Chapter 136

With graduation behind them, the household at Shigure's home packs up and heads off in different directions. Kyo and Tohru tidy their rooms while talking over the life ahead and recalling the years spent under that roof; Tohru is swept up by feeling, and Kyo reassures her that every ending opens onto a new start. Across the wider family, everyone quietly turns their thoughts toward Tohru as they move forward.

Yuki offers Machi a spare key to the college apartment he is about to move into, teasing her until she flusters and takes it. The two admit they will miss each other, and Machi vows to catch up to him one day, which Yuki says he will wait for. Kagura and Ritsu, Hiro and Kisa, and Momiji with Rin and Hatsuharu each share a moment together, trading warm memories of Tohru. Saki, hired to cook at Kazuma's dojo, and Kazuma himself do the same, as do Arisa and Kureno over the phone, Ayame and Mine at their shop, and Hatori and Mayuko on a date. Even Shigure and Akito, once so tangled up with her, look back on what she gave them.

Yuki comes back to Shigure's home for the last time and asks to speak with Tohru alone. He and Kyo swap fond insults, stupid cat and stupid rat, each left smiling. When Yuki reaches Tohru, he finally puts his true feelings into words: in his eyes she had filled the place of a mother, giving him the warmth, strength, and encouragement that helped him become the person he now is. He thanks her again and again and, for the first time, calls her simply by her name, and Tohru, overwhelmed with happiness, breaks into tears.

The story then jumps ahead several decades. A young girl hums a tune while clutching the little Cat and Rat figurines and asks her mother where her grandparents have gone, using the fond nicknames Tohru-kun and Kyo-kun. The woman chides her for it, yet the girl insists that Tohru permits the habit, and her father explains the two are out on a walk. The family chooses not to interrupt them. The chapter closes on an elderly Tohru and Kyo strolling hand in hand through the garden.

Yuki delivers the epilogue as narration, thanking Tohru for having been like a mother to him and pledging that, however far apart everyone now lives, the family will keep wondering whether she is well and smiling. Natsuki Takaya has said this closing conversation between Yuki and Tohru was her very first idea for the story; once she had finished picturing it, the urge to create the entire manga followed, every page building toward this moment.

The last page lingers on the keepsakes in Tohru's room, each a marker of past, present, and future: the hat, Kyo's juzu prayer beads, the little zodiac figurines, a photograph of her beside Kyoko and Katsuya, and more snapshots with Kyo and the family they raised. Its events fall in the same stretch of time as the sequel Fruits Basket: The Three Musketeers Arc, the story it flows directly into. The cover brings together Arisa, Kyo, Tohru, Saki, and Yuki.