Chapter Text
Today Natsume is going to another new foster family—his last family had a sister who married into the Matoba's, apparently, so while he's not actually related to most of them, they're taking him in for a while. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary.
So he goes. They send someone to pick him and his things up in a car, which is a novel experience; he certainly doesn't think he's warranted any such treatment. It makes him nervous. The house, when they drive up to it, doesn't help—'house' is an understatement to the extreme, because the property is huge, big enough to get lost in even, and has multiple structures connected by paved paths. He meets his actually-related-to-him relative and her husband, who's apparently doing pretty well for them in the Clan, (with a capital C, what the hell) and is turned loose to explore the grounds with a servant (they have actual servants this place is so unreal—it's like something out of a manga) to keep him out of trouble, and the knowledge that he's going to be presented to the patriarch of the husband's family at dinner (a thought which fills him with no small amount of anxiety).
Dinner comes around, and it’s some sort of communal affair that is, remarkably, both better and worse than he’d feared. Better, because ‘being presented’ amounts to a short round of introductions made by his latest foster parents and a moment’s worth of small talk before he can safely disappear into the anonymity of the crowd of people; and worse because virtually everyone here has black hair and similar enough features that he can’t help but stand out anyways, especially when his actual-relatives leave him to fend for himself in some kind of initiation ritual. And that’s before he's clued in to exactly how many of the people here are making appearances tonight solely to see the latest addition to their Clan—namely him. He maybe freaks out a little at the realization, though he thinks he does a good job hiding it—not from his latest conversation partner, a sharp-eyed steel-haired woman with round glasses and a stern sort of aura—but at least from the casual, vaguely disapproving onlookers (of which there were by and far too many).
And then a boy melts out of the crowd to dash his hopes of dignity to hundreds of mortified little pieces, by way of mockingly inquiring if anything’s wrong, because you’re looking a little pale there, new-guy-san. Natsume’s not focusing on this kid as much as he probably should be, though, because there’s this tall black… thing, in a white mask and kimono, trailing after the child like an eerie shadow. Even as his foot inches back, he doesn’t dare take his eyes off it, and feels a flinch run down his spine when its face turns from ‘vacantly staring ahead’ to ‘looking right at him oh fuck’. He stammers out maybe half of an excuse to retreatretreatretreat before he’s interrupted by an interested, "you can see it?” and the words just. Stop.
He drags his gaze downward from the silent thing to the little boy it’s standing (submissively) behind, who’s looking a lot less arrogant and a lot more calculating. It takes him a few tries to get his voice working again, but he manages to ask the boy what, exactly, he means by 'it'. In lieu of an answer, the kid jerks his chin forward. The youkai moves, and before he’s quite aware of what he’s doing Natsume screams, (just a little bit!) backpedaling frantically, a little kid yanked protectively behind him, and completely forgetting their audience. By the time he remembers, the hall has fallen dead silent and the kid recovered enough from his surprise to start looking smugly amused.
The following two hours are possibly the most awkward of his entire life. He goes to bed feeling, somehow, both more and less like a freak of nature than usual—because even with the newfound knowledge that he’s not actually delusional or something, that had been an awful lot of judgemental staring to deal with. It’s been a long day.
He doesn’t realize he’d never gotten the boy’s name until the next day, when the kid drags him out of bed bright and early to play games and ask inane questions (the color of a kimono? What does that have to do with anything?) that take him far too long to realize are actually tests of some kind. The brat explains none of them, of course, but looks pleased enough by his answers that Natsume just goes along with it—at first to humor the kid, and later with a tiny bit more nervousness at all the ‘Young Master’s being thrown the boy’s way by passing clan members over the course of the following days.
The nervousness largely disappears at about the same time he learns the child’s name beyond ‘Matoba-bocchama’ or 'Matoba-kun' or even 'Matoba-sama' from some of the kid's personal entourage (there's really no other term for them) of youkai.
At that point, he’s been at the Compound for a full week. He’s pretty sure he won’t be here much longer, which is… actually a little disappointing. For all that he's acutely aware that he doesn’t fit in here even more than usual, Matoba-kun (he refuses to do the bowing and scraping, not to a child half his approximate height and age) has apparently grown on him. He first begins to understand that this might possibly go both ways, though, when little Seiji-kun comes to talk with his ‘favorite uncle’ –Natsume’s foster dad, apparently, is brothers with Seiji-kun’s father and the boy has the same red eyes as the Clan Head and Natsume’s reserved, not blind– about how great Takashi-niisan is and how nice it is to have a friend who doesn’t think he’s weird and helps him out with stuff he can’t do all by himself since he’s, you know, just an innocent little child, and. And Natsume. Doesn’t know what to say, because Seiji-kun shows up right after a particular hushed phone call to another of Natsume’s relatives, and the timing is so perfect there’s no way it’s not contrived somehow. But darling Uncle and Auntie suspect nothing, are so clearly charmed, and Natsume can only silently reflect on how tightly Matoba-kun’s got them wrapped around his delicate little fingers. Especially when the two of them are finally alone and the first thing the boy does is give him the smuggest smirk he’s ever seen on a human face. Brat.
Natsume stays.
...For better or worse.
Better, because the kid obviously favors his nii-san, and Natsume can admit to being in no small part fascinated with the tiny probably-psychopath, but. Well. Seiji is headstrong and doesn't like to listen, (and he IS still the Heir, so Natsume's really not sure how appropriate it is for him to scold the boy anyways; he's really not good with children...) and has somehow bamboozled the entire Clan into thinking Natsume is a good caretaker-cum-playmate for the little terror. He could deal with this, and the way that doing a simple favor for the kid leads inevitably to a lot of complicated dance-of-give-and-take,
("I agreed to go on a walk, not chase a poison-spewing blob of clearly evil intent through the woods at," Natsume manages to check his watch without slowing or stumbling over himself, a feat he'd be almost proud of in other circumstances—any other circumstances, "ten in the evening. Your parents are going to kill me," and see if I ever agree to anything ever again, you spoiled little monster he says and doesn't say, respectively—no matter how much he REALLY WANTS TO.
"But it's obviously up to something bad," Seiji pants, somehow both sounding reasonable and keeping up despite Natsume's longer legs and years of practice running the hell away from the kind of thing he's inexplicably chasing this fine, fine night, "and it's been getting close to your school, so it's probably safer to do something about it now, instead of-whoa!" And Natsume has to snatch the kid upright before he trips and kind of hates that he can't hate the boy for pulling stunts like this. Even if he is fairly sure the brat's still getting something out of it.)
(He's proven completely right the next day, when he stumbles across some of the local youkai—and he recognizes that one-eyed oni, that little brat—thanking Seiji for his help in some bizarre mix of nervousness and fervent gratitude, and promising to uphold their end of the agreement. He doesn't know—nor does he want to know, because clearly getting involved with the little cretin's schemes is a mistake—but then some of those youkai start stalking him, and he has an inkling. He's not sure he likes it, but he has an inkling.)
...But the various beat-up or otherwise-subdued youkai that are meant to be servants are really a bit too much. Especially when some of said "servants" are so utterly and enthusiastically grateful to Natsume for 'saving them' from innocent little Seiji's tender mercies that they jump at the chance to be his underlings, sometimes very obviously for the perceived protection of his presence. And the aggravating little boy has the nerve to just smile at his protests and complaints like everything is going to plan.