Akito (A Fruits Basket Fanfiction)

My Father's Final Wish (and why it still controls me)

I'm extremely sick. Seriously, I think I might be dying. Enjoy this chapter, anyway, even as I lay in bed attempting to cut my own nose off just to stop myself from sneezing.

"Father!" I sobbed, sinking to my knees at his bedside.

"A-Akito" my father croaked, opening his eyelids weakly. "You have to listen to me. You must not... be... afraid. I will always be with you even when you can't... can't see me..."

"Father, no!" I whimpered.

"Akito, you are a special existence. Listen to me Kito, your mother, she- she must be happy. Keep her happy for me, Kito"

'What about me?' I wanted to shout but I didn't. Instead I nodded, tears falling down my face.

He smiled weakly. "Goodbye Akito."

"Father!" I howled in agony and pain, clutching at my chest as if to rip my heart out. "Father!"

But my father was no more.

"Akira!" came a blood curdling scream and I turned sharply to see my mother in the doorway, panting and livid.

My father's body lay cold on the bed, his eyes closed as they had been when he died. Ren, my mother, ran over to him and slapped his face in desperation, her eyes red and her lips in a twisted snarl.

"Akira" my mother repeated again and again as if this would bring him back. I stood beside him, itching to pull her away and stamp on her face or something. I was seething; my father's last words still echoing in my head. It was clear to me now that he cared for her more than me.

My mother turned on me, her blotchy face showing nothing but loathing.

"This is your fault! This is all your fault!" she accused. "Why did no one tell me Akira had taken ill?"

"He wanted to see me" I protested.

"Why would he want to see you? You were just a toy to him!"

The words hit me like a slap in the face and there was a silence as both of our gazes drifted to my father's limp form. Then, with a shaking voice, my mother continued.

"Now he's gone" she said, her voice shaking. "You no longer have a purpose. He no longer has a place for his toy-"

"Father loved me!" I snapped, but I wasn't so sure. On his deathbed, all my father had cared about was that I looked after her. I'd lost to that woman.

"I would be so sure" Ren said quietly and left the room, leaving me alone with my father's dead body.

I sat there for hours, choking on grief and regret. A maid came in to move the body and found me collapsed on the floor by his bed, curled tightly into a ball. She helped me to my feet offering me a concerned smile and pulled out a trinket box.

"Your father wanted me to give you this" she told me. "In Chinese folklore, it is possible to keep a loved one's spirit inside a box such as this one. Take good care of it"

I took the box and hid it under my bed. I guess I knew, even at the time, that my father's spirit wasn't in the box, that my father didn't converse with maids and would certainly not have entrusted his soul to one, that he was gone, gone forever and there was nothing I could do to change that but I couldn't admit it and so I kept the box, never once looking at it but knowing it was there and therefore clinging on to the last bit of hope that my father was too.

The bed was empty when I woke up. I got dressed quickly, gathering all my loose clothes from Shigure's floor and headed to my room. I had the weirdest urge to get the box out, to open it and release my father's spirit from where he had been residing, taking up space in my room and in my heart and let him go. Crossing the hallway, I had just resolved to open the box when-

"Akito?" asked a cold, harsh voice behind me.

"Keep her happy for me, Kito"

I stayed silent, childishly refusing to look at my mother.

"Akito, your hair is growing too long. Cut it off, you look like a girl"

I glanced guiltily down to my room where I knew the box was hidden. I could almost hear my father, begging me to keep her happy as he lay dying.

"I'll cut it off" I agreed sullenly. "If that's what you want"

"It is" my mother said lightly.

"So, my mother wants me to cut my hair off" I told Shigure as he began to unbutton my shirt.

He paused, shocked that I had spoken, least of all about hair; we didn't generally talk much.

"But Kito, I like your hair" he said. "It looks good on you"

I allowed myself a small smile in response to the compliment but shook my head. "She thinks it makes me look like a girl"

"But you are one" Shigure complained, fiddling with a particularly persistent button. "Look Kito, maybe it's time you told people you were a girl"

I stopped dead. Did he mean tell people about us?

"It's just, you look so pretty in girls clothes" he said, finally managing to pop the button and pulling the shirt over my head. "Of course not as pretty as you do in no clothes, but then again you can't really walk around naked..."

"Pervert" I joked. "What's with all the compliments today anyway? Do you want something?"

"Of course I do, why do you think I'm taking your shirt off?" sniggered Shigure and I laughed and hit him.

I may have brushed away the idea then but it lingered on my mind long after we fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke up and headed straight to my room, as I had done yesterday. Gingerly, I slid the box out from its hiding place under my bed and looked at it for the first time since it had been given to me, over 10 years ago.

"Look Kito, maybe it's time you told people you were a girl"

If it wasn't for the need to follow my father's last wish and keep my mother happy, I probably would have told people my secret as soon as I reached adulthood. But the fact was, I had never been able to open the box and accept that my father was gone, never been able to release the part of his spirit that still controlled me, and therefore never been able to go against his instructions and reveal my true identity, something I knew would upset my mother.

Until now.

I reached out one long, bony finger and gently touched the lid of the box. I began to prise it open, then, just as I was about to take it off, I stopped. I carefully pushed the lid back into place and returned the box to its spot under my bed. It seemed that I still wasn't ready to let him go.