TEA IS AT FOUR

(A Hobbit + School Days Crossover)

First and foremost, some initial disclaimers/general notice:

1) All disclaimers apply: The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and all related work were the property of The Good Professor and presently belongs to The Tolkien Estate. School Days (and all the bloody and gruesome and NICE BOAT business within) belongs to 0verflow.
2) This work was written in early 2018 and originally conceived as a one-shot. However, I didn't completely finished it: there are several blanks that I didn't fill in then, and haven't as at this posting. As such I'm posting it as a two-shot instead, with the promise that the latter half would be completed in a week or two.
3) Despite what the other half of this crossover is known for, this fic is firmly and completely T-rated. At worst.

-1-

The first time Katsura Kotonoha came across her Happy Place, she was still a child. A stuffed bear in one hand, a bar of sweet in the other, the world before her, bright and beautiful and full of curious things to explore.

If you would ask her how to find this Happy Place of hers, she would say she didn't know, and she'd be telling the truth. The most she'd tell you is, she'd gone to bed, and there it was.

But if you asked her what it was, she would be all too glad to tell you. She would shed the carefully crafted shell of a Katsura Kotonoha plagued by bullying for much of her life for just a moment, and her face would brighten, and she'd tell you all you wanted to know and then some.

It was a hole in the ground. A surprisingly comfortable hole in the ground, too, wide and broad and spacious, though the ceiling wasn't all that high.

There was a great long corridor, lined with dozens upon dozens of round green doors opening into bedrooms and dining-rooms and studies and pantries, and clothes-rooms filled with garments and toys so mesmerizing to her young eyes then.

There was a huge garden lined with green grass and bright flowers, and therefore so much space to run around for that pair of young feet normally bound with the four walls of a mansion cold and lonely.

There were pictures and maps, books and tomes, and enough pen and ink and paper to make her very own should she have liked to.

And most importantly, there was Birubiru.

Who, and what, exactly was Birubiru? As a child Kotonoha had never questioned overly much.

He was a rotund kind of fellow, and so terribly short: she was well growing taller than he was before she went to middle school. He preferred bright clothing, green and yellow and various shades thereof, and with them he'd wear a kindly smile across his round face that was impossible to extinguish. He had a disdain for shoes and slippers that resonated well with a child born and raised in stuffy Tokyo, and why would he need dainty shoes with that carpet of woolly feet-hair of his?

Of all this Kotonoha would not notice until much later on. The little-girl Kotonoha only knew that Birubiru would invite her in, and give her things to eat: tarts and puffs, cream-cakes and seed-cakes, sweets made into the likeness of trees and flowers and Sun and Moon, and if she was lucky, a glass or two of warm, honey-sweet milk.

He would take her into his study and show her maps lovely crafted and passionately annoted; "My mother has been here-and-here," he would say, pointing to a mountain range that split the map into two, and there would be a glow on his face.

He would spend hours and hours telling a wide-eyed Kotonoha tales so outlandish yet so close to home. He would read her poems and riddles, and teach her melodious songs and curious rhymes. Perhaps Kotonoha would never forget that story of how golf was invented: when Birubiru's very own grand-uncle charged the evil goblins on a pony, and whacked his head off with a club sending the ugly thing all the way down a rabbit-hole. That tall tale made her the single most popular story-weaver in her elementary class for all of one week.

He'd taught her other things, simpler yet no less important. That being plain and quiet and unassuming did not mean indifference. That there was no love purer and more rewarding as that love for things that grow and blossom from the earth. That kindness was a thing best freely given, as was the joy of food and songs. And – this was important – that there was value to all things that lived and walked beneath the sun – including her lonesome self.

He'd smoked, too, and enjoyed blowing those smoke-rings that rose to the ceiling, and reveled in the perfect shape and form of the cloud. That Kotonoha disapproved (although she was fond of the smoke-ring as the next little girl) "Why'd you smoke, mister?" she had asked once. "Smoking cause can-can-can-something, doesn't it? And it smells bad!"

She would never stay for too long. After all, she was, as she had been told by her parents during those few times they were around, that she was a princess. Her father's princess, which meant almost as good as the real thing. Which meant she had manners, and manners meant not overstaying her welcome.

