Hikaru sat down.
"What's your name?" he asked the snake, just in case it had one. Most animals didn't—at least, none they acknowledged—but this one was a pet, so maybe it had taken to whatever its humans called it.
"My human calls me Anthony," the snake replied, making itself comfortable on the carpeted stairs. "You can call me that too if you desire. I don't see an issue with it."
"Anthony," Hikaru repeated, almost not butchering the pronunciation. "Are you a pet here?"
"Yes, I am." Anthony draped himself over the entire lower end of the staircase, then looked up at Hikaru with lidless reptilian eyes. "But I suppose my humans are a bit stupid. They never speak to me, you see."
Realizing this snake was likely Finnian's pet, Hikaru snorted. If only Finnian Day knew what his snake had to say about his intelligence; he would be furious.
"They don't understand you?" he asked. Finnian was a talented mage, and his parents had to be just as good; to know that they didn't share Hikaru's strange ability was almost a disappointment. Then again, what had he been expecting? He had only met someone with a similar skill once, as a child, and it had been a stranger that his parents had quickly pulled him away from and that he had never heard of again.
"Of course not! Stupid humans," the snake repeated. "Always a little slow on the uptake. I have cousins who say their humans speak with them all the time, but of course my own couldn't be of the same sort. It's so sad, isn't it?"
Hikaru stopped short, wide-eyed. "There are other people who can speak to animals?"
"Absolutely." Lifting his head, Anthony leaned closer, his hissing voice taking on a conspiratory edge. "But let's not speak about that. Go on, young human—tell me something interesting."
For a moment Hikaru pondered what would be interesting for a pet snake to hear. Then he remembered the scaly creature likely didn't get to see much of the outside world, and he talked at random about everything, school and flying and his hometown that he missed. Anthony listened, intrigued, and when Hikaru had run out of subjects at last, the snake let out a hiss that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
"Such an interesting story to tell a snake," he said. "I'm pleased, human, exceptionally pleased. My own human does the same, you see, but he never gives me any context."
Hikaru stopped short. "I thought your humans didn't talk to you," he said.
"Oh, they do," the snake replied. "Well, the small human does. But they can't understand me, and that makes it depressing. Although he's still an excellent human," he added. "Always feeds me snacks when the big humans' backs are turned."
Hikaru was still baffled by the discovery, torn between amusement and the discomfort of knowing he shared a habit with Finnian Day of all people. "Tell me more about him," he said.
"The small human?" Anthony said again, and Hikaru took great delight in that nickname despite the fact that he was smaller still. "He's interesting. If you let him, he always sleeps in in the mornings, and he complains when he has to get up. And when he was younger, if he was very upset he would sometimes start crying."
Hikaru bit back a delighted grin. "Like when he loses a game?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," said the snake. "Sore loser, that small one. He still yells and throws fits when he loses at games."
Hikaru made a mental note to rope Finnian into a card or board game at some point, just to see this in person someday. Maybe on the next trip he could sit with him on the bus again and challenge him to a game of Uno. Not wearing his headphones for the time being would stress him out, but hopefully the results would be worth it.
Besides, if Finnian got too upset, he could always block out his tantrum again.
Or…actually, that gave him an even better idea. "Are there any card games in this house?"
Anthony gave him a questioning look. "Card games?"
"Yes," he said. "Or board games, something like that?"
"Hm," said the snake, weighing his head back and forth and thinking. "I think I've seen some in this house, but I'm not sure where the humans keep them. But," he added with a glance behind Hikaru, "perhaps that sort of thing should wait for another time."
Hikaru turned to follow his gaze—and found himself staring straight at Finnian, who had silently appeared in the doorframe.
"Why?" he asked, turning back to Anthony. "I don't care if he sees us."
"Yes, yes, but you should," the snake replied, slithering off the stairs and winding his way towards the door. His voice was growing agitated, drawing out the hisses even longer than before "I personally think it's silly too," he added. "But there's no guessing what these humans will do if they stumble on you sitting here ssspeaking in tonguesssss."
