AN: Well, after much internal debate, and then forgetting about it completely; I decided, what-the-hey, I'd post this. If you like short random nothings, this might actually be half decent. A thank-you to Fyre for reminding me of it! (PS: QuickEdit hates me. In fact, it seems to have general animosity for every author on this site. Maybe it's just me)
Whatever Ijuuin Enzan, five years old, had been expecting to happen today when he woke up, this definitely wasn't it.
Enzan's father was absent on another buisness trip, not that Enzan would have seen him if he wasn't. Left alone with the maids, the hair-brained cleaners decided to slip away from their assigned duties for a day of 'fun'. Of course, if they did this, the only one left in the house would have been him, and apparently the maids decided he couldn't be left to his own devices. What they thought he was going to do while they were shirking work, he had no idea.
Enzan personally decided he was better off alone in his own home than with the idiotic maids, not that he could protest much. It turned out, as logic would have it, that he was dead right. The air-headed ladies had quickly forgotten about their young charge and wandered off on their own. The small child in question was now standing alone, on a street that he didn't recongize, in a town that he didn't even recongize.
Sighing to himself, Enzan began walking down the street, looking for some kind of sign to inform him of his current global positioning. All he could see, however, were stop signs and signs informing one of the legal speed limit. He glared at the closest one, did this town even have street signs? So busy was he engaging in a glaring contest with the atrusive bright red sign, he failed to notice someone coming up behind him, loudly.
"HI!"
Enzan jumped, about a good inch into the air, before coming back down, on his face. The pain. Pushing himself off the ground and blinking dazedly, he looked up and the first thing he laid eyes on was orange. Bright, glaring orange. Again, the pain. Closing his eyes in hopes that whatever it was would be gone when he opened them again, this time found himself staring at brown. Bright brown eyes.
"HI!"
Enzan glared at the other child, which he assumed to be close to his own age. "I heard you the first time, go away."
"Are you okay?"
Enzan's glare was ruined by his momentary look of surprise, was this child half-deaf or something? That would explain why he was shouting so loudly. "I'm fine, now go away."
"If you're fine, why're you here by yourself then?", the bright brown-eyed boy asked, completely ignoring Enzan's command, and disproving his theory of faulty hearing. Enzan was tempted to ask the same thing of the boy himself, eyeing his spiky brown hair with vague distaste. He had never in his life seen someone walking around with such unkept hair, which he noted was the almost exact same shade of his eyes, a warm muddy brown. He wondered if that was genetically possible, than remembered his own hair and quickly pushed it from his mind.
"Go away."
"Are you lost?", the Brown Boy, as Enzan had now dubbed him, questioned. Obviously this thick-headed child was not to be deterred. And technically, Enzan was lost, not that he wanted to admit it to any other living being, especially not this kid. However, the idea of getting back to the station without local aid was very much against him at the moment.
".... .... Yes."
"Oh. Wanna go play?"
Enzan stared outright, he couldn't help it. Was this child even listening to half his answers? "No, I'm busy being lost, go away."
"You don't look very busy to me." Brown Boy pointed out with his stupid, yet somehow infallible logic. Enzan was exasperated by now, this kid just wouldn't leave him alone!
"Would you just go away?", Enzan tiredly asked.
"What's your name?", the other boy asked brightly, with the same cheerful smile that hadn't slipped from his face once in the entire conversation.
Enzan was getting the feeling the spiky-haired child wasn't going to leave him well enough alone. "Ijuuin Enzan.", he answered, hoping against hope the name might scare the boy off.
"Oh." No such luck was to be had, unfortunately. The other child's smile grew wider, Enzan wasn't exactly sure how it was possible, and stuck out a dirty hand. "I'm Netto!"
Enzan gave the hand a withering glance. "I suppose you don't have a last name then.", he commented dryly. The sarcasm was completely lost on Netto, though.
"Oh, whoops. Hikari Netto, I meant." Enzan allowed his gaze to drift back up from the disgustingly dirty hand back to the child's face, which was also dirty, as seemed to be the rest of him. Hikari was a very common name, but there was only one face in high society that carried that name along with brown eyes and hair, although Enzan somehow couldn't picture him being related to this.... thing.
"Hikari Yuuichiro?", he asked anyway, not quite sure why he was still bothering to talk to the other boy at all. The said boy stared at him with large, wide, muddy brown eyes.
"You mean Papa?"
