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ONE thousand years previous, a vixen was born in Chikushino. She came into the world and spent her entire life as an animal. Afterward, she achieved apotheosis as a shapeshifting fox alongside her younger brother. The siblings practiced sadhana over many, many years, thereby increasing their number of tails. By the end of the Muromachi period, they each had five.
During the second year of the Genki era, Dōsetsu Bekki took up residence in Tachibanayama Castle as the military governor of Chikuzen Province. He adopted Sakura, a young priestess, and through her formed a contract with the vulpine pair. He similarly bestowed power upon them via the goddess Dakiniten.
The kitsune worked diligently, protecting the Tachibana clan as war deities. In return, the Tachibana provided them with spiritual energy and a place of belonging. As a symbol of their contract, the foxes received the names of Tsukushi and Shino. So long as those names endured, they would remain loyal to Sakura, who served the Tachibana and the land of Tachibana itself.
Sakura, the sole survivor of a band of wandering miko, was an odd girl. Although an orphan, she wasn’t very world-wise, and in truth, she didn’t serve Dōsetsu Bekki. Rather, she served his daughter, Lady Ginchiyo, who didn’t fit the typical mold of a young noblewoman either.
The two girls, both strange in their own right, got along swimmingly. While master and servant, they were as close as sisters. Thus the miko, lady castellan, and two vulpine siblings formed a tight-knit group of four.
Alas, their peculiar relationship couldn’t last forever. Sakura, the miko, lost her mind and drowned at the bottom of a well. Ginchiyo, the lady castellan, died of fever in a small village at the young age of thirty-three. Both were victims of the era in which they’d been born.
The loss of his beloved miko was too painful for Shino, the male fox, to bear. He eventually became a disastrous force that wreaked havoc upon Chikushino.
As everything fell to ruin, the female kitsune, Tsukushi, found herself adrift. Until she disguised herself as a young girl and, one by one, massacred the sorcerers who’d cursed Sakura. Afterward, she brought her younger brother, calamity incarnate, to heel.
“Kill me,” Shino pleaded, his eyes hollow.
Her pitiful brother had been reduced to a one-tailed fox after forfeiting the power gained through sadhana.
“Kill me,” he repeated. “I don’t want to live in a world without Sakura.”
“I love you,” said Tsukushi. “How could I ever kill my one and only little brother?” She spoke with absolute sincerity. She’d loved Sakura just as much as Shino. Yet Tsukushi had begun to hate Sakura for breaking his heart, though she knew her resentment was illogical.
Once Shino recovered from their battle, imprisoned within her magic, Tsukushi visited him with a proposal. “Shino,” she said, “let’s live on the Far Shore together. All the ayakashi that have gone before us are already there.”
As the human realm flourished, the places in which ayakashi could live on the Near Shore had dwindled. Local deities survived via syncretic transformation, adopting names from the Buddhist and Shinto pantheons. Shapeshifting ayakashi posed as humans. One by one, however, ayakashi without such ability left for the Far Shore.
Those who ventured there could never return. Tsukushi initially despised the idea of retreating to the Far Shore, an option of last resort solely because she’d been driven out of the human realm. But she began to consider the idea in a more positive light. Perhaps she and her brother could live happily ever after.
Unfortunately, Shino rejected her suggestion.
“I want to see Sakura again,” he said. “If only one more time.” Little by little, his eyes had regained the light of sanity, and he wished to reunite with the reincarnated priestess.
Who put this idea in his head?
His wish developed into obsession. Yet even as time healed his wounds and he reclaimed his spiritual energy, he remained a one-tailed fox.
“It won’t return in full until you let go of your attachment.” Desperation tinged her voice. “Do you want to remain a pathetic, one-tailed fox forever?”
“I don’t mind,” Shino replied, the spark fully returned to his eyes. “I’ve chosen to live with the agony of this sigil on my chest.”
Tsukushi loved Shino more than anything. More than herself.
“If that’s what you’ve decided,” she said, “then I understand.”
She couldn’t abandon him. So she lingered on the Near Shore, neither too close nor too far from him.
Shino moved into a hokora in Fukuoka. With Princess Hainuzuka’s backing, he started a business that helped ayakashi find work and community.
