DISCLAIMER:
The characters belong to Sai Yukino and Kairi Yura, Kadokawa Shoten,
Madhouse Studios, etc., i.e., not me.
I'm just borrowing them for a
while to spin a tale.
Written when
I was still limiting myself to 300 Words fics.
Addictions
By firewolf
May 2008
@>;-'-
Kou Reishin hadn't known one
of
his staff was an opium addict. After all, he was hardly interested in
the personal life of his servants and retainers. However, he did notice
when he stumbled upon Kou on the streets running an ingenious little
lottery.
It came out then that the boy
recognized the servant's addiction when
they met. And the man sold him 'sweets' at a bargain.
Reishin refused to recognize
the man's frantic claims that the boy was
an addict before they met. Kou tried to speak in the man's defense and
told Reishin that he was normally all right when his past owners gave
him sweets before they'd play with him. The servant was practically
crying in his denial that he had ever attempted to 'play' with Kou.
Fortunately, Yuri hime was
fully recovered from her brief illness, so
she kept Kou away from the drama surrounding Reishin's disciplinary
action and sat with the boy through opium withdrawal. She also drummed
it into his head that opium was *not* a sweet, that it was *not* all
right to take it, and that it was the drug which was responsible for
how rotten he felt then.
Yuri was glad Kou was too
sick and miserable to worry about the fate
of his 'sweets purveyor' because Reishin had too active an imagination.
And he (unfairly) pinned on the man all his anger and fury for the
abuse heaped upon Kou by his unknown previous owners. At the least,
Reishin had the sense to have the man moved to where his screams
couldn't drift back to reach Kou's ears.
Kou's family happily
discovered later that the boy, once free of the
opium addiction, truly had a brilliant mind starving for knowledge.
Reishin gladly and generously fed Kou's new addiction to books.
~owari~