WARNING: The following story is only loosely-based on ZUN's canon; however, it was still made with a great sense of respect toward his works. Many characters' appearances, thoughts, speech patterns, abilities, friendships, etc. may or may not have been altered. Past events that may or may not be referred to that are likely to relate with ZUN's games, manga, or other material have a strong chance of being different from ZUN's canon. You have been forewarned.
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A Simple Wish to Be Carefree
It is a sunny, noisy day in Ningen no Sato. The air is overwhelming with the scent of humans and the sounds ring of amusement and carefree nature to a certain traditionally-dressed, stern-faced, white-haired wolf youkai, who is currently seated on a crate outside of a tengu-owned brothel and very envious, indeed. This is Momiji Inubashiri--and in his mind, the unluckiest man in the world. See, he wants to be as carefree as the humans are now, but currently, he is stuck waiting for a particular tengu to release her own carefree self from her favorite job of bugging other carefree people.
Everybody is carefree, except for poor Momiji, it would seem.
He sits with his bulky head resting in one hand as his narrow, beady eyes lazily sweep across each wave of on-coming pedestrians. Eventually, unable to take the strain on his eyes anymore, he closes them and breathes a heavy sigh.
Slowly opening his eyes again, Momiji spots a young boy starring at him from about a meter away, and Momiji, being fairly tall, is able to stare back at the kid on an even level. Within a few seconds of them locking their sights with one another, Momiji fetches a low growl deep within his throat and halfheartedly bears his canine teeth--nothing overtly ferocious, but just enough to scare the child away. As the child scampers off, he receives a small amount of satisfaction from the boy's reaction and finds it within himself to let out the slightest little smirk along with a reserved "hmph."
"Scaring away children as usual, Momiji?" comes a clear, booming, kingly voice; Momiji turns his head to his right lazily to snag a better view.
It happens to be Shou Toramaru, a tiger youkai, trotting over valiantly in the wolf youkai's direction. Momiji brings himself to his feet to greet him.
"What's up, feline? Can't find your mouse to play with?" Momiji playfully retorts as the two clasp each others' hand in a sign of camaraderie.
Shou grins, "I'll have you know that she's hard at work running a very important errand."
"Tch! And you aren't with her? Why's that? I thought you were a gentleman!"
The two release their friendly grip on each other. Shou places his hands on his sides, firing off a pointing index finger while Momiji casually folds his arms to his chest.
"Importance does not necessarily equate to a task's level of difficulty, friend. If I believed that Nazrin required my skills, I would have gladly assisted her! No questions asked!" the tiger youkai lectures proudly, but then lowers his voice and turns his attention to the brothel next to them. "But, I'm guessing that you are a little more... erm, faithful, shall we say, to your partner than even I, Momiji?"
One aspect that is clear about Shou is that he is very expressive and likes to speak with his hands. This fact only causes more irritation in Momiji, as he feels that his comrade is looking down on him and misunderstanding the situation at-hand.
"She's not in there havin' sex, Shou. It's just business as usual," Momiji states as bluntly as he possibly can.
"Ah--oho, but of course!" He laughs it off, somewhat embarrassed. Momiji just shakes his fuzzy head in pity.
"Trust me, man, I wouldn't be able to bear this job any more than I already have to if I had to think about that narrow-ass crow thrusting up and down in heat. That'd be freakin' disgusting, man."
"Er... Right, right." Shou just scratches his head, clearly only awkwardly playing along with his friend's frustrations at this point.
After that bit of small talk, there is silence between the two. Momiji turns his vision toward the covered opening to the brothel watchfully, hoping for the tengu girl to get what she had planned finished soon. This impatience that he felt didn't have have anything to do with Shou's presence, but was instead fueled by his consuming desire to do anything else than just sit around waiting; never in his life did he appreciate the feeling of uselessness.
"What's she doin' in there, anyway? I thought she just wanted to talk to her folks," an annoyed Momiji mutters under his breath.
A few seconds after finishing that remark, the wolf youkai spots a mouse sniffing around by the tiger's feet; "Hey, dude," he says and motions his head to he point it out. Shou peers down below and quickly spots the swift, little mouse as it scurries back around the corner from where it came.
"Well, now..." Shou begins, "It appears to me that Nazrin is finished with her errand." He rotates his head back over to Momiji and places a strong hand on his shoulder comfortingly, "In that case, I must return. Attempt not stress yourself too much with the newspaper girl, my friend."
"Yeah, yeah," Momiji responds lifelessly, rolling his eyes.
With an empathetic smile, his tiger friend trots away gallantly around the corner and disappears from sight. Releasing a sigh, a distraught Momiji returns to sitting upon his crate, just as he did before Shou arrived to grant him that little bit of time to be carefree like everybody else in the village; and yet, he couldn't shake the feeling that he himself did nothing but squander that little bit of time.
"Too bad I'm no gentleman like you, Shou," Momiji mumbles to himself. "I could just meditate or somethin' and time would just fly by. No problem."
