InsaneJournal

Irei: Picking up a stray.
Who: Irei and a new companion
When: Saturday, November 10, 2007. During twilight hours.
Where: outside of the Wine Bar.
What: Irei finds a small shadow that follows him home.

Irei stumbled out of the wine bar feeling more than a little tanked. He had probably over done it again with the drinking, and was unable to walk straight. Sascha wouldn’t be too happy when his friend returned home, unless he was somehow preoccupied and didn’t notice Irei walk in. But Irei hardly felt like he could pull off a ninja act in his current state of inebriation.

He placed his hand on the face of the building and pulled his jacket closed around his thin frame. It was getting colder in this place. Irei hated cold weather and winter was his least favorite season. He had been born on a tropical island even though he had lived the last few years of his life in New York before the pandemic and the wars. He had been awake in the morning drinking hot tea when he saw the small white flurries fall from the sky and cursed under his breath. He knew it was going to be cold at night when he would make his pilgrimage to the wine bar.

Irei was becoming quite well known at the bar, and one of the bartenders had talked him into eating a little with his drink. Irei didn’t even pay much attention to what it was, something fried and greasy that had no business being eaten with wine. No one seemed to understand that he had become used to the pangs of hunger. Like other things that seemed to surround him, he would miss them if they were gone. It wasn’t to say that he didn’t eat, Sascha made sure of that even as he stole food from Irei’s plate.

The food felt like a lead weight in Irei’s stomach and the feel of it was making his insides churn. He quickly covered his mouth with his hand and stumbled into the side alley before he had a chance to vomit in front of the popular building.

After purging his body of the contents of his stomach he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. He could still taste the acid and the bile in his mouth, and he spit on the ground in an attempt to rid himself of it when he heard a shift among the trash cans. He looked up and focused on the area where the noise had come from as a small black shadow walked out from between the cans and started the mewl at him.

Irei blinked a few times at the black cat. “Shouldn’t you be on some witch’s broom?”

Animals normally gave Irei a wide berth. Sweeney had become used to him, and even dared to be affection with Irei at times, but Irei attributed that to Sascha’s influence. When he had been younger, especially after spirits had started to follow him, domesticated animals had hissed, barked, and on rare occasions had bit him because of the ghosts making them afraid. There had been a time when Irei (Shinsuke then) had wanted a pet, but that just wasn’t possible.

The cat kept crying at him.

“Nani desuka? Tabemono? Tabemonojaimasen.*” He was growing annoyed with the animal and pulled his jacket around him again before he turned around and left, heading home back to the bungalows.

The cat tilted her head, and followed after him all the way home. Irei talked to it as he would sometimes do with the parasite of a ghost that followed him. When he made it to the door of the home he shared, the small animal was rubbing against his leg. Irei squatted down and looked into cat’s bright eyes.

“You’re not afraid of me? Why are you following me?” He held his hand out as he had seen Sascha do with unfamiliar dogs and allowed the cat to sniff him.

“Who do you belong to?” The cat bumped her head into his hand and rubbed herself against him. He concluded that she must have belonged to someone with supernatural abilities and that was why she had no fear of him. He reached over and picked up the skinny creature and wondered how long she had been wandering around the back alley’s around the wine bar. She whined again and nipped at his fingers and Irei sighed, opened the door, and took the animal in. He could look for the owner later.

* "What is it? Food? I don't have any food."
italics = Japanese