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Chapter Text

She comes to him when he’s seven years old.

She has hair the color of garnets and spring green eyes. She’s lovely and smiles kindly and looks happy to see him, and this is not the standard of the world as he knows it. Takashi thinks she must be a spirit.

But the other people in the park are aware of her. A few mothers mutter and usher their children away, because she’s followed by a big black dog. If Takashi didn’t see monsters all the time, he might have been afraid of the dog, too.

But it’s a gentle creature, he’s surprised to find. It lays its head right in his lap, looking up at him with doleful red eyes. Takashi pets it carefully, at a loss, and the strange girl sits beside him.

She looks as though she’s about to say something, but a monster crashes through the brush nearby and Takashi flinches. It’s a tall and tapered figure with too many eyes, and it rounds on him even faster than normal.

“Something this way smells especially delicious!” it crows, high-pitched, and Takashi cries out and tries to scramble away --

But the dog is heavy in his lap and doesn’t seem bothered to get up. It lifts its head and pins the approaching spirit with a bright red eye and barks, “Get lost.”

“Scary thing,” the girl comments quietly as it flees. “I haven’t seen a yokai in a long time.”

“Not that long,” the dog says wisely. “But it does feel that way.”

Takashi isn’t sure what to be the most shocked over, so he sits very still and tries to work it out. His companions wait patiently.

“You saw it, too?“ he whispers. “You -- and your dog can -- “ His eyes flick down to the animal on his legs, and then up to the girl beside him. Despite himself, his eyes start to sting. “You are monsters, aren’t you? You’re here to -- to play a trick on me.”

Somehow, the accusation doesn’t make her angry. Other people have hated him for less than that, but the girl softens, and even smiles, though it looks a little bit sad.

“I would never play a trick on you, Takashi,” she says, so sincerely Takashi finds himself believing her. “Can I show you something?”

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a little wallet. There are a few paper monies and scraps of paper inside, but what she withdraws to show him is a picture. It’s dog-eared and worn, and she says, “Do you know them?”

Of course he does. Takashi dares take the aged photo with careful hands. “That’s my dad,” he whispers, the hurt still fresh and aching where it sits in his chest, the missing-him not even a tiny bit smaller after all this time. “And is that -- my mom?”

“Yes,” the girl says, “and that little girl in the middle is me.” Takashi stares at her, uncertain what to make of the claim. Somewhere in his head or in his heart he understands already, but in the silence she goes on to say, “I’m your big sister. My name is Chise.”

“Oh,” he says, hands clenching in the dog’s wavy fur. “Really? You’re really-- ?” But she’s right there in the photo, between his mom and dad. He doesn’t think a monster could make that up. It seems like too much work to be a prank. There’s a big pain growing bigger somewhere inside him, one he doesn’t quite understand. “I didn’t -- no one ever told me -- “

Could it be he has a family? A real family? Could it be he belongs to a sister, the way other kids belong to mothers and fathers? The hope hurts and he’s stuck between it and careful, cautious doubt.

Chise looks as understanding as if she could hear his thoughts in her own head. She begins to say, “Takashi, I -- “ but a familiar voice interrupts.

“There you are!”

Takashi’s guardian is making her way across the playground in swift, angry strides. She smells bad, like the strong drinks she and her husband share after dinner. Sharp and cold as she approaches, like biting, bitter winter, and beside him Chise is soft and sun-warmed spring.

“I am so sick of hunting you down every day! If you could just listen to me for once, things would be so much easier! I wouldn’t have to -- “

She reaches for him, and her fingers are going to hurt his arm. Her fingers always hurt his arm, as though she doesn’t know how to touch him kindly. Takashi lowers his eyes and braces himself to be wrenched upright -- it’s his fault, he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, a monster chased him away and he sat down to catch his breath. Of course it would make the woman he’s staying with angry.

