Chapter 9

They finally let me leave on Christmas night. Tsuyoshi and Michiko treat me and Gwen to dinner. We go to a restaurant wedged between two concrete buildings, totally boring on the outside, totally vibrant on the inside. Red paper lanterns cast a warm glow over low tables where people perch on cushions. The menu promises all sorts of tofu delights. Tofu is a kitsune’s best friend. As evidenced, of course, by kitsune udon, a fantastic soup of chunky noodles loaded with deep-fried tofu. You can guess what I order.

“Better than hospital food?” Tsuyoshi says, with a deep chuckle.

I smile, but it feels like a mask. “Thank you for dinner. Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas!” everyone choruses, playing their parts.

This is all too nice, like my grandparents want to counteract the bad luck of me ending up in the hospital. Like it’s their fault, not mine.

A skinny waiter refills Gwen’s teacup, his eyes fixed on her red hair. She’s gotten nothing but stares ever since she set foot in this restaurant—and she still doesn’t seem tired of it. Of course they gave her a fork, assuming a gaijin like her couldn’t possibly handle chopsticks.

Michiko smiles at me. “We knew this was a good place for kitsune.”

The waiter’s eyes sharpen. “Kitsune?”

“Our grandson.” Michiko nods at me. “We adopted him.”

I freeze, a chopstick-load of udon noodles halfway to my mouth. Oh my god. What did she just say? Telling somebody you’re Other is not polite dinner conversation back in the States. That’s the sort of thing that can get you killed. Or at least shot.

Gwen nudges my ankle with her toes, and I unclench my fists.

The waiter gives me a big smile, his teeth bleached bright. “Do you like the kitsune udon?”

I let nothing show on my face. “I’m eating it right now.”

“Another bowl, then, on the house.” The waiter bows and leaves.

Michiko smiles and looks at Tsuyoshi, who nods like a bobble-head. Why are they smiling? Is this okay? I don’t even know if I’m angry or scared or… happy. That might be pride on their faces, but I’m definitely not ready to be publicly announced as kitsune.

“Excuse me,” I say, in my politest Japanese possible, “but that makes me uncomfortable.”

Tsuyoshi’s bushy eyebrows descend. “What does?”

I meet his eyes. “Telling people that I’m kitsune.”

Silence. Tsuyoshi stares into his rice bowl, and Michiko busies herself rearranging the dishes in front of her. My face heats until I’m sure it must be the color of the lanterns above.

“You may have forgotten,” Tsuyoshi says quietly, “the place of the kitsune in Japan.”

I don’t think I could ever forget my childhood.

Out loud, I say, “I remember the place of the nogitsune.”

Tsuyoshi’s eyes flash. “There is no need to speak of that.”

Is he asking me to pretend I’m not a field fox? To let the waiter believe that I’m actually a temple fox? That I’m good luck rather than bad? I clench my jaw, biting back my words.

Gwen keeps her head down, taking quick, quiet bites of her food. I can tell she’s trying to figure out what we’re saying, even though she doesn’t understand very much Japanese.

The waiter returns with a giant smile on his face and a steaming-hot bowl of kitsune udon.

“Thank you,” I say, since it seems like the safest thing to do.

“Enjoy your dinner.” The waiter bows again, then leaves.

I stare at the ghosts of steam dancing above my bowl. My stomach feels hollow, but I’m not hungry anymore. Still, I force myself to drink every last drop of broth, if only to see Michiko smile again. Tsuyoshi won’t meet my eyes for the rest of dinner.

When I go to the restroom before we leave, Tsuyoshi meets me by the sinks. I look at him in the mirror; his face looks gray and whole decade older. “We will see the myobu tomorrow.”

I concentrate on washing my hands. “I’m not one of them.”

He closes the distance between us, his face so close I could count every wrinkle. “There is no need for your birth mother to bring disgrace to the Kimura name. Shiranu ga hotoke.”

Shiranu ga hotoke. Not knowing is Buddha. Ignorance is bliss.

Tsuyoshi’s voice is low yet intense, like the distant roar of a waterfall. “You have a duty to this family. You will leave behind your past. You will speak to the myobu.”

My hands stop moving. I keep my head down and stare into the sink. Then I nod, because I know I have to.

~

Tsuyoshi wakes me at sunrise. He’s wearing an expensive suit and carrying a briefcase. In silence, we take the elevator down and drive to Ueno Park. Dawn tints the sky cherry-blossom pink over gray branches of trees famous for their flowers in springtime. Frost sparkles on the grass, turning the vast lawn into a galaxy.

“Be careful,” Tsuyoshi mutters, as he parks the car, “and don’t meet strangers in the eye.”

“Why?” I say. “Isn’t it safe around here?”

Tsuyoshi shakes his head. “Homeless people.” He unbuckles his seat belt and slides out. “Bakemono.”

Bakemono. Changed thing, as in yōkai who shapeshift, or those whose bodies were once human but are now supernaturally, irreversibly changed. The word has overtones of the monstrous—like the scary stories kids at the orphanage told, after the lights went out and they thought I couldn’t hear their whispers.