And then always Birubiru would see her off, tell her "Tea is at four, pray do come again," and send Kotonoha her merry way.

And then, without fanfare, Katsura Kotonoha would invariably wake up, alone in her fleeting happiness, atop the expensive bed fit for half a dozen of her, that her parents had bought for her sixth birthday.

For some, growing up meant good things. For others, a mix of the good and the bad. For Kotonoha? Actually not much in the way of good, and a whole lot in the bad way.

Her middle school was bad enough. As the children traded their elementary uniforms for the middle school garbs, they'd left part of their innocence behind. They'd started noticing differences. How a girl grew up faster or slower than the rest – that was obvious enough. Or how a classmate's lunch money was more or less than the other's – that was less obvious.

Those friends she'd blend in before as a child, the same boys and girls who'd clapped their hands and cheered when she'd put a foot on the table and made a golfing pose and said "and off went Go-ru-fin-bu-ru's head!", now looked to her as something not like them.

Not that the change surprised her overly much. She'd had everything: a big house, more money to splurge if and when she liked than some of her classmates' parents earnt for a month, and of all the girls she grew up the fastest. She'd fill out her uniforms rather nicely, and somehow that made the boy flusters and the girls... well, envious. Needless to say Kotonoha never liked the attention, and particularly disliked the whispering around her.

She'd just learnt to live with it, and retreat to her Happy Place when the going was bad.

Because Birubiru didn't care that she had changed. Birubiru didn't care that the little girl dragging a stuffed bear and a bar of sweet into his hole in the ground one day was growing into a beautiful maiden every passing day. Birubiru didn't care she lived in a huge house, or that her parents were obscenely wealthy.

No, Birubiru cared that she'd come exactly when the clock struck four in the afternoon, as he was putting out cakes and pastry for the afternoon tea. Birubiru cared that she'd knock and wait patiently until he'd open that perfectly round green door. Birubiru cared that she still had a taste for milk and seed-cakes and berry-tarts, and that her endless interests in the books and puzzles and maps in his study had never grown any less.

But now, Kotonoha realized, she would begin asking Birubiru things he had no answer.

Like how Tetsuya-kun from the next class looked really nervous around her, beet-red and all. Or that one day she'd found her table slashed and defaced with so many mean words. Or another time a group of nasty girls cornered her in the washroom and punched her.

"And what did you do?" Birubiru would ask, which was weird because Kotonoha was the one asking for advice.

"I smile when I can and hit back if I have to!" she'd say, and she meant it. She'd now learnt that smiling more often than not would confuse the other kids, and if all else failed it would make her felt better. And there was nothing, she'd thought, inherently wrong with defending herself when bad come to worse either.

Birubiru would then smile, and pat her gently on the shoulder, an act increasingly hard since she was growing taller while he, well, wasn't. "You did well, lass," he would say, and though at once Kotonoha didn't know what she had done so well she was a child in some ways still, and children loved praises as a rule. Then he'd take her into his study, and they'd have another go at yet another long poem passed down from generation to generation.

The names in those poems never quite rolled off her tongue easily as a little girl, and it never got easier. There was Gondo-rin, that great city of the elves in the Elder Days crowned with towers and spire, that much she remembered. Other things did not sound right, and she never memorized them well. Was Tou-a-gon the dragon-slayer, or was it Tourin? Was Eredo-heru the Emperor of the Elves who dueled with the Black Overlord, or was it Fingoru-fin? Was the land of the Grey-elves called Menegurosu, or Doriasu?

Though she did memorize, for good reason, the name Rushien: she adored, adored, adored that brave elven lady who faced that Black Overlord to save her love, not with a sword but with songs. "I want to be like her when I grow up!" she'd say with gusto, and Birubiru would say, "You have all the making of one."

Other times she'd tell Birubiru of her sister, always prefixed with "If Kokoro were here she'd-", and ended with "Would be so fun if she were here." She was proud, and why would she be otherwise? She had the liveliest sister in the whole ward, if not the whole city and that was a big thing to claim, but she'd fight everyone who'd say otherwise.

Those times Birubiru would speak of his family, too, with the same keenness that mirrored his protege. They were weirdly named, too, and did not roll of Kotonoha's tongue at all. All that Kotonoha could retell was that there were many of Birubiru's siblings, cousins and cousins-so-many-times-removed, that if everyone of them were to assemble in one place the whole of the Happy Place wouldn't be enough to house them all.