Deep, guttural growls cut between them before the woman can get close, and for the second time the black dog fends a monster away. His teeth are very white against his fur, sharp and promising, and when he starts to stand, Takashi’s guardian stumbles farther away.

She’s white with fear, the glare replaced by a more shaken expression, and only hesitates a moment before she turns on her heel and leaves him there without another word.

Takashi is torn between gratitude and dismay. “I’ll be in trouble when I go back,” he says, and the dread that puts in his stomach is an old one. He’s often in trouble, for all that he does his best to be good.

A hand covers his, gentle, unlike the hands he’s used to. He looks up into Chise’s warm eyes.

“You’re my little brother,” she says, “and the very first person I ever loved, after mom and dad. It’s taken me this long to find you, but now I have.” Her other hand joins the one already holding his, and her fingers squeeze his tightly. “I live a long, long way from here, in a nice house, in another country. I study magic and tend gardens. If you’d like to come with me, my home could be your home, too.”

And with that, it’s too much to bear.

The sting in Takashi’s eyes finally turns into a burn, and tears slide down his face. He cries so easily, and the other boys make fun of him for it, but Chise’s big dog snuffles wetly against his cheek and Chise’s hands are warm around his, and neither of them say anything cruel, and Takashi has never been offered anything like this before. He’s never been offered home and family and a place to belong.  

He’s never been wanted.

He dares lift his arms up to her, and Chise isn’t completely grown up herself but she’s big enough to lift him off the ground. She holds him as close as she might hold something very precious, and Takashi buries his face in his sister’s red hair and clutches her shirt in his fists and says, “I want to go with you. Please, oneechan." 

She lets out a breath and clutches him tighter, as though afraid to loose her grip for even a moment. "Okay," Chise says, her voice curiously soft and thick, the way Takashi's sounds when he's doing his very best not to cry, "then let's go home." 

Chapter Text

Ruth is sulking, and Chise can’t help laughing at him. Takashi, it seems, is a cat person.

“You came all the way to England to see me, yokai-san?” he’s asking of the fat fortune cat, and it regards him with a single narrow green eye. Ancient and powerful, Elias said of the creature when it arrived, but its physical form is entirely disarming.

Maybe that’s the point, Chise thinks fairly, as Silky continues arranging apple croquettes on a plate for their guest.

“Your grandmother left you a book,” the yokai says, “a dangerous book. I sensed when you left with it, and followed you here. It will attract attention from all manner of spirit, many of which could be power-hungry enough to follow you as I did to get their hands on it.”

Takashi doesn’t look as worried as he should -- only mildly interested, and for the wrong reason. “A book from grandmother? It’s probably in one of the boxes ojiichan picked up from my relative’s house.”

He looks at Elias for confirmation, and the skull-headed mage nods agreeably behind his teacup. “They’re still in my study, waiting for you to unpack them. You can, of course, take all the time you need,” he adds, when Silky gives him a dark look.

“What makes the book so dangerous?” Chise asks. 

“It’s a list of contracts. Your grandmother collected the true names of all the yokai she bested, and kept them in what she called the “Book of Friends”.”

Ruth sits up sharply, ramrod straight, and even Elias is given pause. Chise knows how much power there is in a name, knows this strange yokai didn’t introduce himself to this house of magic when he arrived for a reason.

“I see what you mean,” the mage says after a moment. “What will you do with the book when you take it?”

“Guard it.” The yokai doesn’t look happy about the idea. “I made a promise to that ridiculous woman before she died, and I intend to keep it.”

Takashi looks thoughtful, and says, “Maybe the yokai just want their names back. Could you do that, if you took the book?”

The cat looks at him. “Of course I couldn’t.”

“Could I?” Chise’s reckless little brother asks.

The room shifts, as though everyone is drawing breath to speak at once, and Chise herself is about to surge forward with a stout no, but the cat beats them all to it.

“You could,” it says. “You’re her descendant and your spiritual power is strong. But why would you want to?”

