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Meow
Sugishita stops in his tracks, ears perking up at the soft sound.
He’s walking home, classes and the last of the patrols having ended awhile ago. He’s alone, as usual. He knows that the rest of his class finds him unapproachable, and they usually split off from him as soon as they can. Only Umemiya walks with him, but that’s pretty rare given how busy he is.
Sugishita will never complain—he doesn’t want to seem ungrateful for all Umemiya’s given him already.
Sugishita looks around, trying to find the source of the meow. It’s starting to snow, and the grey air chilled in the early winter—the cold doesn’t bother him much, but it might be different for the cat.
He eventually finds it tucked away in the corner of an alley, small and shaking. It’s so covered in snow that it’s completely white. Or maybe it’s just a white cat, what does he know.
He kneels down, ignoring the way his uniform pants dampen when they touch the ground, eyes focused on the cat—the kitten, seeing how small it is, only about the size of his hand. It opens its mouth to meow again, but only a croak comes out. His heart clenches at the sight. He feels odd.
He reaches a hand out to grab it, but it shrinks away, fear in its eyes. He quickly pulls his hand back, frustrated ashamed, but shakes his head and scoops the kitten into his arms anyway.
After all, he’s not only used to that reaction from people, but also from cats.
Sugishita and cats have never seen eye to eye.
That is a fact. It’s one he’s come to accept a long time ago, even if Umemiya insists that you just haven’t found the right one for you yet. It’s one of the few things that Sugishita disagreed with his senior on.
He doesn’t mind, not really. Sure, it would be nice to feel the soft fur of the black neighborhood cat, and to pet the calico on the way to school, and to have the small long-haired kitten rub it’s head against his ankle like it does with his classmates outside the school gate…
But it’s ok. They hiss and hunch and run away, and that’s just how it is.
He makes his way back home, immediately holing himself in his small but organized room. He doesn’t have any loose cloth lying around, so he just bunches the shaking kitten in a clean jacket and places it on his bed.
It meows pathetically at him. “Sorry,” Sugishita says, even if there isn’t any reason to.
The snow on it’s fur drips down the kitten, soaking into the jacket as well as his sheets, but Sugishita ignores the mess in favor of the kitten’s fur.
It’s not a white cat, but a black-and-white cat. Or a white cat with black spots. Or a black cat with white spots. Half-black and half-white. Look, he’s not an expert on this stuff.
It looks like Sakura.
He tries to banish the thought as soon as he can, but thoughts of his grade-captain haunts his mind, as it often does these days.
Something about Sakura just pisses him off. He’s loud without reason, he disrespects Umemiya daily, he puts himself in the craziest situations and drags the rest of them into it, he’s—
The only one who ever stood up to him, who ever stood beside him. He’s brave, and strong, and annoying, and recently Sugishita has been starting to get butterflies in his stomach every time he sees him and he doesn’t know why—
So. Sugishita doesn’t hate Sakura. It’s the opposite, really. It’s just…
Really hard to interact with him, even if he wants to. Just like the cats that avoid him.
Except for this one.
Without him realizing it, his hand once again reaches out to touch the kitten. This time, though, it stays still and allows him to lightly pet it.
The fur is matted and wet, and he can sense it’s shallow breathing and rapid heartbeat under his fingertips, but all he can feel is calmness, sitting in his room, kneeling besides something so much smaller and more delicate himself.
He wants to protect it. He wants to pet it some more.
It sneezes. A cute, small sneeze that jolts it’s entire body, and he flinches, pulling his arm back.
“I need to warm you up,” he tells it. Then stares. What do cats eat again?
…
He ends up taking it to the vet early the next morning, before other Furin students even rolled out of bed.
He learns that it—she’s only a few weeks old, that she’s malnourished and underweight, and that she miraculously doesn’t have any other health issues. She’s a stray, no mother or home to return to. The veterinarian asks if he wants to give her to a shelter, but he’s halfway out the door with her in his arms before the question is even finished.
He walks carefully, so as not to slip on the leftover snow that glistens in the morning light. He’s not sure where to go from here, but he wants to keep her. He stayed up almost all night to take care of her, but it banished the quietness that usually haunts him at home, and he wants it to be like that everyday.
The kitten meows at him. And sneezes.
“Are you hungry?” He looks around, still a bit lost on what cats eat despite his chaotic googling the night before.
Unfortunately, he’s only surrounded by clinics and stores, though he spots Café Pothos down the street to the left. Kotoha is nice, she’ll help him.
He enters the Café, holding the kitten firmly as it flinches at the door bell. Kotoha isn’t at the counter, and the store is empty except for one person.
It’s Sakura. Eating an omelette. Staring right at him—right at the kitten.
“Uh,” Sakura says, around a mouthful of eggs. “Is that yours?”
“Yes,” Sugishita grunts, keeping his cool despite his surprise. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Sakura since last night, but he refuses to look weak in front of his grade-captain (in front of Sakura). “She’s mine.”
He goes up to the counter and sits next to him. He places the kitten on the counter in front of them both, letting her unfurl and explore the wood beneath her feet and the two delinquents in front of her.
“Are you gonna, uh, explain?” Sakura asks, looking completely lost. It’s the first time they’ve had a one-on-one conversation not about fighting. It fills Sugishita with a weird sort of glee, one he usually only has for Umemiya.
“She doesn’t have a name.” Sugishita looks at him, hesitating for merely a second. It takes all his willpower to say these next words: “Help me?”
“Uh.” Sakura blushes. Pretty. “Ok?”
They sit in awkward silence. Sakura pushes around his food. Sugishita stares at the kitten, silently thanking her for giving him this opportunity to talk to him.
Now that Sakura and the kitten are next to each other, Sugishita can see how much they’re alike. Not just the black-and-white hair, but their large eyes, their cautiousness, their loneliness.
His own loneliness.
“...it sure is hungry, huh?” Sakura asks. His words sound bemused, but his eyes sparkle as he watches the kitten come up to his plate and sniff the eggs. He even lets it take a nibble of his food—something he wouldn’t even let Nirei do.
“Sounds familiar,” Sugishita attempts to quip, like he’s seen the others do.
Sakura shoots him an annoyed look, which pleases Sugishita for a reason he can’t identify, but his attention is drawn back to the kitten when she buts her head on his wrist. She’s so small, yet she’s warming up to Sakura even faster than she did with him.
It fills him with a bit of jealousy, but even more so with relief. He really wants the two of them the three of them to get along.
Sakura brings a hesitant hand to her head, and starts to pet her. Sugishita was able to get most of the matts out last night, but her fur is still rough and uneven. However, if you go by Sakura’s awed face, her fur must be been the softest thing in the world.
“She can be our cat,” Sugishita blurts out. He’s never said this many words to Sakura at once, so he doesn’t know how to hold himself. It’s a nice thought, though; the kitten being theirs and theirs only.
Sakura smiles, a small and rare one, eyes still on the cat. “Then we should start brainstorming a name, huh?”