So are there are both homeless people and bakemono in the park? Or are the bakemono homeless?

“There,” Tsuyoshi murmurs.

At the other end of the path, a stunted old man hobbles nearer, leaning on a blue umbrella like a walking stick. He’s wearing a muddy gray tracksuit and battered running shoes. His gray beard probably hasn’t seen a comb in ages. He keeps his gaze lowered politely as he passes us, or maybe he’s looking for fallen change.

“No,” Tsuyoshi whispers. “Not a bakemono. A man.”

I don’t bother pointing out that as shapeshifters, kitsune are bakemono too—even those myobu we’re going to see. Of course, myobu are too respectable to be monsters, and I suspect Tsuyoshi would smack me if I called them “bakemono” to their faces.

“Another one,” Tsuyoshi says.

“Where?” I whisper.

I’m getting a sick little thrill from spotting the homeless and worrying that they might be dangerous, might be Other. This time, it’s a woman squatting by a garbage can, picking through a take-out box of noodles with chopsticks. She’s wearing nothing but rags, and her long black hair curtains her face, hiding her features. A man jogs past, and she cranes her neck toward him in a fluid, boneless motion.

Tsuyoshi sucks in his breath. “Bakemono.”

“How can you tell?”

The woman answers my question when her neck snakes longer and longer, like silly putty, even while her body stays motionless. She arches her neck high over the jogger, keeping pace with him, as if she’s going to sink fangs into his back. What is she? The word dances around the edges of my memory. I swear Gwen just told me, that there was a picture of this particular yōkai in her textbook.

“Rokurokubi,” Tsuyoshi whispers. “Long neck woman.”

The rokurokubi sighs and withdraws from the jogger, her neck retracting into itself. She spots us and blinks her doe eyes.

“Ohayō gozaimasu,” she says. Good morning.

I bow to her, just because it’s better to err on the side of polite.

The rokurokubi loops her neck toward Tsuyoshi to get a better look. “I am very hungry,” she says in English, her voice breathy. “I would love a bite to eat.”

Don’t rokurokubi prey on men? Or is that a myth?

Tsuyoshi stares the rokurokubi in the eye. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any food.”

The rokurokubi drifts close to me. “If you could spare a few yen…”

Oh. Oh! She’s begging for change, that’s all. I dig out a five-hundred-yen coin from my pocket.

“Take this,” I tell the rokurokubi.

Her body shuffles forward to meet her head, until her neck looks nearly normal. She cups her hands and I give her the coin. Our fingers brush for a second—her skin feels chapped from the cold, but nothing odd. Normal.

“Arigatō gozaimasu,” she says. Thank you very much. She shuffles away into the darkness, her head bowed, her hair swaying in the wind.

Tsuyoshi blows out his breath in a plume of white. “That was brave.”

God, I feel like such a jerk. Assuming she was going to mug us, or worse, just because she’s Other.

To my grandfather, I shrug. “It was the right thing to do.”

He arches his eyebrows but says nothing.

We wind along a road through the trees as sleepy birds chirp in the canopy. A woman jogs past us, her black ponytail bobbing, her running shoes crunching the snow. At a bend in the road, an iron fence opens to a moss-streaked stone torii, an arched gate marking the boundary between the mundane and the sacred. Beyond this torii, framed by its tall columns, rows of smaller torii—wooden, painted persimmon-red and black—stand in orderly ranks, guiding a path between their posts.

“Almost there,” Tsuyoshi says.

We pass through the torii, the stone steps beneath our feet worn by thousands before us. The vivid red of the gates looks stark against the frosted leaves of bamboo. The path ends at a shrine to Inari, its sweeping roof hung with white paper lanterns, red banners, and straw ropes—all the traditional Shinto trappings. A pair of snarling stone foxes, both wearing red bibs, stand guard on either side.

“Kitsune,” I say, the word a cloudy whisper.

Something white and delicate drifts before my face. I hold out my hand. Not a snowflake—a cherry blossom. An ancient, gnarled tree shades the shrine, laden with flowers.

A shiver crawls down my back, and not because of the cold.

Cherry blossoms, sakura, are cherished for the way they fall in their prime, a beautiful death, a reminder of mortality. To have an ever-blooming tree, with sakura untouched by winter—it makes the hair on my arms bristle. The air reeks of yōkai magic.

“Illusions,” I say. “The blossoms, maybe the entire tree.”

Someone coughs quietly.

Tsuyoshi dips into a low bow. I do the same, to be safe, and peek up through the fringes of my hair. Silk rustles like wind through leaves. Indigo, shot with gold, slithers along the flagstones—a kimono, worn by a woman. A twelve-layered kimono, exactly like those worn by court ladies a thousand years ago. Her eyes glitter like slivers of amber, and a sleek white tail peeks coyly from the folds of her garment. A jolt of recognition travels my spine. She smells, very faintly, of fox.