The Beginning, scene the... eighth?

[sakon76]

Yuusuke stared at him, then turned his back on Kurama. "That falls under the category 'things I didn't wanna know'," he announced to the back of his stall.

"You already know I'm a shapeshifter," Kurama pointed out. "Why should it matter if I've been a woman in the past?"

"Because I'm comfortable in your masculinity, thank you very much!" Yuusuke turned around and glared at Kurama, whose eyes were twinkling.

"Haven't you ever wondered why I'm popular with women?" the redhead inquired.

"Because you're a damned smart pretty boy with manners."

Kurama shook his head, his expression losing a touch of its usual amusement. "I know what it's like for women, Yuusuke. I've been where they are, and so I treat them better than I was treated." His eyes unfocused. "That said, Yasuna was a good man."

Yuusuke waited a moment, then asked, "Did you want to talk about him?"

Kurama's eyes focused back on Yuusuke.

"I can be sensitive!" Yuusuke defended himself. "Besides, I've known you for what, five years now and I didn't even know you were married. We are friends, right?"

Kurama's half-smile had come back. "It was well over a thousand years ago, Yuusuke."

"So what?"

Kurama took a swig from his soda then set the can down, fingers tracing along its sides. "A thousand years ago I was young and arrogant. I was already a reknowned thief who had lived long enough to turn white, and Inari-sama had entrusted me with the keys to his storehouse."

"What kind of idiot god gives his keys out to a thief?" Yuusuke demanded.

Kurama's smile broadened. "You gave me the keys to your place when you took Keiko-chan to that hot spring resort."

"She woulda killed me if I'd let any of those plants she gave me get killed," Yuusuke shot back.

"It's a ritual phrase anyway, Yuusuke. It means that I'd lived long enough and proved myself quick and clever enough to be accepted into Inari's retinue as his messenger. He gave me power over plants as a mark of his trust."

"You mean you weren't born with that power?"

"No more than you were born shooting reigun blasts."

"Huh." Somehow Yuusuke had thought that all youkos had innate plant powers. "So you were young and stupid," he prompted. "What happened?"

"A trap in the woods on Mount Kurama." Kurama snorted. "You have no idea how much one of those hurts, or how impossible it is to get out of one when it's warded to keep you in fox form. I think I was in it for three or four days. I was pretty out of it by the time the trapper came back. Fortunately my lord appeared with a hunting party at the same time and saved my life. I had to repay him for that, so I followed his party for two days. I found out that his wife had recently died. On the third day--" Kurama smiled a little sappily. "--they happened upon an abandoned mansion where a fair flower of noble blood was wasting away, waiting alone to bloom. Quite coincidentally, she resembled the dead lady so closely that they might have been sisters, or even twins."

Yuusuke remembered stories about fox spirits. "You bewitched him, didn't you?" he accused.

"At first," Kurama admitted. "It wasn't hard--he fell in love mostly on his own. And I really did want to repay him. That time it wasn't for a trick."

Yuusuke decided he didn't want to think about the phrase "that time." "So what happened then?" he asked instead.

"He made me his wife and took me home and eventually we had a son." Kurama's voice was wistful. "It lasted nine years. Nine years of silks and perfumes, poetry and painting competitions, the sounds of flutes or koto in the air... watching my son take his first step and helping my lord advance his standing where I could."

"So why don't you like Kyoto now, if you were so happy there?"

Kurama seemed to come back from his memories. "It's not the same city anymore, Yuusuke," he explained. "Yasuna and Seimei are both dust, and not a matchstick remains standing of the capitol I knew and loved. Time hurts, Yuusuke. Everything changes and nothing stays. Even our friendship will probably end someday. I've learned to live in the present moment because the past can never be brought back."

"If it could be, would you bring it back?" Yuusuke asked. "Was that when you were happiest?"

Kurama shook his head. "It was a good time, but not a 'best time.' I worried a lot. I had to keep myself hidden, keep up with the court, keep Yasuna's attention, keep my son safe and healthy, educate him... in the end it all became a big game of sorts, like playing keep up with the neighbors and playing house at the same time." He took another drink from his soda can. "I think the fact that I was treating it like a game was what made me finally lose."

"Why? What happened?"

Fingers slid through long red hair and held strands of it up for inspection. "Even though I'm human now, like this, there are still hints of what I really am that show through for those who know how to look. Aside from me, have you ever met any Japanese with bright red hair and green eyes?"

Yuusuke was forced to admit that he had not.

"Just a century ago people would've known by looking at me. Now, though, old truths are being lost in modern ways. So now, when people dye their hair and wear colored contacts, being human like this is safer. My shadow is Minamino Shuuichi's shadow. But then, when I was human only by shapeshifting, I *looked* right... until you looked at my shadow. It had a fox's snout and a tail. For the most part I managed to keep it hidden, but... I was admiring some chrysanthemums one day. We were having such a nice conversation that I slipped. I let my shadow be seen. It... ended everything. I left that night."