“What do you mean by that?”
The traffic light flared green, and he resumed driving without further explanation. “Again, you don’t need to worry about me or my former master,” he said. “I want you to give me your answer the next time we talk.”
I nodded, unable to find the right words. Shinozaki’s tail swayed in front of me, tacit permission to stroke his fur. Obliging, I ran my fingers through its tip. He didn’t utter another word but, unless my eyes were deceiving me, did smile faintly.
🍁🍁🍁
✦ ✦ ✦
THE sea breeze rustled the garden trees. Wind whistled through the open shoji screen and into the samurai’s residence in Chikushino. Tsukushi, Shino’s sister by blood, relayed the events as matter-of-factly as she could.
“Lady Ginchiyo became bedridden due to illness,” she said. “Plagued by one curse after another. We kitsune, along with Sakura, protected her to the best of our abilities, but… She slowly dismissed all of her handmaidens, as she was no longer the wife of a feudal lord. But Sakura continued to care for the lady like a real sister. It reminded me of when they were children.”
Tsukushi paused, shrugging her narrow shoulders as she watched Shino. Despite her brave front, he could see the exhaustion in her hollow eyes.
“During the summer, when Lady Ginchiyo was on the brink of death, she was bombarded with curses—as though the casters were seizing the opportunity to kill her. Around that time, Sakura often donned the lady’s clothes and jewelry in order to bear the curses on her behalf. Thanks to Sakura’s bravery, Her Ladyship survived, but on a particularly cold autumn day… Her Ladyship’s fever still hadn’t broken…”
What happened to Sakura? What happened to her remains after she fell into the well?
Shino had a million questions, yet he couldn’t form the words.
Should I have forced her to come to Hakata with me? If she hadn’t formed a contract with me, would she have lived as a typical miko? If I hadn’t fallen in love with her, would she have married an ordinary man, retired as a priestess, and found a normal woman’s happiness?
“Shino, you poor thing,” said Tsukushi. “You can’t even cry, can you?” She stood, nearing him to cradle his head against her chest.
Jolting, he pushed her away. “Stop it, Tsukushi,” he said. “I’m…”
“You’re tired, Shino,” she finished. “Honestly, I’m tired too. Why don’t we return to the mountains together?” After smoothing out the hem of her short-sleeved kimono, mussed where Shino had shoved her, she gripped his hand. “Just the two of us foxes,” she said.
Her delicate, pale fingers filled his vision. She has such beautiful hands.
But the hands he longed for weren’t so beautiful, dainty, or smooth. Sakura’s nailbeds were always stained with medicinal herbs and amulet ink. Her hands were suntanned and slightly calloused, with cuticles frayed by hard labor. Burns and cuts covered her palms. Yet Sakura’s slender fingers had fit perfectly in Shino’s. Her hands were beautiful in their own way.
“I can’t go with you,” he said.
“Why…not?” asked Tsukushi.
“Leave. I can’t return to the mountains with you.”
“Shino. Please listen. You’re not—”
“Leave,” he repeated. His fur bristled. The vases in the drawing room trembled, their flowers wilting. At the same time, the color of the floorboards paled, and the tatami mats started to rot.
“Shino, you…” Tsukushi trailed off.
Stop. Don’t say another word.
He let loose a bestial roar.
For the next few years, Shino rampaged across Japan as a malevolent spirit, unleashing curses wherever he went.
🍁🍁🍁
✦ ✦ ✦
SHINO longed to see his beloved miko again. But Sakura had died in defense of Lady Ginchiyo, whom she’d loved and respected since the lady’s days as castellan.
So the fox grew feral, tearing across the land until his sister tracked him down once more.
“Shino,” Tsukushi said. “I can’t kill you. Nor can I take you to the Far Shore by force.” She looked down at her brother sadly, her heel pressed against his throat. He’d lost all the spiritual merit he’d accumulated over six hundred years, reduced to a one-tailed fox.
Her own tails had multiplied in number as her spiritual energy increased.
“I’ve chosen to remain on the Near Shore for the time being, for I have work to do here,” she continued. “But let’s venture to the Far Shore together once you’ve regained your wits.”
Shino could no longer maintain a human form. After capturing him, Tsukushi used her power to imprison him in Chikushi Forest. The wounded fox had become so mad with fury that he could no longer remember the source of his suffering. Or even his own name.