Enzan was disturbed by that answer. 'Maybe he's adopted.', he hoped feverently, but the boy's facial looks told a very different story. Before he could reply, Netto spoke up again.
"Wanna go play?" Where was this child's brain? Enzan sighed weakly, "No, go away."
"Why?" Oh, so he actually heard him that time.
"Because I'm lost and don't have time to 'go play'." Enzan informed him, trying to glare at him. Those warm brown eyes were incredibly disarming however, and Enzan couldn't find the strength to.
"You sure?", Netto asked, voice still bubbly and cheerful, "Being lost isn't very fun."
"I don't have 'fun'." Enzan darkly told the other child, becoming increasing agravated with him. This was not the right thing to tell him, though, because Netto's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.
"What???"
Enzan again failed to glare at him, "You heard me.". He turned his back on the brown boy to continue walking down the street, and was completely taken by surprise for the second time that day when Netto grabbed his arm and start dragging him in the opposite direction.
"What are you doing??" Enzan all but shouted at him, trying to wrench himself away, but Netto kept a firm clamp on his sleeve.
"I'm going to show you what fun is!" Netto declared, determination shining in his expressive eyes.
'Oh no,' Enzan thought distantly, 'this can't be good.'
----
Five minutes later found Enzan staring in horrid fascination at what appeared to be a large, pink elephant. "What is this?", he asked, eyeing it distrustfully.
"It's a slide!", Netto called down cheerfully from where he had climbed on top of the hideous plastic animal.
"A what?"
"A slide!"
"That still doesn't make any sense.", Enzan complained to his overly- chipper companion.
Netto rolled his eyes, "You slide on it!"
"Why?" Enzan decided to voice the obvious insanity of such a contraption.
Netto, however, looked at him like he was the insane one. "Because it's fun."
"Right. Of course." By this time it was beginning to occur to Enzan that aruging with this boy was a very challanging concept indeed. He stared at the 'slide' some more, and paused to wonder why everything in this town had to be so colorful. His monotonous mullings were immediately disrupted as something brown and orange shot right across his field of vision and down the elephant's truck, landing in an intelligently placed sandbox with a soft 'whump'.
Netto jumped up, dusted some sand off his pants, which were now effectively covered in it anyways, and turned triumphantly to Enzan. "See?!"
"No." Enzan told him honestly.
Netto frowned for the briefest of seconds, then went back to smiling happily, "Then you try it!". Enzan stared at him in utter horror.
"I am not getting on that deathtrap.", he said in very clear tones. Netto had the decency to look vaguely annoyed. 'Good', Enzan thought, 'he deserves it.'. Unfortunately for Enzan, it seemed the brown-eyed youth had a back-up plan.
"So, you're just too scared to try it!", Netto taunted in a childishly superior tone. It still had the desired effect however. If there was one thing Enzan could not stand for, it was his pride being attacked.
"Oh fine.", Enzan grumbled.
"YAY!", Netto cheered as Enzan began his ascent of the stairs of doom. Once finished tromping up the worn plastic steps, Enzan stared down at boy still covered in sand from the top of the elephant.
"Why is this thing pink anyways?"
Netto paused, considering this. "I have no idea."
"Ah." Enzan switched his gaze over to the actual slide part of the structure, which to him, looked entirely unsafe and dangerous.
"And how is this supposed to be fun?
Netto shrugged, "It just is?"
".... Ah." There was an exceedingly long pause where Enzan remained where he was standing rather than move closer to the slide. Netto began to tap his foot impatiently.
"Well?"
"Give me a minute." Enzan replied testily. Netto raised an eyebrow to this, or at least Enzan assumed it did, because it disappeared farther into his unruly bangs.
"Do you need someone to push you?" Netto asked after another minute of silence.
"No!" Enzan hissed. Netto's other eyebrow followed the first one into the spiky depths of hair. Drawing a deep breath and muttering things too low for the other boy on the ground to hear, Enzan started inching towards his inevitable doom.
"Any time now." Netto called helpfully. Enzan finally managed to glare at the boy, but wasn't watching where he was putting his foot in the act of doing so, and quite suddenly found himself staring at the cloudless sky. The view was ruined when Netto poked his head into Enzan's field of vision.
"Are you alright?", the brown-eyed boy asked, sounding genuinely worried.
"Do I look alright?" Enzan managed to reply.
"Yeah."
