One More Curse (Fruits Basket Fan-Fic)

Chapter Twelve- Dex:

She may be nice, she may care, but she will never understand. Yet her question echoed in my mind over and over: “…you were mad today. Can I ask why?” shouldn’t it be obvious? I’m a member of the Zodiac with no parents.

I stood there, I was eight years old, almost nine, under my dad who had hung himself in the basement. I cried out in fright as I flicked the light on. My mom had ran down the stairs to see what had happened. She cried.

After a few minutes of us wailing, she pointed at me and said, “It’s your fault! It’s all your fault, you freak!”

It wasn’t my fault I was of the Zodiac, was it?

Two days before I turned ten, she was coming back from work at night. She had worked at a packaging company and worked late into the night, sometimes till morning. That night she fell asleep at the wheel and ran into a semi. They both tumbled into a ditch and one of the gas tanks exploded. Nobody survived.

We had her funeral, but I stayed away. People were glaring at me, whispering that I had cursed her in some way. All but my grandmother who didn’t know about the curse. She had never hugged me.

She invited me to live with her at her house when I turned ten. That was my birthday present. I accepted because other than the main house, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. So I moved in with her. Nice old lady, at first until she hugged me.

Her response was shock, followed by hatred, then last, sadness. I was in bed when she gave me the hug and she dropped to her knees and cried. Her hands were covering her face. My first response was to erase her memories

But I wasn’t heartless. Yet. I laid in bed and waited for her to say something.

Instead, she got up and left the room, never to speak with me again. I got along pretty nice, got some bad older friends, they did drugs and drinking, yes, but I was the only one who didn’t.

A year later, my grandmother died of natural causes. I didn’t bother going to her funeral. I didn’t want anyone else shunning me. So now I was eleven and I never even met the other Zodiacs.

So I moved to the main house. The head of house showed me around. When I saw a group of kids around my age, I wondered if they were any of the Zodiacs.

“Are they Zodiacs too?” I had asked.

The head of house, Akito, glared at me before continuing on. “You don’t need them. They won’t care about you. Only I will.”

I believed him. Because I was lonely. So I stayed at the main house with Akito. I never met with any of the Zodiac, never spoke with them, only viewed them at a distance.

Usually they were in groups of three or five. Occasionally, I saw the one that was supposedly my sister, but I never talked to her. They always were talking with one another or laughing. Nobody saw me looking out at them behind the curtain upstairs. Nobody cared to look. Did they not notice or feel that they were being watched?

Akito always shooed me away before they came. Then always called me back when they were gone. I was either in his room or my room. Nowhere else. Some days he wouldn’t call me until two days after I thought they had left but one had stayed behind.

No school, no homework, no friends to talk to but Akito.

One day, another year after I had moved in, after all the Zodiacs had left, Akito had me downstairs with him. We were talking about my Zodiac, since I hadn’t seen it in two years. I tried to draw it out to Akito, but it was difficult.