🍁🍁🍁
✦ ✦ ✦
SEVERAL decades later, a capricious canine spoke to him.
“My, my, you’re still alive?” she asked. “You’ve got grit, if nothing else.”
The unnaturally beautiful woman, arrayed in the garments of an oiran courtesan, simultaneously resembled a black Shiba Inu. Below her slender neck, enormous swan wings unfurled from her back.
Princess Hainu had lived in Chikugo, a city south of Chikuzen, since time immemorial. The ayakashi, whose name meant “winged dog,” breathed life into the bedraggled fox. With a snap, the magical barrier imprisoning him shattered, and he regained his human form.
“Why did you save me?” he asked.
Princess Hainu’s red lips twisted into a smirk. “I suppose I did it on a whim.”
“On a whim…?”
“Precisely. Your story touched my heart. A fox that fell in love with a human and ultimately destroyed himself? Why, it’s practically a fairy tale.”
Princess Hainu was infamous for her eccentricity. She’d caught the eye of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had a taste for oddities and beautiful women, during his subjugation of Kyushu. Thereafter, he secretly housed her in his Kyushu estate as a favored concubine. According to rumor, she’d even taught ancient and secret ayakashi arts to one of Hideyoshi’s barren concubines, allowing the woman to conceive.
In other words, the fox was free at the behest of a notoriously strange woman.
“If you’ve grown weary of the mortal realm, little fox, make haste for the Far Shore,” she said. “Your older sister wanted to take the journey alongside you, did she not?”
“I…” The fox hesitated.
“You sound like a sulking child. No wonder you have but one tail left.” Sighing, she told him gently yet firmly, “If you choose to cling to the Near Shore, you must adapt to it. The world will continue to change; you must become familiar with the human realm. If you wish to see the woman you love again…if you choose to wait for her…”
“Wait for her? She’s already…!”
“My, my, are you really that simpleminded?” Princess Hainu smiled sweetly. “Humans reincarnate. Waiting for their rebirth is what makes life worth living for us ayakashi, no?”
Princess Hainu was an ancient local deity. She’d existed long before the land received the name Chikushi. Furthermore, she’d chosen to accept Hideyoshi’s favor and remain on the Near Shore rather than be overrun by the march of time. Her words thus carried a great deal of weight for the fox.
“Or…will your love not withstand her change in appearance, perhaps?” she asked. “For shame, for shame.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” the fox shouted, staggering as though she’d punched him in the gut. “No matter what Sakura looks like, I’ll always—”
“That’s why I called it a fairy tale, my adorable little fox.” Again, Princess Hainu smiled sweetly, her curly tail wagging back and forth. “If the spark of resolve has ignited within your chest, I’ll lend you a small portion of my strength.”
🍁🍁🍁
✦ ✦ ✦
OVER the next several centuries, the fox gambled everything on the hope that Sakura—or at least, her soul—would return to him. As the kitsune of Tachibana, he’d been given the name Shino. During that new era, however, he changed his name to Rai Shinozaki.
Four hundred years passed in the blink of an eye, and he became perfectly at home in the human realm. Then, one day, he had a fateful encounter.
“Um, I really don’t have any money,” the young woman insisted. “Besides, I just want to find a new job, give my parents some peace of mind, and live a normal life.”
“There’s an old proverb,” the nekomata responded. “The frog in the well knows nothing of the great ocean. You need to take a leap of faith.”
“You’re not listening to me…”
Lately, Rai had been investigating a black nekomata running an illegal fortune-telling booth. The cat was forcing a bracelet onto a frazzled woman, who could barely manage the wan smile on her face.
Upon sight of her, Rai’s body reacted faster than his conscious mind. His every hair stood on end. Amid a world of lifeless gray, she stood out like a spring field in vibrant bloom. Her overflowing spiritual energy suffused the air with a sweet scent.
“Sakura…” he murmured. He dashed toward her.
The woman, in an ordinary job-hunting suit, startled as he bolted straight at her. “A f-fox…?” she mumbled. Despite her obvious fright, she had the audacity to smile slightly upon seeing his ears and tail.
Yes, I recognize her.
He held back the tears threatening to spill from his eyes. After a quick look at her, he turned to the nekomata. She had inherited Sakura’s soul, yes, but he feared that rebirth might have transformed her into an entirely different person. At the same time, he knew for certain that the goofball of a woman would break his heart and body all over again.