PEE ESS BLAME Harukami :((((((((((((((((

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On one rainy Tuesday morning, there was a box of kittens outside of the school gates.

They were small with milky blue eyes and tiny, tiny voices: two ginger, one white, two black. When Soubi knelt beside them with his umbrella, three looked up at the sudden shelter, but the two black kittens remained curled in the corner of the box, wrapped around each other and asleep.

He looked up at the school. Class would not be over for another half-hour. Ritsuka didn't sit close enough to the window to be visible. He imagined it anyway. This late in the day, most students would already be distracted, and even Ritsuka might look to the sky and ignore every other word of his teacher's voice.

He looked down at the box. One of the ginger kittens had risen to its hind legs and braced its forepaws as high as it could reach. Its pink mouth opened with a sound lost in the rain. When he reached down, it flinched but did not drop away. He could hardly feel its fur, silky-fine and flattened by the wet. It reached up and patted his wrist in turn, claws too weak to even catch against his skin.

The larger of the black kittens raised its head. Its eyes could barely focus when it looked at Soubi. A moment later it went back to sleep, and he found himself dismissed. He could hardly see the other black kitten, half-covered by his larger brother.

Soubi reached down. He brushed past the ginger kitten and pressed his fingers between thin warm bellies, then scissored until he had pried the black kittens apart. The larger one opened its eyes and squeaked indignant protest, but the smaller one -- the runt of the litter, by the looks of it, barely the length of Soubi's palm -- turned immediately and attacked his hand ferociously. Its back feet rabbit-kicked against his inner wrist, not even leaving marks; its teeth were hardly more than faint pressure.

It opened its eyes and looked straight at him. its ears went back.

"Soubi-san! What are you doing -- oh, how cute! Cute, cute!" And there was Yuiko, peering over his shoulder. She had an umbrella as well, pink with white ruffles. It suited her. Soubi smiled.

"They were left here," he said. "Is class over?"

She squatted down beside him, reaching down to run her fingers down the first ginger kitten's back. "It is! Yuiko -- I was going to wait for Ritsuka-kun to walk home with him. He wanted to talk to the teacher about something, and I thought, 'ah, maybe Soubi-san is here, because Ritsuka-kun doesn't have an umbrella!' And here you are."

"Here I am," Soubi agreed, and smiled again.

Yuiko cupped her hand under the ginger kitten and lifted it carefully, with her umbrella balanced between shoulder and neck. It fit easily in the palm of her hand, curled on its back with all its limbs splayed. "Ahh," she said. "I've always wanted a kitten! But our apartment doesn't allow pets." Her cheeks puffed. "Isn't that unfair? Humans are born with ears and a tail, too! It's not kind to discriminate, don't you think?"

"That's a wise belief," Soubi said. "I'm impressed."

She beamed. "Ritsuka-kun has been lending me books," she said, though he already knew this. "It takes me a long time to read them, but he's really patient about when I can return them. 'Maybe I'll get smarter if I read the same books Ritsuka-kun does!' I thought, so ..."

"Yuiko-san is smart enough on her own," said Soubi. He pulled his hand out of the box, away from the black kitten, and got to his feet.

Ritsuka stared back. His ears were flat and his hair was plastered to his skin from the rain. For a moment, it was like deja-vu to look at him.

"Soubi," he said. Though his voice remained flat, the tip of his tail twitched back and forth.

Soubi lifted his umbrella. "I thought we could walk home together," he said.

"Ritsuka-kun!" Yuiko chirped. She lurched up -- less gracefully than Soubi, but still managing to keep her umbrella over her head -- and held out her cupped hands. The ginger kitten had gone to sleep. "Look, look! Kittens!"

"Kittens--?"

"Aren't they cute?" Yuiko beamed. "They're so little! Soubi-san he found them already here when he arrived, isn't that sad?" She looked down at the kitten in her hands, and her expression fell slightly. Her ears went down. "Why would anyone abandon babies like this?"

Ritsuka hesitated. He reached out and touched the ginger kitten's ears gently. "I don't know," he said. "But it's raining. We can't--"

"I wish we could take them home," she said wistfully. "Yuiko loves kitties."

Ritsuka's hand fell away. He didn't look up when Soubi stepped beside him and held the umbrella over both of them. "It'd be a bad idea if I took them," he said. "Mom ..."

"What's that?" A gaggle of girls stopped beside them. One of them saw the kitten in Yuiko's hand and squealed. "How cute! Where did you get that?! Don't tell me you brought it to school, that's so against the rules--"

"No, no!" Yuiko waved her free hand frantically. "No, this one is--"

"Ah, there's more!" One of the girls had bent down beside the box, picking up the larger of the black kittens. "Look at this one! Ahh, he's so cute--"

Soubi put a hand on Ritsuka's shoulder and gently pulled him out of the way as other students drifted over, drawn by the noise and the fuss. Yuiko was trapped beside the box, still cradling the one ginger kitten protectively. Soubi himself watched the doors: in a moment, one of the teachers would appear, and--

"What's all this noise?" And it was Shinonome herself, with her long skirt gathering water and mud at her ankles, striding across the courtyard. She did not have an umbrella either. "Shouldn't you all be going home?"

"But Sensei--" and that was Yuiko, stretching a bit over the crowd. "Sensei, someone left kittens here! They were abandoned! Isn't that horrible?"

Soubi curled his fingers around the back of Ritsuka's neck. Against his fingers, the hair of Ritsuka's nape was very soft and mostly dry. Ritsuka said nothing, but did not pull away. By the time Shinonome noticed them, she had the box in her arms and all the kittens reclaimed, and she did not seem terribly surprised by the sight of them.

"Agatsuma-san," she said, and her voice only quivered a little at the end. "I hope this is not your fault."

Soubi cupped the base of Ritsuka's skull with gentle fingers. The boy leaned into him just a little. "Do you mean if they're mine?" He raised an eyebrow and stared straight at Shinonome, unblinking. "Of course not. I'm not interested in children." He squeezed before Ritsuka could pull away.

She stared for a moment, then flushed bright red. It wasn't a bad color for her. "N-no, that's not -- ah, I didn't mean like --"

"Soubi," Ritsuka said sharply. He dug his elbow briefly into Soubi's hip. "Be nice."

And smoothly, without missing a beat, Soubi said, "It was a joke, Shinonome-sensei. I'm sorry."

She hesitated longer, biting her lip. Her eyes lingered at a point above Soubi's head, where his ears had once been. Then she dropped her gaze to the box in her arms and nodded. "You ... don't need to worry about these," she said quietly. "I, ah, one of my neighbors works for a no-kill shelter. They'll find homes soon."

Just like that Ritsuka smiled. It only came for a moment before being swallowed again, like a single beacon of light through the clouds overhead. He nodded. "I'm glad," he said. "I hope they'll be good homes."

Soubi smoothed his hand down, letting Ritsuka's hair trail through his fingers. He pressed his palm flat between Ritsuka's shoulder blades, where the space was narrow and the bones were defined even through muscle and skin and shirt. Overhead, the rain had finally come to an end. He could hear the voices of the kittens now. He wondered if one belonged to the fierce runt.

"We should go too," he said. Ritsuka finally looked up at him, pink-cheeked from the cold and his eyes wide and dark. "You have curfew."

Ritsuka cocked his head. The consideration of refusing on principle crossed his face.

Eventually, though, he nodded. He reached out and hooked his fingers loosely in the cuff of Soubi's jacket sleeve.

"All right," he said.