With that he wound around Finnian's feet and disappeared into the corridor beyond.
There was an awkward pause.
"Hiyama," Finnian said at last, his voice strangely tense, no longer holding the easy, sarcastic hostility from before. "Did you talk to my pet snake?"
Rising from where he'd been sitting on the steps, Hikaru shrugged. "Maybe," he said. "Are you jealous?"
"You sure like to accuse me of that." Crossing his arms, Finnian leaned against the doorframe, blocking Hikaru's way back. "Are you sure you're not projecting? Maybe I'm not jealous. Maybe you're secretly the one who's consumed by jealousy, and you distract from it by deflecting it all on me. How's that sound?"
Too complicated, Hikaru thought. He only had a very loose idea of what Finnian was talking about in the first place, so all he did was shrug. "You talk too much."
"What! No denial? No protests? You really are boring." Finnian smirked lazily. "A real sleeping pill. Almost makes me wonder if you act like that on purpose."
Hikaru shrugged again, too amused by the things Anthony had revealed to feel much hostility today. "I don't care what you think," he said.
"Of course you don't." Stepping out of the doorframe, Finnian circled him slowly, lazily, like a lion trying to determine if it was worth going for another snack. "That's why you're here, aren't you, snooping around my home and having a conversation with my pet snake."
Oh, screw it. Hikaru had meant to save it for a better occasion, but maybe he would just throw it at him now. "He says you cry when you lose," he said.
Finnian stopped in his tracks, splotches of red blooming all over his pale face. "That dirty, ungrateful liar!" he burst out, glaring into the direction in which Anthony had gone before spinning back towards Hikaru. "Or you lie," he said. "Maybe you can't actually talk to animals! That would explain everything. What do you say, Hiyama?"
Hikaru took in the look of clear agitation on Finnian's face, the heated, uneven blush. "Anthony," he said, emphasizing the name he had no way of knowing without hearing it from the snake himself, "said that you hate mornings. And you feed him snacks."
Finnian went redder and redder. "That little snitch," he muttered before glaring at Hikaru. "Fine, so maybe you can understand him! Care to tell me how you did that, or is that another one of your mystery skills that I just need to practice?" He made air quotes around the last word, imitating Hikaru's accent. Annoyance flared. The usual Finnian-ness was one thing. Making fun of an accent he was already embarrassed about having was a different thing entirely.
"How's your Japanese?" he asked in his mother tongue.
Finnian stared in incomprehension. "What language was that?"
"Exactly," said Hikaru. "So don't make fun of my accent."
"I wasn't making—"
Hikaru paused, and Finnian froze, as if realizing what he had been about to say. His face was still bright red. "You're so insecure," he said, trying and failing to invoke his usual dramatic tone. "Who said I was making fun of your accent? Maybe I actually—"
He stopped himself again, glaring at the pictures on the wall instead of Hikaru. "Maybe I was just imitating it," he finished lamely.
Hikaru shrugged, then he stepped past him and left him alone in the staircase to rejoin the others.
Maybe he could still get his hands on a game of Uno.
~ ~ ~
Finnian remained in the staircase, baffled, confused and very, very flustered.
Maybe I actually—maybe he what? What the hell had he been about to say? Maybe I actually like it? That was silly, completely ridiculous. He didn't like Hikaru's accent. He didn't like any of him, not his aloof, prickly attitude, not his hatred of noises or his inability to maintain eye contact like a normal goddamn human being, and definitely not his accent. Alright, so maybe he didn't hate it, not exactly. It gave him something…unique, something that set him apart when he spoke, and combined with his low, quiet voice it was…not unpleasant. In general, he thought, Hikaru wouldn't sound half bad when speaking if not for his rudeness. Maybe it was because English wasn't his native language, but there was a thoughtfulness, a careful consideration to his words that Finnian simply couldn't bring himself to dislike.
