Minutes later, the doctor finished examining Kagetsu, finding nothing wrong or out of the ordinary. He was a healthy boy, full of energy, but his body needed to rest and regain the lost nutrition.
"Doctor, why am I in the hospital?" he asked as the man wrote the last notes.
"You were in an accident."
"In which one?" Kagetsu wasn't that dumb to not see people avoided answering his questions.
"That's—"
"Ka!" Rigaku shouted, bursting into the room. Even his eyes wavered with tears.
Freya stepped aside, giving him all the space to half-hug his brother as his arm still hurt.
"Arigatou! I was so worried!"
Aiyoku at the edge of the scene gesticulated with the doctor, prompting him to leave them. Once alone, Aiyoku stood on the other side of the bed.
"Sheesh, what's happening?" Kagetsu asked. "Everything is so confusing! What had happened? Why's your arm bandaged? Why do you look like you saw a ghost? Why my butt hurts?" The barrage of questions continued until he needed to inhale.
Rigaku pulled down his glasses to wipe the tears. "You don't remember?"
"Remember what?" Kagetsu puckered his lips.
The older brothers exchanged looks.
"Please, tell me," he begged, giving them his puppy eyes.
"I don't mean to hide anything from you." Rigaku sat down on a chair, and Freya stood next to him, leaning against the wall. "It's just... I don't want to send you into shock."
Kagetsu parted his lips to ask for more details, but he closed them, letting his brother know he would listen.
"Do you remember what you were doing for the last time?"
Knitting his eyebrows, his youngest brother was thinking. "Reading a book. I remember I loved a certain part so much, I had to reread it again. It kinda"—his eyes trailed to the ceiling—"resonated with me."
'So, it's like I've suspected. That's why this series speaks so much to him.'
Lifting his weakened hand, Kagetsu scratched in his hair. "I think I ventured on my own... kinda."
"Yeah," Aiyoku agreed. "You walked and read at the same time without bumping into anybody. You gotta tell me how you did that."
"I dunno. Guess I'm natural." The youngest sibling shrugged.
"You little!" Aiyoku ruffled his hair into a five-star bird nest.
"So, what happened next?" Rigaku inquired once his youngest brother ironed his hair into a less messy nest.
Crossing his arms, he racked his brain. "I ended up in the garden, and then..." His eyes went blank as if he got lost in his mind.
Their hairs stood up, expecting trouble.
And it arrived.
"Kitty!" Kagetsu shouted, jerking into a sitting position. "Is it okay?"
Aiyoku caught him under armpits, preventing him from leaping out of the room.
"Ka!" Rigaku shook with him as Freya held his hospital pajama from behind. "Calm down."
Yet his words had fallen onto deaf ear since Kagetsu shrunk, curling. Ragged breath escaped him as he remembered the freezing embrace of water.
The bubbles rushed around him, blinding him.
The invisible hand pushed him deeper and deeper.
His body turned into a rag doll at the mercy of a bratty child.
The cry for help pierced his ears.
He waved his limbs in an unfamiliar fashion.
His hand grabbed a wet ball and threw it over the pool edge before everything turned dark.
A piercing pain shot through his shoulder. A few moments later, his body turned soggy, and his breath calmed down.
The nurse laid him back into the bed and gestured the rest to leave. Before they could, Kagetsu muttered, "There was a cat in the pool, I couldn't..."
Outside of the room, they looked at each other as if those words made little sense.
"Did Ka jump into the water..." Rigaku started.
"... for a cat?" Aiyoku finished.
The oldest Kamini pushed up his glasses. "I mean, he always liked animals. I don't remember any freaking him out except for Rocket."
"True. But to overcome his panic fear of water for a cat... it's... hard to believe it."
Freya remained silent with her gestures. Her own thoughts rotated in a twister. 'Cat...?' The image of Taiga came to her mind. 'Could she slip into the pool?'
Another flash pierced her mind, reminding her Mori-san from a few days back. 'Those scratches... could they really be...?' Unsettling feelings bothered her all the way to the car. Could Mori-san be connected to all of this?
\\_(''>_<'')_//
Wednesday came, and despite the warm weather and only a few clouds, Freya couldn't smile. The awakening of her friend brought her fresh energy and turned the burden on her shoulders into dust.
Yet, the feeling of more behind this didn't let her celebrate with the brothers. She shared with them her story regarding Mori-san's approach to her, and how he had cat scratches on his forearm.
Rigaku immediately found the connection suspicious, and all of it added to each other. However, he couldn't find a proper reason for Mori-san to throw a cat into a pool except for a twisted fun.
Aiyoku had found many stories from animal shelters for cats and dogs, where animals suffered crippling injuries from kids. One cat lost both of its eyes, and another suffered burns.
Cases of broken bones and cuts were too common, and nothing could be done with it. No law could punish the kids due to their young age, but more often than not, there were no witnesses or leads to the culprits. Only a handful of people noticed and cared for stray animals.
"It's hard to think he would torture an animal," Aiyoku said the evening Freya shared her story, but she excluded Mori trying to get her under his control. They had enough to worry about. "But then again, that's what he can use to his advantage."
"His family owns a chain of hotels across Japan and China. I've heard they are building a few branches in Europe too," Rigaku added. "He has it all. I wouldn't be surprised it was nothing but a game for him, or he could try to see if cats have nine lives."
"Whether or not it was him, the culprit is going to pay."
Aiyoku's face darkened, and despite Rigaku had no visuals signal of raising anger, his eyes could cut diamonds. Animal cruelty made them sick of their stomach, but their brother got caught into it, and who knew what consequences it could have.
Freya shook her head, shooing the memories.
'I need to ask Ueno-san if she noticed something.'
Before finishing the thought, she texted her, and they met a few minutes later by the hut.