?”

“I, I-I-I, I, uh, oh,” the brunette girl stammered.

“It’s not working!” Kyo explained furiously.

“W-wait,” Haruka couldn’t think of any way in which this day was going right. “W-what’s not working?”

“I, I can’t,” the brunette girl managed to get out, “I can’t move your body. Nobody can.”



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