But that, he decided, was a problem for another time. There was something more urgent going on here. Namely, the fact that Hikaru goddamn Hiyama could speak to his pet snake and Finnian himself couldn't.
"How come you never tell me anything?" he asked Anthony when he had found him again napping on his favorite windowsill. "What do you think I feed you all the snacks for?"
Anthony regarded him sleepily and made absolutely no response, as always.
"Come on," Finnian hissed. "I know you can understand me, so stop ignoring me! Say something, you backstabbing mass of scales!"
Anthony lifted his head ever so slightly, but otherwise made no comment, not even the tiniest hiss. Finnian was beginning to feel increasingly stupid. "Don't play innocent, snake," he said. "I know you told Hiyama my embarrassing secrets. The least you could do is tell me how I can understand you too!"
Uncurling himself from his comfortable position, Anthony slid down from the windowsill and headed for the door. Still not a word out of him.
"Anthony!"
Pausing halfway to the door, the snake turned around and finally deigned him with a single hiss. Finnian still didn't understand it, but he didn't need to speak snake to know he had just been called an idiot.
~ ~ ~
By the time he joined his parents for dinner, the mystery of Hikaru's ability to talk to animals was still fresh on his mind.
How on earth did he do it? Finnian himself had never learned it, indeed had never heard of anyone who possessed the ability. Was it genetic? Or was it a taught skill, and teachers were simply rare and hard to come by? Was it more common in other countries than it was here? He had tried to search for it online but mostly found a lot of nonsense from clearly non-magical websites.
"Something on your mind, Finnian?" his mother's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. "If something's bothering you, you can tell us, you know. You can talk to us about anything."
Anything, Finnian thought bitterly, except for the mistreatment of innocent mages? But he didn't want to start that argument again, so he bit his tongue. Instead he considered if he should bring up this issue. Something told him it might not end well, although rationally he couldn't see a reason why. It was just a strange ability of Hikaru's, after all, and nothing more.
"Mom, Dad," he said, looking up from his food, "have you ever heard of people who can talk to animals?"
His parents both paused. His father frowned, then leaned forward in obvious interest. "Talk to animals?" he repeated, raising his eyebrows. "Why, is there someone you know who can do that?"
For some reason Finnian had a bad feeling about bringing Hikaru's name into this. "I just saw it the other day," he said dismissively, "and I've never seen anyone do it, so…"
"Who?" his father insisted. "Some stranger on the street? Someone at school? A competition?"
Just say who. What's the problem?
Finnian squirmed.
"It's Hiyama," he admitted. "My teammate—he can talk to cats, and he was talking to Anthony earlier and—why can't we do that?"
His mother smiled fondly, but there was pity in her eyes. "Because we're not supposed to, darling," she said. "People shouldn't talk to animals. It's unnatural."
But I want to, Finnian thought, taken aback. Her comment didn't make sense to him. They could create items with emotional energy, alter objects and perceptions, travel anywhere they wanted through a bizarre parallel dimension—but talking to animals was where they drew the line?
"We talk to our familiars," he remarked.
"That's different," she answered. "Our familiars aren't animals; they're extensions of ourselves, dear, manifestations of our own power. It's very different from talking to any garden variety squirrel you meet on the street."
His father, who had looked deep in thought for a moment, finally lifted his gaze. "This teammate of yours," he said. "He hasn't shown any other…unusual abilities, has he?"
Finnian thought of Hikaru's uses of invisible magic, magic that might or might not have been Twilit—or even Dark.
Your secret is safe.
"Not that I know of," he said.
"Hm," said his father. "It just reminded me of something—but surely that can't be it."
Finnian frowned. "What?"
"Nothing important." Smiling, his father reached over the table to ruffle his hair. "It's probably something different, anyway. Now are you still planning to eat that, or will you let it grow cold?"
Finnian dug in, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.
The problem was that he had no clue what it was, or even where to start looking for it in the first place.
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