Chapter 7

I frown at my dictionary, double-checking the second-to-last character, then look back up at the mirror.

The noppera-bō floats in the mirror behind me, a white smudge.

I scream before I can stop myself and the noppera-bō vanishes, just like that, faster than the fog fades.

There’s a knock on the door. “Octavian? What’s wrong?”

Michiko.

“Nothing!” I say. “I just… I slipped coming out of the shower, and… and I almost fell…” I can’t lie fast enough.

Michiko yanks open the door, and I clutch my towel. She looks only mildly alarmed about seeing me in the nude; maybe she thought I’d slipped and cracked my head open on the toilet.

“Be more careful!” she says.

“I will.” I nod and hold the towel tighter.

Her gaze moves to the kanji on the mirror behind me. She looks at the dictionary, then, and her lips thin. Leave now. It is almost too late. Oh no. She thinks I wrote that. Does she think I was mocking their hospitality? Does she think I’m ungrateful?

“I was practicing my kanji.” It sounds so pitiful that I wince. “Does it make any sense?”

Her face softens. “I can help you learn. After you get dressed, of course,” she says, without a hint of sarcasm.

After Michiko shuts the door, I lower the toilet lid and sit, my legs Jell-O as the adrenaline leaves my system.

You need to go. She is coming.

Leave now. It is almost too late.

A tight thrill runs from my stomach to my chest. I can’t tell if it’s fear, excitement, or both.

Let her come.

~

All throughout dinner, Tsuyoshi asks polite questions about our day, and Gwen and I pretend like we had the most boring time in Harajuku ever. Later, my grandparents announce they are going to bed early because winter makes their bones ache. I’m secretly glad, since I’m not about to admit that I, a strapping young man, am also feeling dead tired at the ungodly hour of nine o’clock. After saying goodnight to Tsuyoshi and Michiko, I surreptitiously follow Gwen to her bedroom.

She lies on her bed and stares at me. “What happened?”

“When?”

“In the bathroom, earlier. Michiko told me something about you drawing kanji on the mirror.”

“Oh.” I lie beside her and put my arm around her waist. “Guess.”

“Your kitsune mom?”

“No.” I wrinkle my nose. “I highly doubt she’s spying on me in the bathroom nowadays.”

“The noppera-bō?”

“Bingo.”

The muscles in Gwen’s back tense beneath my touch. “What did it say?”

“‘Leave now. It is almost too late.’”

“Well, that’s cheerful,” she says.

“I know.” I’m silent for a moment. “But I’m not the type to run away. I’d rather let my kitsune mother come to me and find out what’s really going on.”

Gwen says nothing, just snuggles closer to me and sighs.

We lie together, then, warm in the chill of the night. Outside, in the amber glow of the streetlights, it begins to snow. Gwen’s breathing slips into the slow rhythm of sleep. I glance at the door. I know I should go back to my own bedroom, but… just a little while longer. Gwen feels so good in my arms, like a puzzle piece clicking into place.

“Tavian.”

It’s just a whisper, so quiet I’m not sure I heard or imagined it.

“Come to me.”

A cold eel twists in my stomach. It’s my kitsune mother’s voice. How does she know the name that Mom and Dad gave to me?

“Tavian.”

Impossibly, she sounds like she’s right outside the door. I slip away from Gwen, gently so I don’t wake her. My heartbeat knocks against my ribs as I cross the room. I grip the doorknob with a sweaty hand, then twist it and fling the door open.

Darkness. At the end of the hall, a white ball of light disappears around the corner. Foxfire.

“Tavian.”

My whispered name echoes off the walls in a way I know defies the physics of the house. I run down the hall and come to the genkan. The foxfire glows from the crack beneath the front door. When I open the door, I see the foxfire flit into the elevator just as the doors slide shut.

Why won’t she stop and face me? Why does she keep running away?

“Wait!” The stillness of the hallway swallows my voice. “Okāsan!”

The elevator dings, and the doors open with a soft clunk. It’s empty. I dart into the elevator. My hand moves to the button, but one of them is already lit: 40, the top floor. The elevator ascends. In the polished steel of the walls, I can see myself reflected. The noppera-bō walks behind me, then vanishes. It’s too late for him; I want to find her now, and I will.

