Fruits Basket Avatars

One day, Tohru comes upon a house in the woods which is the home of Shigure Sohma and Yuki Sohma (a first year at her school with an unwanted fan club) from the Sohma family. When the Sohmas discover that Tohru is, in fact, living in a tent in the woods, they are quite surprised. The entire area is Sohma property, and Tohru pleads to stay, offering to pay a rental fee for living on their land. Feeling sorry for her, and desperate to end their take-out eating habits and filthy living conditions, the Sohmas offer her their spare room in exchange for cooking and housework. When her tent is buried that night in a landslide, burying her mother's picture and school clothes, she has no option but to accept.

Tohru soon discovers the Sohma family's secret, and the reason why Yuki is so private and secertive: thirteen members of the family are possessed by the 12 animal spirits of the Chinese Zodiac ("Jy?nishi" in Japanese) and the spirit of the cat who was left out of the Zodiac according to legend. They transform into animals when hugged by the opposite gender, or when they are under a great amount of stress. When she promises to keep their secret, the Sohmas allow Tohru to keep her memories rather than hypnotically erasing them, a fate that had previously befallen anyone not on the "Inside" of the Sohma family who had discovered the secret.

The story follows the lives of Tohru and the Sohma family, as they deal with each other and a society where neither quite fits in, as well as the feared Akito Sohma, head of the Sohma family.