Welcome to Gaia! ::

As the boy walked down the road, accompanied by a man he affectionately called “Tou-chan,” he drew the gaze of any they passed. For one thing, he wore clothing based on the style of tradition Chinese clothing for boys, an out of place choice of casual attire for this town to say the least. The red color with gold accents would have been eye-catching enough, but they were offset quickly by an even stranger feature: from the boy’s head sprouted a pair of what appeared to be striped cat ears, and dangling behind him was a tail. These two items, of course, caused people to look upon the boy’s companion with some amount of shame and disgust: their immediate impression being that he was “into” that sort of thing, and with little boys at that. If they’d paid more attention, they may have noticed the occasional flick of an ear or the way the tail moved that belied the fact that they were not actually fake, but none dared look quite that hard.

“Tou-chan, hurry up!” the boy beckoned, skipping ahead then turning on his heel to face the older man and wait impatiently. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” the man assured. Of a medium stature with golden brown hair touching his shoulders, a smooth and handsome complexion, and wearing a dress shirt unbuttoned to a few inches below his collarbone, “Tou-chan” was only an “older man” when compared to young boys, a mere 23 years old. Adjusting his glasses on his face, “Tou-chan” hurried to catch up to the younger boy. “Geez, Hatsuhi, slow down. We can’t always be darting around the place.” His complaints fell on deaf ears as Hatsuhi was already some ways ahead, and shortly turned around to impatiently wait for the man again.

The two were headed home from one of Hatsuhi’s gymnastics classes, yet the boy that had been through the rigorous exercise involved in the class seemed to have significantly more energy than the man that had been merely sitting and watching, something he demonstrated as he agilely leapt onto and walked along a low ledge, balancing with both arms extended outward. “C’mon,” the man said with a sigh, having caught up with the boy, and he grabbed Hatsuhi by the waist and pulled him off of the ledge, setting him firmly on the ground. “Don’t run around like that or jump on peoples things. You’re disrupting them,” he chastised the tiger boy. Hatsuhi seemed abashed, but said nothing, merely pouted a bit and wouldn’t meet his tou-chan’s gaze.

“Hey! Tou-chan!” Hatsuhi’s gaze, which had been stalwartly avoiding that of his Tou-chan, had instead focused on something else: a ball of fur on the steps of a shopfront, somewhat mangled and obviously not taken care of for some time. “I think it’s a cat! Can we keep it?” Sure, the fur color was strange, but that mattered not the least to Hatsuhi: in a way, he considered that he had no right to think anything strange: he was, after all, a boy generated from pocky with fully functioning tiger ears and tail. Next to that, anything else would seem normal. The boy darted forward once again, this time toward the “cat.” Unaware and uncaring of any danger it might cause, he crouched down pawed at the ball of fur. Tou-chan sighed and smiled, hurrying to the boy’s side only to stop, dumbfounded as he realized what it was: a boy. Bruised, bloodied, and from what he could tell far too thin, the “cat” was actually a young boy around Hatsuhi’s (apparent) age with cat ears and a large, fluffy cat tail unlikely to be fake.

“T-tou-chan…” Hatsuhi’s voice was small and worried: he’d never seen such an abused-looking creature before. The tiger boy pawed at the other boy once more, obviously concerned. The shivering and lack of response worried him. “Tou-chan, he’s too cold. He needs help.” Tou-chan knew well enough that, despite the boys condition, he could not take him to the hospital. The boy’s lack of insurance aside, no boy with ears and a tail like that could ever go to a hospital for normal people. They’d become a test subject, or worse. So the man nodded and placed the dress jacket he’d been carrying over the boy. “We’re going to take you to our home,” he said slowly, soothingly, just in case the boy was awake.

Hatsuhi and “Tou-chan” both heaved sighs of relief as the cat boy showed some signs of life. As he uncurled and revealed a small statue, Tou-chan suppressed any interest he may have felt in it, recognizing the boy was of far higher priority. Tou-chan took his smile as consent and gathered the boy in his arms together with the statue, lifting them up with surprising physical ability, especially compared to his refusal to move with any speed earlier. With Hatsuhi close at his heels and fussing over the cat boy, Tou-chan now strode toward their home with as quick a pace as he could, a pace that caused Hatsuhi to practically need to run to keep up. It was some small blessing, at least, that their house was nearby.

As the apartment complex they lived in came into view, Hatsuhi ran ahead, unlocking the door of their first-floor apartment and swinging it open to allow Tou-chan to enter without any inhibitions. The man brought the cat boy to his bedroom without any delay, followed closely by Hatsuhi, and Tou-chan set the boy gently on the bed. “You keep him company. I’ll be back in a minute.” Hatsuhi nodded and Tou-chan left the room, to the kitchen judging by the clanging of pots and sounds of cabinets and drawers being opened. Hatsuhi perched on the bed beside the cat boy, eying him worriedly. A minute later, Tou-chan returned, carrying a stack of blankets and a stack of wet, warm towels. Piling the blankets on the boy, he handed the tiger boy the towels. “I’ll have soup out in a minute,” Tou-chan called out, already out of the room and back in the kitchen. Hatsuhi folded one towel up and set it on the cat boy’s forehead, and began to clean off some of the blood and dirt with another.