The elevator dings, then opens.

I’m in a dark room illuminated by a bare light bulb. Before me, snow falls on a steep staircase leading to the roof. The white flecks floating in the black look like the drifting of marine decay in the deep ocean, and for a moment, I feel like I’m sinking. I grab the railing of the stairs and drag myself upward, to the roof, where the whiteness of snow surrounds me.

She is there. Standing at the edge of the building, staring out at Tokyo.

She’s wearing a dark jacket and jeans, not a kimono—maybe that was my imagination—but her long hair flies behind her in the wind.

My heartbeat thuds so hard I wonder if she can hear it.

This might not be my mother. I’m terrified that when she turns around, she’ll wipe away her face. That I’ll be forced to confront the noppera-bō. I open my mouth to speak, but before I can, she turns to me.

Her face is the face I remembered from eleven years ago, with the same high cheekbones and sharp chin, but I don’t remember the faint lines by her eyes, or the streak of white in her hair. She stares at me with glittering, slit-pupil eyes more like those of an animal than a woman.

Was she always this wild?

“Okāsan?” I say.

She stares at me, unblinking, until my own eyes water and I have to blink. She doesn’t vanish like I’d feared. Am I dreaming, or is this real?

Her eyes narrow. She steps toward me, the snow crunching beneath her boots. “You should not be here.” She speaks perfect English, with only a trace of an accent.

Suddenly, I’m aware of the cold. “Why?”

“You should not exist.”

“What do you mean?”

She doesn’t say anything, just tilts her head to one side, her eyes reflecting the lights of Tokyo. She looks inhuman.

“What do you mean?” My voice is ragged, my throat raw. I walk toward her, my bare feet burning-cold in the snow. “You can’t say that. You can’t come back to me after eleven years, after leaving me alone in the snow. I thought maybe you died.”

She sidesteps away from me as I advance on her. She holds herself low to the ground, ready to run.

“I should not exist,” I continue. “Do you mean I was an accident? Is that why you left me?”

Her eyes flicker with something resembling sadness. “No.”

“Then tell me!”

I reach to grab her by the shoulder, to pull her to me, but she curls her lip, baring fox fangs. Her hand darts out and closes around my chin. Her fingers are hot on my skin, almost feverish. She tugs my face downward so she can stare into my eyes—only then do I realize she’s smaller than I am. She’s tiny, but she holds herself with such grace and fearlessness that I thought she was taller.

“Are you still a fox?” she whispers. “Can you still change?”

I blink, disoriented. “Yes, of course.”

Her face blurs as I stare at her, my eyes tearing. I retreat from her touch and peel off my T-shirt in the frigid air. I’m shaking uncontrollably. Cold stiffens my joints as I unzip my jeans. My kitsune mother stares at me as impassively as a fox regards a dead mouse, wondering if it’s worth eating or not. This woman is a stranger to me. Unrecognizable.

They line the hall as I walk past, barking at me like dogs, until I want to flatten my ears against my skull—

I creep from the dormitory, my nose twitching as a mouse scratches in the wall. I’m starving. A flashlight flicks on, and I scream—

They laugh at me as I huddle in the corner. I’m shivering, my pants wet because I didn’t understand how to ask for the bathroom, didn’t think that I could escape the cage of this room without them punishing me—

I shut my eyes against the flashbacks, my stomach queasy.

Fox.

I can do this. This is who I am: half-kitsune. I can show her the truth. Or is the kitsune part of me dying? Is this why it feels like my ribs are clenching my heart, squeezing it tight? I strip away the rest of my clothes, prepared to become a fox.

“You are broken,” she says softly, almost as if I wasn’t meant to hear.

I clench my fists and jaw and stomach, then let the tension go all at once, drawing on the power inside me to push my body from human to fox. My heartbeat stutters, then stops. I gasp and stagger forward. My heartbeat stumbles back, erratic, weak, and I open my eyes. I’m on my hands and knees in the snow, naked. White snow fills my sight. My kitsune mother speaks, but her voice sounds too faraway to hear. My eyes slip shut as the pain gives away to sweet numbness.

Okāsan.

Darkness overtakes me.