Breathe

A/N: So. I promised this would come out this week, and here it is! *(^o^)* I don't really like this to be honest, but I figured that someone would. I just wanted to jump on the neko-mimi bandwagon, but put my own twist on things--you know, like I normally do. Haha, but yeah! I have to wake up at three-thirty tomorrow, so leave me a cute little comment or vote to let me know what you think about this and make my Thanksgiving day not so terrible with a horrendously early morning wake-up.

Iki model to the left~ (Or above, if you're like me and love the Wattpad app and read on your phone all the time.) まふまふはすごくかっこいいでしょうね。I actually wanted to use another picture for this story, so if you want to see that one, PM me and I'll reply back with the image link~

As a final note, this is very very roughly edited, so if you come across something that doesn't make sense, please ask me~ This came out  to be a lot shorter than I thought, so I didn't add in all of the story like I originally thought I would.

Otherwise, enjoy. ♥

 Breathe

I gently tugged the sweater sleeve from between my love’s teeth.

“Now, Iki, we’ve talked about this.”

His bottom lip trembled, and his large brown eyes welled with glittering tears. Guilt stabbed me through the heart, but I had to be firm about this. I placed his arms at his sides, using minimal strength to keep them there, wrists encircled by my fingers.

“You can’t chew on your sweaters anymore. You’re going to rip holes in all of them.” I rubbed small circles on his sleeve-covered wrists with my thumbs. “You wouldn’t want your favourite sweaters to be ruined, would you?”

Even though I tried to be as careful as I could about the situation, the tears still collected on his water line until they spilled over, creating small crystalline rivers flowing over his pale cheeks. I moved my hands up to brush away the tears.

“I’m sorry, Kokoa-sama.”

I smiled at the nickname he had given me when we first met.

I found Iki a little over a year ago. He was—what seemed to be—an orphaned child, hiding in the street alleys. I had heard whimpering from behind an old dumpster along a building side on my way home from the store. It was pouring rain that day, and I was worried about whatever animal might have been hiding behind the dump.

When I found the source of the crying, I was rather surprised to see this pale little boy, curled up and trying to protect himself from the elements. My heart was instantly filled with pity, so I extended my arm out to hold my umbrella over him. Dark eyes met my own hazel ones, and the pity changed to some kind of warmth.

After a few minutes of coaxing, I managed to get him to come home with me where I bathed, clothed, and fed him. Throughout the night, he would pat my hair and murmur the word kokoa, because he didn’t speak very much English at the time—something I found strange yet endearing. He stuttered out simple phrases that I drew along to create sentences in my mind.

He brokenly explained that he was actually a small spirit of sorts, nearly thousands of years old. He was a guardian to shrines in Japan, dedicated to cats. Somehow, he had gotten here with no recollection as to how. I didn’t care though. Over the course of the year, I had slowly fallen in love with this little spirit and all of his little quirks. He never demanded to go back to Japan, so I let him stay with me as long as he wanted to.

Snapping myself back to the present, I wrapped my arms around him and cradled him close to my chest, his fitting right beneath my chin. He sniffled and curled closer to me than I was already holding him, which warmed my heart intensely.