"..... Well, I'm not."
"Oh." Netto blinked, "Can you get up?".
Enzan also blinked, despite himself, "I don't think I broke anything..."
"Great! Wanna do it again?"
Enzan's expression was priceless. "Are you trying to kill me?!"
"No." Netto's bubbly voice answered, and the orange-clad child offered his hand. Giving it a wary look, Enzan used it to pull himself up, and vainly tried to rub the sand off his pants. "It's not my fault you weren't paying attention.", Netto pointed out.
"It was your fault for talking me into doing it."
"That's not fair!" Netto whined.
Enzan gave him a scathing look, "I'll be going now." Netto blinked in shock, completely thrown off by that statement.
"What?"
"Going. Now.", Enzan simplified for someone of Netto's IQ level. He took a step away from the sandbox, intent on putting as much distance between himself and the grotesque pink elephant as soon as possible. He hadn't counted on something to latch onto him from behind, effectively knocking him over, into the sand, face-first.
"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!" Netto blinked into the back of Enzan's shirt.
"Is that possible?", came the muffled question.
"With you, I wouldn't be surprised.", Enzan wearily replied. Netto rolled off of Enzan, who pushed himself to his feet.
"Anyways, you can't leave yet."
Enzan raised a dignified eyebrow, "Why?"
"Because I'll be bored."
"...... Honest, I see."
"Yep."
Enzan sighed, and rubbed his nose. "And what do you suggest we do then? I'm not getting back on that thing."
Netto looked thoughtful for a rare moment, and Enzan took advantage of the silence to examine his surroundings, noting a pond. In the middle of the pond, for whatever inane reason, was a huge statue of a squirrel. A pink squirrel. 'What is it with this place and that color?', Enzan shuddered.
"We could try the swings." Netto's almost ever cheerful voice broke into his inner musings, and Enzan spared him a glance.
"The what?"
"You really are hopeless, you know that?", Netto rolled his eyes in reply. He hopped up, then dragged Enzan into a standing position, and over to another unsafe looking mechanism. This one involving long bars of metal, chains, and flat pieces of metal. All of it was painted a disturbing shade of green that had Enzan wishing it was pink like the rest of the place.
"And I'm supposed to endanger my life with this, how?" Again, all dry sarcasm in Enzan's voice was lost on Netto.
"You sit on it." Netto informed him plainly.
"That doesn't sound very dangerous." Enzan knew there had to be a catch to this.
"And then someone pushes you." Netto further explained.
"Pushes? Off the thing?"
"Noooo. They push you so you start swinging on it."
"Like a pendulum?"
"........A what?", Netto asked blankly.
"Nevermind.", Enzan shook his head, "You try it first."
Netto looked at him rather pointedly, "Do you know how to push someone?"
"No." Enzan admitted, "I wasn't aware it required a specific kind of pushing." It was five seconds after saying this that Enzan realized he had done so without any sarcasm or coldness to his tone. This Netto child was having adverse affects on him without even doing anything.
"Well hop on then!" Netto eagerly told him, dragging him over to one of the suspended benches. Enzan very carefully, in case it gave in and collapsed under his weight, grabbed ahold of the chains and pulled himself up. He thought over what he was doing for a second.
"Why am I doing this again?"
"Because it's fun!" Netto told Enzan brightly, walking around behind him. Enzan was getting the impression Netto would next tell him jumping off bridges was fun too. Enzan didn't have much time to mediate on this, as Netto roughly shoved him from behind. Quickly grabbing onto the chains again, Enzan managed to catch himself before his face ended up on the ground for the third time that day.
Instead, the swing gave a creak and swung forward slightly, and it dawned on Enzan how it was supposed to work. And wanted off. Now. Netto however, was not a mind reader, and as the cursed contraption made its return swing, shoved Enzan again, this time harder, before he had a chance to voice his discomfort. Said discomfort soared, as did Enzan.
"Let me oofffffff!" If this was a different place, in a very different situation, that being no spiky-haired brown-eyed children, Enzan would've been mortified at the tone he was using. Netto ignored his plea and pushed him again with even greater vigor, and Enzan swung in a huge arc as the chains creaked ominously.
"Stop pushing!!!" Enzan screeched as the swing reached its highest point and started falling back down. His knuckles were white from the death-grip he had on the chains, but couldn't manage to shut his eyes.