“Insufferable mutt.” Tsukushi bit her nails. “How could she give my poor Shino such fleeting hope?”
He spent his days toiling for the sake of other ayakashi, and from Tsukushi’s perspective, his actions seemed like atonement. He wanted to save people like Sakura and Ginchiyo, his departed loved ones who’d died as outcasts in the human realm.
“Reincarnated individuals possess the same soul, yes, but they don’t inherit memories from their past lives,” Tsukushi said to herself. “Shino will be devastated when he encounters Sakura again and she’s forgotten everything. I have to kill her reincarnation before then.”
Love—too much love—lit the fire of resolve within her.
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FOUR hundred years passed. Over the centuries, she became a nine-tailed kitsune. One day, she heard the first cries of Sakura’s newborn reincarnation.
At long last, the time had come.
Tsukushi would murder Sakura before she and Shino could meet. The vixen bounded toward the infant, her chest bursting with joy to finally fulfill her vow. At the hospital, she shapeshifted into a nurse.
She regarded the baby. Swaddled in white cloth and lying next to her mother in the maternity ward, the child slept soundly, not a trace of understanding on her face.
“I’m sorry,” Tsukushi murmured, “but I can’t allow Shino to suffer any more than he already has.” She extended a lethal finger toward the infant—and the infant grabbed it. Overpowering spiritual energy, so reminiscent of Sakura’s, coursed from the baby’s hand, rendering Tsukushi incapable of doing anything.
She broke into tears as the energy flooded her soul. “Sakura…” she sobbed. “You’ve finally reincarnated.”
In the end, she couldn’t kill Kaede Kikui, Sakura’s reincarnation. The reunion, four hundred years in the making, reminded Tsukushi of her original feelings. She loved Shino, and she also loved Sakura. In her heart, hadn’t she always wanted to protect Sakura?
Rather than kill Kaede, Tsukushi kept a close eye on her. She watched over the human girl from the shadows and in broad daylight, maintaining a constant magical barrier around her. Tsukushi ensured that Kaede lived a healthy, normal life. Likewise, she distanced Kaede from ayakashi and anything abnormal.
Sometimes, she felt a twinge of guilt. Had normalcy become a prison for the girl? Regardless, she continued to protect Kaede.
“Tsukushi!” Kaede cried.
The two of them became close friends. Kaede always wore an innocent smile, and her heart was full of love for Tsukushi.
The years passed, marked by flurries of cherry blossoms.
Kaede’s mother dressing her in her preschool uniform.
Kaede shouldering a backpack for her first day of elementary school.
Kaede wearing a sailor uniform in middle school.
Kaede donning a kimono for Coming-of-Age Day.
Slightly odd due to her teeming spiritual energy, Kaede nevertheless grew into a healthy young woman. All the while, Tsukushi was determined to defend Kaede’s profoundly normal happiness as well as keep her existence a secret from Shino.
But the two women saw each other less and less when Kaede became a working adult, and Tsukushi’s clandestine barrier became increasingly difficult to maintain. By the time a fortune teller, a foolish nekomata, caught Kaede in his snare, the barrier had grown paper-thin. When she finally encountered Shino, it shattered entirely.
“So, they’ve finally met…” muttered Tsukushi. She couldn’t turn back time, no matter how much she regretted the turn of events.
So she observed them from afar. Shino fell in love with Kaede again. And Kaede smiled at Shino in a manner completely unfamiliar to Tsukushi.
At this rate, misfortune is going to befall them again.
Shino must have feared the same, for he seemed to struggle with how best to interact with Kaede. Noticing his indecision, Tsukushi decided: she would play the villain and tear the two of them apart. Afterward, she would return Kaede to a normal human existence and accompany Shino to the Far Shore.
I’m doing this to prevent the tragedy awaiting them. In her past life, Kaede’s immense spiritual energy brought her nothing but misery.
But Kaede punctured every barrier to reunite with Shino. She stood her ground and refused to let him escape. In the end, she even softened his hardened heart.
And that’s not all. Kaede even extended her hand to me, a horrible, so-called friend who’s deceived her all along.
“Ginchiyo,” whispered Tsukushi, alone in the mountain grove. “Do you think I made the right decision?”
The ghost of a familiar hand—soft and pale—grazed her shoulder.