“It’s sad that their names are trapped in a book just because grandmother beat them a long time ago,” Takashi says with the stark simplicity of a child his age. “I’ve met nice yokai before, and there are lots of nice ones here. I wouldn’t want them to lose their names forever. And I don’t think grandmother did, either,” he adds, “not if she called it a book of friends.”

“That doesn’t make it your responsibility, brat.”

“No, it’s grandmother’s. But she isn’t here to apologize and fix what she did, so someone else has to. Dad and mom are dead, and my sister is busy leaning magic, and I’m the only one left after that.”

This is the most Takashi has ever said in one sitting without careful, patient prodding. For all that he fears them, he’s much more comfortable talking to the neighbors and the spirits than he is the human townspeople or Elias’ colleagues when they come to visit. He sits a little taller under the yokai’s green eyes, and his quiet voice doesn’t waver as they speak.

Chise doesn’t want Takashi involved in anything that could hurt him, but more than that she desperately doesn’t want to make him unhappy. His eyes are brighter now than they were even when he met the aerials, at the prospect of doing good and being useful in a way only he can.

She doesn’t know how to interrupt without pushing him further into his uncertain little shell. The time she loses thinking about it turns out to be time enough for Takashi and the yokai to come to an agreement.

“If only you were a snotty teenager,” the cat sniffs derisively. “I could just threaten you and take the book by force. But Reiko would curse me from beyond the grave if I snatched it away from a soft-eyed little brat.”

Elias doesn’t sound concerned by the implied threat. “What good would the book do you? You aren’t the one who made the contracts, none of the yokai would answer to you.”

“A kid who didn’t know what it was wouldn’t know what it would mean to me,” the yokai returns with coolly, and noses at the croquettes Silky set down beside him. “I suppose this means I’m stuck with you, Natsume Takashi. At least the food here looks good.”

“What was the promise you made?” Takashi asks. “To grandmother?”

The yokai doesn’t look at him as it replies, “I promised to look after what she left behind.”

Chapter Text

Takashi is close to ten years old when Elias finally broaches the subject of familiars. 

"It's a companion that will keep you safe," the mage explains to the little boy, crouching so Takashi doesn't have to crane his neck looking up at him. "They'll know you better than anyone else and share your life."

That gets Takashi's attention quickly, his eyes going slightly narrow. "What does that mean? Share my life?"

"They live as you do, and die when you do," Elias says. 

Perhaps predictably, Takashi backpedals fiercely. "I don't want that," he says at once. "I don't want to share my life like that."

"It isn't a bad thing," Ruth tells him, nudging the boy's hand with his cold nose. "It was my choice to bond with a human, and I don't regret it. How could I? It brought me two little siblings to look after, after all."

Ruth is usually enough to get a smile out of Takashi those times everyone and everything else fails, but even as he dutifully strokes the dog's glossy fur, the frown on his face remains. 

"Yokai-san says my grandmother died when she was very young," he points out, as calmly as discussing the weather. "My mother and my father, too. Nee-chan is strong and good at magic, so I know she'll be okay. But I'm not a mage, and I'm bad at most spells. I don't think I'm much like my sister. I don't want to have a familiar if they're going to go away when I do." 

Chise's heart is in her throat. Three years now, and she thinks her heart would break in a way no magic would fix if she were to lose Takashi to a place she could no longer reach him. She joins Ruth beside him, and puts an arm around Takashi's shoulders. More than she's ever hated anything, she hates those people who came before her in his life, who made him slow to smile and braced for a blow every time someone put out their hand to him.

He's more like her than he could ever understand, in those ways. She wishes desperately that he wasn't. 

"Bah, enough," a grouchy voice interrupts, and Chise looks up as Silky enters the room with the lucky cat in her arms. It's munching on something that looks suspiciously like Elias' favorite biscuits. There are crumbs in his whiskers, and he wipes at them with a paw, even as he pins Takashi with a narrow green-black eye. "Don't let them fill your head with that nonsense, brat. Familiars are more trouble than they're worth."

