32 A Fox’s Confession

  [Player: Fleet (Yokai - Kitsune)]

  [Form: Humanoid (Currently) -> Fox]

  [Alignment: Chaotic Good Boy]

  [Skills: Shapeshift, Make Believe, Effortless Entry]

  [Current Location: Sinking beneath the Northern Sea]

  ---

  Fleet couldn’t breathe. Somewhere above, the Umibozu’s voice rumbled through the ocean’s darkness and cold:

  WHY?

  Fleet wanted to answer but he couldn’t. No breath, no time and what’s worse, he didn't understand the question. Why what?

  He was drifting down in the dark.

  The simple animal that lived inside him stirred in wild panic, but all Fleet could do was remember.

  ---

  They had been traveling from Kagura Village, Suzume’s home toward Karasu Peak through towering cedar groves and rocky passes. It was a long hike and Kazuki and Suzume were quietly exhausted, while Fleet... Fleet was just bored.

  But that day they discovered a battered wooden torii gate jutting from a tangle of high grass. Nearby, two fox statues, their snouts chipped and tails broken, flanked the shrine’s entrance. The Inari Shrine was deserted: no caretaker, no sign of recent visitors. Only the wind.

  Fleet ran through the gate, a chimera with fox ears and tail but human body. “Look!” he said, pointing at the stone fox guardians. A few stray leaves had gathered around their weathered paws. “Must’ve been guarding this shrine for ages. Super old!” He brushed aside the leaves with his fingers, tail swishing behind him like an unused feather duster.

  Fleet bowed deeply to the fox guardians, grinning.

  Suzume smiled as well, adjusting her bow on her shoulder. “An Inari Shrine this far off the beaten path? Maybe there used to be rice fields around here. But who visits it now?”

  Kazuki bent down to examine the shrine itself a short distance from the gate and statues. “No offerings,” he said. “No footprints. This place looks forgotten.”

  Without speaking, the three travelers set down their packs. Suzume bowed politely at the torii, stepping in with the care of the shrine maiden she was. Kazuki, a few steps behind, offered his own quiet bow. Then Suzume pulled out some incense and they each lit a fragile stick—Fleet borrowing Suzume’s flint. The sweet, sandalwood aroma mingled with the resin of pines. Together they clapped twice, bowed, and prayed for safety on the road.

  When they had finished, without warning Fleet knelt before the battered shrine, shut his eyes and dramatically lowered his voice:

  “Oh mighty Inari, hear me, your humble servant Fleet, also known as Abe no Seimei, direct descendant of the fox goddess Kuzunoha!”

  He heard Suzume laugh behind him.

  Fleet opened one eye and saw Suzume looking at him with a smirk. "You don't believe me? It's true. I am!"

  Suzume rolled her eyes and began to walk away from the small shrine back to the trail. Kazuki, on the other hand, was grinning but looking at Fleet thoughtfully..

  Fleet looked up at him, "Do you believe me?"

  Kazuki smilled, a little shyly. "Fleet, I really don't know what to believe here. But I can totally imagine you being the grandson of a fox goddess."

  Fleet’s ears went pink. “W-well... yes. Thank you,”

  Suzume turned to Kazuki in mock astonishment. “Don’t tell me you’re buying into that! Next he’ll tell us he’s an ancient warrior king or the rightful heir to the Imperial Throne.”

  Kazuki shrugged. “Everything here is strange. Why can’t Fleet be the son of a legendary fox mother?”

  A spark of gratitude flared in Fleet’s chest. He was so used to everyone rolling their eyes or ignoring him.

  “You do know that *Abe no Seimei* was a real onmyōji sorcerer from centuries ago?” Suzume teased, poking Fleet’s ear. “Not a fox boy who steals dried fruit and runs from Kappa.”

  Fleet’s ears drooped.

  Kazuki let out a short, soft laugh—genuine and warm. “Even if it’s all a story,” he murmured, “I like it.”

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  Fleet blinked at him. “...You do?”

  Kazuki nodded. “Sure. Sometimes what we need most is a story.”