And then there was cooking!

At some point, a very curious Kotonoha had caught Birubiru stealing to the kitchen in the middle of tea. The table that day had been quite a bit emptier than usual, and it turned out that Birubiru had not count on Kotonoha arriving. It had taken the girl one – one! look at the amazing magic Birubiru was doing with his pots and pans and stove to demand she get a try.

It was a complete disaster.

So much so, that Birubiru would recall years later (not without fondness) the Disaster of the Kitchen of Bag End, a tale of tragic struggle that ended with the heroine Katsura Kotonoha covered from head to toe with soot, batter, sugar and every condiment known to man. Needless to say the girl wasn't amused with the retelling overly much.

Like it or not, as she grew older Kotonoha couldn't help but be grateful for that disaster. Before she'd never learnt to cook, assuming with childish innocence that the divine art of boiling one ingredient with another to create a whole greater than the sum of its part would come naturally – just as her mother had married her father.

In another timeline that would have led to yet greater disaster. Not in this timeline, and not on Birubiru's watch.

In time he'd taught her, well, not all he knew because apparently Birubiru had spent most of his lifetime cooking for himself, but as much as she would have liked. He'd taught her to use knives without cutting herself or other people (at least not unintentionally so), to heat pans just right, when to use oil and when tallow would be the better thing, how to use herb so they didn't clash with each other, and most importantly, the oft-underestimated yet essential art of distinguishing between sugar and salt.

In exchange she'd tell him those recipes her servants would make her at home. It was not long before Birubiru's teas had some distinctly Japanese treats: Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki (except made with eels rather than squid), homemade ramen and katsudon, and on at least one occasion there was even taiyaki, except stuffed with berries and apple rather than red beans.

Like before, she would never stay for too long. Manner, this time, had little to do with it, and more like a middle-school Kotonoha would have less time to herself than a elementary Kotonoha.

Like before, Birubiru would see her off, tell her "Tea is at four, pray do come again," and send Kotonoha her merry way.

Like before, without fanfare, Katsura Kotonoha would invariably wake up, alone in her fleeting happiness, atop the expensive bed fit for four of her, that her parents had bought for her sixth birthday.

Unlike before, her happiness would be crowned by a resolve she didn't know she had.

Because somewhere, dream or real, there was a place where she would always be welcomed.

Middle school had passed by like a whirlwind, and every visit to her Happy Place had made it just a bit faster.

The bullying hurt, and the unwelcome gazes never made her any less comfortable.

But Kotonoha had Birubiru and a place she was safe to recover, relax, have fun and plan her next moves, and that was a luxury people like her did not often have.

It was on a rainy Sunday during her last year in middle school that Kotonoha realized she had become something of a young woman instead of a girl, and that the change was irreversible.

It began with a letter under her table. It culminated with a boy making a clumsy confession as the rain pattered outside the window.

It ended with him dipping his head. "I see," he said, and bolted off into the rain.

Kotonoha did not know if it was tears or rainwater that was drenching his face.

Part of her couldn't help but feel guilty and a little regretful at that. Motoyama-kun was a nice boy, bespectacled and slick-haired and bookish to a fault, and the fact alone that he was brave enough to ask meant he would have made for an okay-ish though awkward boyfriend.

But here was the important part: he was looking for a relationship she wasn't sure she was willing to enter, and that mattered more than the trapping of a relationship itself. She wasn't so love-starved she'd jump into the arms of the first person who'd show her some. That she'd made abundantly clear, though in far more polite terms – Kotonoha was well brought up, if not by her parents then by her Happy Place.

The bullying continued until the end of her middle school, as did the occasional leering at her endowment. The asking-out part stopped, though that offered her little in the way of respite. Now the whispers changed: she was somehow both the girl who'd slept around with absolutely everyone with a name and the cold-hearted bitch who would trample the delicate emotions of delicate cute boys for the hell of it. The logic of teenagers, as was the case, boggled the mind.

