Heart of the House
by Fa Ker
Heart of the House
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You are the original template
You are the original exemplary
It was a windy summer afternoon and a rare time for Kurama to be spending with his family. These days with all the youkai running loose on the Ningenkai, Kurama just could not find enough time to be with his family, especially with his mother. Oh, it was nice spending time with the Urameshi team, especially if it meant that Kurama would be basking in the glorious presence of a gorgeous fire demon who shall remain unnamed. He didn’t really enjoy fighting but the camaraderie of the team... it was intoxicating.
Nonetheless, even a centuries-old youko would miss his mother and Kurama definitely had much to miss. Shiori was busy attending to the new additions to their family, and Kurama did not envy the attention she poured on Hatanaka and his little Shuuichi. Anything that would have made Shiori would have made him happy. She was the mother he never had, and so treasured her like nothing he ever had in his entire life, both as the ningen Minamino Shuuichi and as the ruthless Youko Kurama.
How seen were you actually?
How revered were you honestly at the time?
Strange though, his new stepfather did not seem to hold his wife in the same reverence Kurama did. Silently, he watched as Shiori fussed over the picnic food while Hatanaka nonchalantly read the morning paper as he lounged casually beneath a tree. Shiori did not seem to mind. Was this really how she expected to be treated?
Murmuring a soft excuse to Shuuichi, Kurama extricated himself from the knotted picnic blanket the boy had wound all over him, in an obviously vain effort to tie his brother down. It was a little game they played when they had nothing to do. Kurama always won, though mostly because he was determined enough to get out of the little fix.
The aroma of roasted food steaming out of the basket wafted beckoningly to the three. Kurama moved to help his mother unload the sandwiches, pudding, roasted chicken and various other mouth-watering picnic cuisine. Hatanaka seemed content to let the mother and son take care of their food while he examined the stock exchange.
Can’t have the stocks going bad for his company, Kurama thought scornfully, maintaining a cheerful front for the sake of his mother.
Why pleased with your low maintenance?
You loved us more than we could’ve loved you back
Where was your ally, your partner in feminine crime?
The food settled plainly on the red checkered blanket. Kurama sat back, watching as Kazuya and Shuuichi swarmed to the picnic blanket, eyeing the chicken greedily. Shiori only laughed as she watched her family settle into the get-together routine.
How typical. Shiori looks just like me when I organize a picnic.
“Shuuichi, aren’t you going to eat?” Her voice was so soft and caring and Kurama could not help but be overcome. What was he thinking? As long as Shiori was happy with this family, he should be happy as well.
“I’ll be along presently, kaasan. I thought I just saw something in the underbrush over there. I’ll be back.”
Oh mother who’s your buddy?
Oh mother who’s got your back?
The heart of the house
The heart of the house
All hail the goddess
She was so loving. Kurama recalled when his heart had first been awakened to this maternal love, to the feeling of filial piety...
[FLASHBACK]
“Is there a big can around here I can use?”
He walked like a king, acted like a king, and he was only eight years old. Well, not only eight years. His body was immature, but the mind was cunning, keenly intelligent and fully aware of its superiority to everything and anything that existed on the same plane. He was no ordinary ningen child. He was not the needy helpless little boys and girls scampering around with their childish games. He was Youko Kurama. Thief, liar, seducer, murderer... the names were endless. He was an angel as he was a demon. Ageless, preternaturally beautiful... and thus felt no innate responsibility to his family, to this woman who had carried his ningen body at birth, who nursed and cared for him over the years. Well, he was Yuko Kurama. He needed no ningen woman to survive. Two more years and he could leave the pathetic confines of this weak human body and return to his true form.
Shiori turned from the dishes she had been washing and wiped her hands on her apron. “Up in that cupboard. I’ll get it for you.”
He shrugged and pulled up a short stool, used it to lever his body higher so he could reach the cupboard. So simple. He could manage very well on his own. Youko Kurama needed no help from a human.
“It’s okay. I can get it myself.”
The cupboard was laden with all manner of clutter, cans, dishes, boxes that contained nothing and remained there only for future use. Kurama leaned a bit higher, spotted the one he needed. The stool wobbled uncertainly. His socks were sliding smooth against the plastic of the stool. Kurama reached out a bit more and finally grasped the can.
Suddenly the stool gave way under him and his slick socks slipped, causing him to thrash backward as he tried to regain balance. Some plates slipped out of the cupboard and came crashing on the paneled floor and smashed to a million pieces. Kurama wobbled, unable to recover his balance, and fell backwards.
“Look out!”
Adrenaline shot up in his veins. Vainly, the six hundred-year-old youko mind tried to gain control of the small body crashing backward, head straight into the sharp cutting shards of the smashed plates. I cannot die...
There was a sudden flash of movement that his hazy eyes did not see, and the next thing he knew, he lay on his back, head cradled in the loving arms of the ningen woman. Shiori was quivering as she held her little boy.
“Kaasan!”
Belated cry. Kurama sat up. Shiori sat shivering. Her hands were bleeding from multiple lacerations she incurred from the broken shards of porcelain cutting deep into the soft skin of the back of her hands.
“Ugh...”
Kurama approached her hesitantly. The wounds bled rather profusely. Shiori gathered her hands up to her chest and gave her son a warm pain-filled smile even as the blood continued to pour out of her open veins.
“Y... you’re all right? You weren’t hurt...”
