Little Tiger

The weekend

I fell asleep as soon as I saw the faintest sight of the sunrise. It was easier to fall asleep in the daytime, I thought I would be safe from my dreams that way. There was nothing more suffocating than the, seemingly endless, darkness that the nighttime welcomed. I wished I could live in Sweden or Alaska during the summer time, when the sun stayed out for the entire day. I'd sleep perfectly fine then. 

My sleep was lucid and not very comfortable. I could hear Momiji getting off of my bed at some point and crouching down in front of my face to see if I was awake yet. Obviously, I wasn't. He gently poked my head with his little finger then waited a moment before doing it again. I was calculating the appropriate amount of pokes to the head it would take an actually sleeping person to wake up. After he poked me about ten times, I realized I had already missed the threshold by a long shot. 

I opened my eyes and looked up at him, feigning confusion. 

"What is it?" I asked, my voice strained and rough from (lack of) sleep. 

Momiji beamed at me, bleary eyed and cheerful. "I wanted to wake you up so that we can have breakfast." 

I sat up on my elbow and put my hair behind my ear. "I don't think Akari has much in the house," I said, knowing this from personal experience. Akari was rarely home and he most often took meals in the main house. His busy schedule did not give him an opportunity to go grocery shopping with frequency.

"Oh," Momiji said resignedly, dropping to the ground with his legs out in front of him. He was wearing my pajamas (I had forgotten to take him home first last night, so he could get his own clothes for our sleepover); a cropped shirt that was full length on him and a pair of basketball shorts that touched his ankles. "What about we go out to eat?" he suggested, tilting his head to the side. It was hard to believe he was nine years old. I've never known another little boy who acted like Momiji. His secret weapon was being cute and he knew it. I think everyone embraced his persona even though, deep down, we all knew it wasn't real. Yes, he was only nine here, but Hatsuharu was nine too and they acted completely different. Anyway, I liked that Momiji relied on me so much when I was with him. It gave me someone to protect, take care of. Whether he was pretending to be younger than he was or not, he gave me purpose. I'm sorry, I shouldn't tell you things that aren't consistently true. I'm making myself out to sound much kinder than I really was. In the whole time that I've been explaining my story, I had only seen Momiji twice. I think I'm too good at defending myself to be writing this accurately. 

I took Momiji out to eat. Ayame was always talking about a coffee shop near campus that he loved. He claimed that their pastries were the best he'd ever had and their coffee was even better. I figured his review allowed Momiji and I to both have something we love. 

Taking Momiji out of the estate was different from when I took Yuki. It wasn't sneaky and it didn't matter if Akito was at the estate or not. I had forgotten that Yuki was different from the other younger Zodiacs. I spent so little time with all of them that I believed the only reason Yuki was not able to leave the estate as freely as the older Zodiacs was due to his age. Instead, it was because he was the rat and practically an orphan; everybody, no matter their age, was allowed to enter and leave the estate as often as they would like. 

Momiji wanted to hold my hand the whole way there. It wasn't a bad thing, but it felt strange because the only other person I'd held hands with was Shigure and he only did it when he was trying to pull me somewhere. I most likely held hands with my mother when I was a child, possibly my father too, but I do not remember. 

"Ko-chan, do you think we'll see Shigure or Hatori or Ayame?" Momiji asked, skipping alongside me. 

I hoped not. "Maybe," I replied amiably, shrugging my shoulders. It's early in the morning, we'll only be in there for five minutes, what are the odds that any of them will be in there at the same time? I thought, trying to convince myself. I wouldn't hate it if I did run into them, they were my friends and I loved them, but I didn't want to get caught up in their worlds. The boys were in college now, listening to interesting lectures and staying up all night partying---the things I wanted to do--- and I was in high school, still living in the main house and staying up all night because my nightmares made it too hard to sleep. Their lives always sounded far more interesting than mine (because they were). I just wanted to have my own world for a change, one that didn't involve constantly feeling like I wasn't having enough fun or doing enough things. I'd probably see them later, anyway, which was time enough for Hatori to complain about his studying while simultaneously gloating about his good grades, Shigure to talk with big words I couldn't understand while melodramatically smoking a cigarette out an open window, and for Ayame to tell me every bit of his life and each one of his friends that weren't a part of our little group, that I had yet to be introduced to (leaving me to assume they were imaginary friends).