Chapter Text
手を引かれるままの道
te wo hikareru mama no michi
(The Path Your Hands Lead Me Down)
"Kageyama-kun? What are you doing?"
Ah, he should've waited to walk home with Ritsu, after all. "Oh, um ... I just ..."
"What was that? I can't hear you."
Before Mob could reply, the reason he was stuck up there peered its head down toward Emi and mewled at her.
Recognition flickered in Emi's eyes, and then she gasped, "Sato-chan?!" Immediately her demeanor changed. With her hands on her hips and her brows furrowed, she scolded, "Did you get Kageyama-kun in trouble?"
"E-eh? Is this your sister's cat you talked about, Emi-san?" Mob said, a little louder so she could hear him down below.
But Emi ignored him. She reached into her bag and retrieved a small colorful rectangular sachet. The cat, Sato-chan, seemed to recognize it as its tail whipped side to side in excitement.
Emi knelt on the ground as she offered the treat, still unopened. "Get down. Now."
Sato-chan wiggled its bum, and for a moment Mob was afraid the cat would jump straight down. But Sato-chan leaped onto the branch of a nearby tree. It made her way down from branch to branch in a quick blur of white, before finally making it to the asphalt and scurrying toward Emi.
Once the white cat was within range of her treat, Emi grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, and put her inside her school bag. Emi zipped her bag until only the cat's head was protruding, the poor little thing mewling in protest and staring sadly at the treat.
"No. No treats for you, little menace," Emi said sternly, and she gently booped Sato-chan on the nose in reprimand. Now, with the cat out of trouble, Emi returned her attention toward Sato-chan's attempted savior, still stuck on the top of the electric pole. "I'm really sorry about her, Kageyama-kun."
Mob waved his hand placatingly. "I'm just glad she's safe now. It's no problem at all."
Emi furrowed her brows again, but there was the start of a grin on her lips. "'No problem at all'? Are you sure? Can you get down okay?"
"Yeah, yeah ... I um ...," Mob examined his way down the pole. "I can get down." How the heck did he get up there in the first place? "I think," he added to himself, but apparently Emi heard him.
Now she was panicking. "S-should I call the firemen? Get a ... get a ladder? Or-"
"I'm fine!" Mob insisted as he began inching down slowly.
"I don't think you are ...."
"Emi-san, you're making me nervous."
"Sorry! I'll shut up now."
Mob made it a little more than halfway down when he slipped and then fell on his butt with a painful thud loud enough to scare the crows away.
Emi rushed to his side. "Kageyama-kun, are you hurt? Should I call an ambulance?"
She offered her hand and Mob took it, grunting as she helped him up. "I don't think so, it'll probably just bruise. But I'll be fine," he said, dusting his pants off.
"You're bleeding!"
"Huh?"
Emi, who was still holding his hand, showed him the back of it, where a pair of slightly bleeding scratches marred his skin. Didn't take much time for her to figure out what had happened, or where the culprit was.
"You really are Seasoning City's biggest menace," she grumbled. Little Sato-chan only hissed back.
Afraid of a half-literal cat fight breaking out, Mob said, "Please don't be mad at her. She was probably just scared when a stranger approached her."
"No way! Sato-chan got away with too much at home already because my sister is a big softie." She turned toward the cat again. "For the unforgivable crime of hurting my friend-" she squeezed his hand.
Mob blushed. "Ah, it's just a small scratch, Emi-san-"
"No treats for a week! Blehh," Emi stuck her tongue out at the cat, who hissed again. This time Mob felt his heart skip a beat. He'd never seen Emi this playful before. Unfair, really. She was already cute, but now he had to look away to hide his blush.
Emi insisted on taking Mob to her house to treat his scratches on the basis of being a responsible cat-owner. Since she never did let go of his hand, Mob couldn't really escape, and he couldn't voice any polite refusal because she kept berating Sato-chan all the way to her house. So it was surprising when she suddenly turned her attention to him.
"M-me?!" Mob squeaked in surprise.
"Yeah, you! You have psychic powers, don't you? Why couldn't you use it to get her down? Or to get yourself down safely?"
He stuttered something about not wanting to depend on his powers, to which she replied with a straight face that chilled him to the bone, "Kageyama-kun. Do I really need to tutor you on the importance of personal safety too on top of Japanese Lit?"
Mob looked down immediately. "No, Ma'am. This won't happen again."
"It better not."
And so Mob resigned to his fate, trailing along behind her. He would had spent the entire time pitying Sato-chan, if it weren't for the two old ladies who'd passed them by two blocks ago, throwing him He wished Emi-san hadn't heard them.
When they finally reached Fukami residence, Emi set Sato-chan free, and the cat took its opportunity to run away from Emi as fast as she could. Emi grabbed the first aid kit. Mob went to the bathroom to clean up his scratches. He tried to focus on being methodical. Although that proved difficult when, despite leaving it under the running cold water for a while, the warmth of Emi's hand was still imprinted well on his palm.
It's not like he never held hands with a girl before. He had held Tsubomi's hand when they were kids. And there was that time when he saved Asagiri Minori ... if hand-holding in the mindscape counted. But he'd never done it as long as he just inadvertently did with Emi-san. Isn't that what boyfriends do with their girlfriends? Walking home from school hand-in-hand? That thought only led him back to the old ladies' whispers, and he realized too late that blushes couldn't be washed away.
He tried to convince himself none of this was a big deal. Friends come over and patch each other up all the time. Friends help you apply antibiotic cream on your cat-scratched hand. (But do friends do that, when the scratched friend is perfectly capable of doing it himself? And does a friend feel his heartbeat spike up when his friend touches his hand?)
And friends offer you a band-aid illustrated with a cute frog because, "You like frogs, right, Kageyama-kun?"
When she beamed, Mob could breathe a little easier.
Mob took the band-aid with a white cat illustration instead. He put it on his hand with a smile as Emi tidied up the first aid box. "Going for ironic, huh?"
"I like cats, too." He smiled, admiring the band-aid.
"Well. I doubt you like Sato-chan now."
"How do you write her name?" he asked, because he knew better than to assume Emi would allow simply hiragana in the names of anything related to her. All those times she spent buried in kanji dictionaries and lists of baby names to develop her characters were proof.
Emi took his hand again, the one with the band-aid. She flipped it over and began drawing strokes of kanji on his palm. Mob furrowed his brows trying to focus, then, "'Sugar'?"
"Yep. Not exactly as sweet as her name." Emi sighed before her tone turned regretful. "I really am sorry for all this. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"
Mob thought about it for a bit. "I don't blame you or Sato-chan, but," he glanced at the cat watching them from across the room, "would you let me give her a treat? Maybe if I befriend her, she won't be scared of me anymore."
"You wanna be friends with that little menace?"
Mob nodded. Emi, rightfully, looked reluctant.
"If she scratches me again, the first aid kit's right over there. And I'll let you tutor me on the importance of personal safety. With emphasis on how to avoid cat-menaces."
She stared wide-eyed at him for a second. Then she burst into giggles, and the nerves of Mob's palm tingled in the pattern of her finger's strokes from earlier. That same palm soon received a sachet of cat treat, and a happy Sato-chan sat on Mob's lap as he fed her.
"Aw, look. The menace's already stealing my best friend."
Mob smiled. "Don't worry, Emi-san. As long as she doesn't offer me a frog band-aid, I don't think she ever will."