The little red-haired boy helped her up, staring down at the broken plates with detached interest. His hands went to touch his mother’s bleeding ones.
For him... Because of him... These wounds, these little doorways. It was all because of him. And she loved him enough to save him from being the one to incur them (the wounds). Kurama blinked, feeling funny. This was not something he expected. But it was not something he didn’t want either.
[END FLASHBACK]
He had not been wrong when he chose her to give him a new life, one far removed from the pitiless existence he led as the most wanted thief in the Makai.
You were “good ol’”
You were “count on ‘er till four a.m.”
As he plowed further into the shrubbery of the outskirts of the forest, he turned back, curiously. In his careless meandering while he ate, Shuuichi had apparently tripped on a buttress root of a tree and spilled soda all over his new t-shirt, the one Kurama had given him when he first came into the youko’s life. Shuuichi stared disconsolately at the stained shirt. The soda was quickly evaporating on his skin and the boy glanced fearfully in Kurama’s direction, hoping his brother had not seen that lapse. Kurama mercifully turned away to spare the boy his trepidation.
Before he hurried on into the thicket, he heard Shiori say lovingly, “Come on, Shuu-kun, change out of that shirt. Don’t worry, I’ll wash that for you as soon as we get home.”
You saw me run from the house
In the snow melodramatically
The forest was thick and filled him with a sense of peace, the one that stole over him every time he was alone in the presence of his beloved plants, the same feeling of peace and he security he felt when he was in the presence of his beloved Kaasan. The thick undergrowth seemed to part at his feet to let him pass, carving out a little path into the heart of the forest. Kurama followed it without thinking.
It did not take him a long time to find the object of his little quest. To his right, just a little off the forest path, he glimpsed the yellow and purple iris, standing proud and tall in the midst of the thick thorny shrubbery. Kurama did not waste ki on retrieving the flower. It was better to get it the hard way, and in such, would make him cherish it all the more.
Summoning his ki, he channeled power into the little bloom, making it grow, larger and more beautiful, smiling up at him tenderly, dew running down its sweet velvet soft petals. He smiled back it ats radiance and plucked the flower out of the stem, and started the short trek back.
Oh mother who’s your sister?
Oh mother who’s your friend?
The heart of the house
The heart of the house
All hail the goddess
They had finished eating when he came to the clearing and Kazuya was back at his newspaper and Shuuichi running around chasing birds and butterflies, something the younger boy hardly ever got to do with the tight schedule he maintained at school. Kurama smiled faintly at the boy’s antics. He would have gladly gone chasing butterflies too, except now he had something better, something more meaningful to do.
Shiori was quietly putting the food away into the picnic basket, leaving just enough for Kurama when he came back. Kurama shook his head with a sigh. The woman would bear this all stolidly of course, as what a loving wife was expected to do.
He hurried over quickly and helped her finish her work, smiling as he put away the last of the plastic containers. He did not feel like eating just yet, but for the sake of seeing her happy when he savored the food she cooked, he dug into the sandwiches.
“Where did you run off to, Shuuichi?” Her voice as always was soft and gentle.
Kurama smiled at her. “I found something.” Slowly, very like a magician performing his first trick, he produced the purple iris from his hair.
“It’s beautiful, Shuuichi!”
“It’s for you, kaasan...” The soft faint smile touched his lips again. “It is you.”
We left the men and we went for a walk in the gatineaus And talked like women, like women to women would
The afternoon wore swiftly with each family member doing his own thing. Kazuya sat back into the tree and dozed while Shiori settled beside him with her cross-stitching pattern at hand. Kurama and Shuuichi chased each other through the clearing, laughing when one tripped, helping each other climb trees, and Kurama teaching the boy about the flora that surrounded them in quiet peaceful coexistence.
It was like a commercial for a fabric softener on television, with the picturesque family in a perfect picturesque backdrop of the warm sun setting in the horizon. Kurama gazed back lovingly at his mother who cross-stitched quietly, content in the placidity of the moment. Content to watch her sons play and frolick in the grass, content to watch her husband snore at her side.
So simple, Kurama thought. I wish I were so.
Womyn to womyn would “Where did you get that from?
Must have been your father, your dad”
I got it from you, I got it from you.
When finally, Shuuichi grew tired from running around on barefoot chasing after the fauna, the two boys returned to the clearing. Shiori was dozing lightly at Kazuya’s side, the cross stich pattern lying forgotten on her lap. Shuuichi quickly appropriated a seat beside his father, curled up and was immediately asleep.
Smiling ruefully, Kurama stood away to watch the little family, a family he knew he belonged bodily, but could never fully coexist with spiritually. Shiori was happy and content with this family, and Kurama was happy for her sake. He had never thought there would come a time when his happiness rested on that of another, but then again, he had never thought he would love and be loved by a ningen. He had never thought he would have the mother he had been deprived as a youko. She taught him something he never learned in all his six hundred years as a thief in the Makai.
Do you see yourself in my gypsy garage sale ways?
In my fits of laughter?
In my Tinker Bell tendencies?
In my lack of color coordination?
What could he do? Shiori taught him to love. Her joy was his joy, and if it meant having to live with his new stepfather (who he really didn’t think much of if Shiori had not married him), Kurama was glad to do it. With a soft, almost wistful sigh, he leaned back beside his mother and duly fell asleep as well.
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