"But you're not high enough yet!" Netto cheerfully called from the ground. He looked like a brown and orange ant to Enzan. Enzan responded with a look that could have melted the chains he was clinging to for dear life, but this was Netto. Enzan shrieked as the swing went even higher. "You sound like a girl!"
"You're not helping!!" It was then Enzan had noticed that Netto was now watching from the side and no longer pushing him. 'I'm not going to die!', was his appoximate train of thought.
----
Five minutes later found Enzan off the Swing of Death and seated on a half- rotting park bench by himself. Netto had walked off saying something about food, and as long as Enzan didn't have to get near the swing again he couldn't care less at the moment. He shuddered at the recent memory. He didn't get to dwell on it long, as something orange was stuck in front of his face. Shaking off the sense of deja vu, he looked up at Netto, who was holding it out to him, with another one in his other hand.
"And this is?...."
"Food!" Netto beamed as he said this, and Enzan fetched that food was a very important aspect of life to Netto. Enzan stared at it for a minute.
"It doesn't have to do with swinging, does it?"
Netto shoved it into his grasp and flopped down next to him. "Seesh! I don't see what you're so freaked out about, that was awesome! Nobody's gotten that high before!" Quite suddenly, Enzan lost his appetite. Netto glanced over from his frozen substance to see that Enzan hadn't touched his, and was holding the stick like he expected it to try and bite him.
"It's food, you eat it." Netto emphasized helpfully, and then added, "And it's going to melt in your hand if you don't do something with it." Noting that Netto was most likely speaking from personal experience, Enzan tentively licked at it.
"It tastes like oranges."
"That's why it's orange."
"Ah."
There was a long, dragging silence where the two young boys licked at their popsicles. Netto did most of the licking however, and Enzan stared at his. "Being a child," he suddenly declared, "is dangerous." Netto looked over at him while he was still in the middle of licking his orange-flavored treat.
"Whafh?"
Enzan shrugged absently in reply, and Netto noticed something. "Your sicle's melting, Enzan.", he notified the skunk-haired boy. Said boy looked down, and noticed his green pants were now covered in both sand and melted orange juice.
"Ah."
Netto looked worried at the lack of response, "Are you feeling okay?"
Enzan thought this over seriously, looking at his pants, the rest of his dirty clothes, Netto's absolutely filthy self in gerenal, his melting popsicle, and Netto's nearly vanished popsicle, which was currently more stick than anything else. After a few minutes of contemplation, he came to his second great conclusion of the day.
"Better than I ever remember."
Netto brightened, "See, I told you it was fun!".
Enzan smiled.
"Ijuuin-sama! Ijuuin-sama!", both boys looked up in unison to see a harassed looking woman in a maid's outfit rushing up to them, followed by several eerily identical maids in identical outfits. Upon reaching the bench, she doubled over panting. "Thank..goodness! We were...all so...worried!" Netto stared at the crazy looking lady with childish curiousity, while Enzan regarded her indiferently. 'The only thing you were worried about was your paycheck.'
"And?"
Regaining some of her breath, she looked up. "Where were you?!", she cried.
Netto answered for him, "We were right here the whole time." The maids finally noticed Netto, and as one being, cooed and went for his cheeks. Enzan, knowing the maids under his service far more than he would have liked, feared for Netto's life.
"Don't suffocate him.", he told the gaggle of giggling maids, who disappointedly clambered off of Netto. The boy now had extremely bright red checks from being pinched repeatedly, and wobbled, looking about ready to fall over from his sitting position. "Wha...."
The maid that had reached them first, or at least Enzan thought she was, they all looked exactly the same to him, cleared her throat. "Ijuuin-sama, we have to be heading back now. Your father is going to return in the morning. And well...", she paused to look at the state he was in, "you need a bath." Nodding, Enzan handed his not quite melted popsicle to Netto, who had dropped his own when attacked by the maids. The brown-haired boy blinked.
"You're leaving now?" he asked softly. Enzan looked over to him and nodded faintly. To his surprise, Netto's face lit up in a smile.
"See you lateeeeeer!" Netto sang out as Enzan was guided away by the harrased looking maids, waving his free arm so vigorously that by the rights of logic it should have fallen off. Enzan raised his hand slightly, and smiled warmly.
----
Upon recollection, it was amazing how little could change in the years. Netto was as energetic and eager as ever, although things tended to slip his mind easily, much like his father.
Ijuuin Enzan, however, never forgot.