When she came back to her Happy Place and asked what he thought about the whole unpleasant business, Birubiru just picked up his pipe before Kotonoha could object, and blew for himself a cascade of smoke-ring. "My lass," he said, "as my father said, third time pays for all." He said no more (and blew no more smoke-ring: Kotonoha had snatched away his lung-destroying apparatus before he could), but from the glint of his eyes Kotonoha felt... vindicated. She'd done nothing wrong, and often the knowledge of being in the right alone made all the differences.

Now that her Birubiru had thought her more an adult, he started teaching her something else.

He brought into his study one day so many scrolls, signed and unsigned, and a little leather-bound tome to go with them too, and many a quill and enough ink to last days. "The bedrock of the Shire is kindness on the one hand," he said, "and contracts on the other."

Kotonoha widened her eyes. "Contracts?" she parrotted, not sure if she liked the sound. "What is a contract even good for?" she said. And why should she believe they were anything but poor omen?Those were her parents' favorite syllables to utter, and they would invariably accompany yet another business trip anywhere between half a day to several months.

Birubiru looked mortified for all of a couple seconds. Then he gestured her to sit down – because now she was too tall for his eye-level standing – and then patted her on the shoulder. "My lass," he said, "it's good for a lot of things. So you and the other party knew your rights and obligations, for one. And when you know what you have to do, and what the other people have to do, codified into something accepted by lord and land... you feel secure."

Secure, he said. Kotonoha closed her eyes for a second and thought. And thought. And thought some more.

She decided she liked the sound of that.

It was with such auspices from Birubiru that Katsura Kotonoha kicked her way into high school, to borrow the popular phrase of the new media, 'like a boss'.

Because she knew if all else failed, one thing remained a constant: "Tea is at four, pray do come again!"

It was a simple thing how that rumor went, when you think about it.

Take a standard high-school ensemble: boys and girls raging with hormones, barely contained by social conventions, boiling underneath with peer pressure and the desire to grow up quickly, and thoroughly confusing between 'liking', 'loving' and 'lusting'.

Now make a good portion of that crowd dysfunctional for various reasons – from bad parenting to literally generations of in-breeding (though of this Kotonoha would, thankfully, have little knowledge of) and everything in between.

Now add a rumor that said, basically, "If you keep the person you like on your cell-phone wallpaper for three weeks without anyone finding out, your feelings will be answered."

It was the proverbial spark to the proverbial cache of explosive.

At first Kotonoha paid it no mind. If there was real magic, she thought, then Birubiru would have told her, so much lore as he had shared. Besides, the magic he'd related to her had been infinitely more interesting.

Return-your-love charm? Bah, try 'a brooch that never came undone unless ordered'.

Or firework that sailed into the air in the likeness of dragons taking off.

Or a hundred beautiful things of magic and elf-smith make, that the elves East of the Happy Place were rumored to keep to this day.

Or, or, or, if all else fail, there was the magic of the kitchen, of seed-cakes and honey-milk, of tarts and bacon and egg (poached, not fried), and of Japanese dishes made in thoroughly unconventional manner they barely resembled Japanese dishes any more.

Besides, she'd had her hands full living her life already.

You see, every version of Katsura Kotonoha across the multiverse was particularly skilled with some sort of melee weapon, from knives to saws to crowbar – and if she'd had an opportunity to lay her hands on one manner of Numenorean sword long lost or another, she would probably be able to swing it as well as the next Chieftain of the Dunedain.

This Kotonoha was no exception, with the sole difference that she was aware of that proficiency. It was oft a small miracle how much more one would appreciate their strength given just the tiniest of self-esteem.

She'd signed up for the school kendo team, and never looked back. It was fun, it helped with stress, it made her more aware of herself. And, when she was alone at night, she'd think to herself that being a kendoka itself was like telegraphing a message, that this girl, this meek-looking, bright-eyed girl was not to be trifled with.

Of course there was Kanou Otome and her posse, but as long as they were unable to physically overpower Kotonoha, she'd learnt how to shut away their words of knives and razors. Really, their bullying ways were no more creative than the meanest she'd seen in middle school.

There was also a certain Sawanaga Taisuke, who had been trying to butt his way into her life through a variety of silly and increasingly creepy ways. She made every attempt to ignore him – and with every passing day he was coming that much closer to make her do something regrettably drastic.

Because of those and other lesser things not worth a mention, Katsura Kotonoha would go to sleep with her shinai.

But then there was only so much a bamboo sword could do.