Ruth growls at him, and likewise Chise frowns. Elias says mildly, "Troublesome, I grant you, but hardly more so than they're worth."

Takashi, however, is finished listening. His eyes bright, he rushes past Elias with his hands out, and Silky deposits the lucky cat into his smaller arms. "You're back! Did you bring any spirits with you?"

"A few, out waiting past the wards," he says, settling with a proprietary air. "Do you have the book?"

"I do," Takashi says. "I keep it on me all the time, just like you said. Nee-chan showed me how to do pocket magic."

"A useful spell, for a change," he grumps, and Chise decides to be magnanimous and take that for the compliment he probably meant it to be. 

"Elias," she says when the two have gone, "it's dangerous. He needs a familiar."

"I can't force him to form a contract," the mage points out, sounding almost amused. Even Silky is smiling. "I wouldn't worry too much, Chise. Now, don't you have any orders that need filling?"

Chise goes into the workshop feeling distinctly slighted by her family as a whole. Ruth goes with her, shifting into his human form to bump shoulders with her as he leans against her table. 

"I wouldn't trade you for the world," he tells her, and it makes her smile. 

"I wouldn't trade you, either." She leans into him, feels him rest his cheek on the top of her head, and thinks its the best magic in the world, familiars. "I never expected it when I first met him, but Takashi is so stubborn." 

"Must run in the family."

They spend the afternoon making potions and medicines, Ruth running into the back garden to get plant materials as needed, and Chise does her best to push her worry to the back of her mind. It's always there now, worry for her little brother -- she thinks maybe it wouldn't matter if he had a familiar, after all, she would still worry when he was gone somewhere.

It's been three years, and she only loves him more every day, but there's danger lurking around every corner of the dark wood outside their home, and Takashi wanders off every time he's left alone. It's enough to make her shake, sometimes, to think of what might happen. 

That night, Ruth a black mass at the foot of the bed and fast asleep across her legs, soft conversation wakes Chise up from a pleasant dream.

"...still here, yokai-san?" her little brother murmurs sleepily from his own bed across the room, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of one hand. "I thought you went back to Japan."

"Well, I didn't," the lucky cat says plainly, perched on its haunches on Natsume's stomach. Its eyes narrow when Natsume's free hand falls to stroking its fur, but it's a content expression rather than an angry one. In the soft, silver wash of moonlight from the window, its eyes are like nickel coins. "Give me a name, brat."

"A name? Like the ones in the book?"

"Any name," the cat says. It's usually so short with everyone it speaks to, it's remarkable to hear it speak with Takashi. Gruff and put-upon, but patient with all the boy's fumbles and tentative questions and reluctant, hopeful conversation. "Well?"

Takashi thinks it over carefully, or as carefully as a ten-year-old is capable of in the dark of the very early morning, and finally says, "Can I -- would it be okay if I called you Nyanko-sensei?"

The cat eyes him for a moment, then snorts, and settles down into a comfortable-looking loaf. It's eyes are still narrow, permanent cat-smile curled in what could be mirth or disdain or fondness. "Fine." 

She feels it, then, a magic she doesn't quite understand. Something settles into place like an overcoat that fits just right, a safeguard against the cold. 

And after a long moment -- after Takashi's eyes have fluttered closed again, and Chise herself feels the pull of sleep in the warm and peaceful darkness and starlight -- the newly named Nyanko-sensei says quietly, "I won't die with you, but I'll share your life until then. And when you're gone, I'll look after what you leave behind." 

That's very lonely, Chise thinks, aching in the pit of her chest for this ageless and powerful creature who steals scraps from the table, and turns his nose up at Elias' teachings, and keeps her little brother company through the longest hours of sleepless nights. 

"Just like grandmother," Takashi whispers, soft and distant as dreams steal him away.

"Yeah, brat," Nyanko-sensei says. "Just like her."