Kotonoha had no idea when she'd been photographed – without her consent no less. But when this girl, Saionji Sekai, approached her with an open hand and a smile, something within her went off.

Said someone was interested in her.

Said he was this really, really nice guy, and she'd be missing out not to give him a chance.

Said she was playing this matchmaker because she couldn't stand her idiot friend being a drooling idiot any more, believing in a silly charm and all.

Kotonoha had more than half a mind to tell this new friend, that if Saionji's precious Itou really respected her, he would not have taken a photo of her without explicit consent. But that would be so impolite and therefore unbecoming of a princess of her father's.

The other part of her, that part where the giddy maiden high-schooler dwelt, where self-esteem couldn't reach all that well, was moved. There was someone really into her, and all at once the status quo was changed.

"I'll think about it," came a cool-sounding answer, though deep inside Kotonoha was anything but.

That night, Kotonoha's visit to her Happy Place did not go well.

She came just as the clock struck four, and was just about to rap on that perfectly round green door when she realized it was not perfect any more. There was now a peculiar sign scratched into the lower part of the door.

"Sorry, no adventures here!" she heard Birubiru's voice, angrier than it normally was. "Nasty, disturbing uncomfortable things, make you late for dinner!"

"Birubiru-san?" she said. "It's me!"

It took forever for Birubiru to emerge from behind that round green door, and when he did, there was a look of discomfort in his face that mirrored Kotonoha's.

And why would it not? There they were, two people, different as day and night, both having just received a life-changing offer neither were one hundred percent willing to take, brought about by someone they hardly personally know.

It was the first time Kotonoha realized that Birubiru was, after all, not at all infallible and therefore prone to indecision just like her. For long they stared at the scrumptious afternoon tea, eating and speaking nothing.

"What will you do now?" asked Kotonoha.

That exact moment their four eyes met. Kotonoha couldn't tell what her lifelong friend was thinking – she only knew herself. Whichever her friend, her earnest, rotund friend who'd never asked anything of her but her attention as he recited another puzzle or another epic poem, would choose, she'd likewise do the same.

But then for just that blink of an eye she thought something in her friend had awakened; an enthusiasm long suppressed, a desire for the long road and the open sky; to wander the green earth, see all that there was to see from East to West, explore all that there was to explore, and come back home the better for it.

"You know what, my lass," he finally said. "Perhaps I should like to undertake this adventure after all."

After tea, again Kotonoha followed her old friend into his study. This time, however, he spoke no more of poetry and riddles. Instead he opened so many maps, those annoted by an elegant cursive writing different from his own. "My mother's maps, once upon a time, drafted by her very hands," he said. "She'd gone as far as here-"

He pointed to a little dot next to that great mountain range cleaving the map in half.

"Rivendell, or Imladris in the tongue of the High Elves who'd sailed West ere my grandfather was born, and there cajoled with those who yet remained – elven music is not something to be missed!"

He laughed in that dry, throaty voice of his. Kotonoha looked him hard, with those bright eyes of hers, curious and questioning.

"Will you make a contract?" she asked, almost on instinct.

"Why, yes, of course! Because I am a Baggins of Bag End, and I don't sail off into the blue without knowing my rights!"

"With a magician?" The mental image of calling on a wandering magician to draft a largely legal and therefore un-magical document was almost too funny, and Kotonoha's lips curved into a soft grin. It lasted all of four seconds before Bilbo regarded her fondly and said,

"A wizard, my lass. Makes no difference. A contract is a wonderful thing; helps you plenty in a pinch and quite much out of it too."

Like before, Kotonoha did not tarry long. If anything she stayed less than she normally did, for her Birubiru was lost in the thrill of the moment, recounting those fanciful tales of wild adventuring alien to a girl who grew up in a mansion in the middle of bustling, no-nonsense Tokyo.

Like before, Birubiru saw her off. He told her again, voice shaky and winded, "Tea is at four, pray do come again," and send Kotonoha her merry way.

Like before, without fanfare, Katsura Kotonoha would invariably wake up, alone in her fleeting happiness, atop the expensive bed fit for three of her, that her parents had bought for her sixth birthday.

Like before, her resolve strengthened.

She would give Itou Makoto a chance, like her Birubiru had given adventuring a chance.