  And that was that.

  They said their final prayers at the old Inari Shrine, left a few coins as an offering, and returned to the road.

  Night fell on their camp that evening with starlight sometimes visible through pines as the thinner trees swayed in the evening breeze. Suzume and Fleet settled by a small fire, while Kazuki scouted a bit ahead. When he returned, Suzume had laid out bedrolls and drifted into an uneasy doze.

  Fleet, however, was wide awake. He slipped out from under the blanket and padded over to the edge of the clearing where Kazuki sat on a log, staring at the darkness.

  “Kazuki?” Fleet whispered.

  Kazuki glanced over. “You’re not sleepy?”

  Fleet shook his head. “I… wanted to ask….” He hopped onto the log, folding his legs under him. In the darkness it was easy to miss the tail or the ears - he looked like any slim, awkward boy.

  Kazuki nodded, waiting.

  “When I said those things at the shrine—about my name being Abe no Seimei, and my mother being the great fox Kuzunoha, all that stuff.” Fleet cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Did you really believe me?”

  Kazuki took a moment to answer. “You told a story. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. This whole world feels like a dream to me—why should any one part be more or less believable?”

  Fleet frowned. “But Suzume said it was nonsense.”

  Kazuki’s eyes flicked up to the night sky. “She thinks she knows what’s true and what’s not. But me? I don’t know anymore.” He paused. “I used to live in a normal place with cars and phones. Then I ended up here. I can't say what's true.”

  Fleet felt a pang of guilt. “Still,” Fleet ventured, “what if I *am* lying? Doesn’t that bother you?”

  Kazuki shook his head. “It doesn’t. Because it’s not about what you say Fleet. I trust you.”

  The fox-boy glanced down at his own hands, slender and claw-tipped and not quite human.

  “Kazuki,” he asked softly, “why do you trust me?”

  Kazuki exhaled, then looked at Fleet. "Because I might not know if your stories are real. But I know *you’re* real,” Kazuki said, putting his hand on Fleet’s shoulder. “ And that’s enough for me.”

  Fleet swallowed hard, a warmth flooding his chest that he’d never felt.

  Before Fleet could say anything else, Kazuki ruffled his hair gently. “Let’s sleep, okay?”

  Fleet nodded, chest tight. As he slipped back under the shared blanket next to Suzume, an strange but welcome thought appeared in his mind:

  I trust you too.

  ---

  Time blurred. They journeyed on.

  They ended up captured by the Kappa King’s army of wet and slimy monsters—tied up in an underground hall dripping with algae-streaked walls. The air was foul with the spores of bioluminescent mushrooms.

  They had bound his arms behind his back, forced him to kneel on a cold slab of rock. His fox tail twitched uncontrollably. On either side of him, Suzume and Kazuki knelt, also restrained. Suzume’s hands were broken and her hair stuck to her face in wet strands, anger and pain smoldering in her eyes. Kazuki’s expression was confused - as if he had just woken up.

  Fleet was terrified. He parted his lips, meaning to joke or call for help or something, but he was gagged. He couldn’t make a sound.

  Helpless.

  Kappa soldiers ringed them with fins and scales and webbed claws. Water dripped from the ceiling and from the saucer like bones that many of them had on their heads. A steady plunk-plunk.

  They had to get out. Fleet recalled the night not long before by the campfire, Kazuki’s quiet voice saying, I trust you.

  Trust… me?

  His friend trusted him. And Fleet wouldn't let him down.

  Fleet, like a fox, started panting. He closed his eyes. *Change,* he pleaded, imagining that small abandoned Inari shrine and those two fox statues guarding it since forever. *I'm a fox, I'm a fox, I'm a fox... come on. Please grandma Kuzunoha!.*

  And then it happened.

  It wasn’t gentle. His body spasmed, bones shifting, muscles bending, fur erupting from his skin. He gasped, or tried to… but then it was over. The ropes binding his arms dropped away as his body shrank from that of a boy of twelve to a small animal.

  A small red fox. Nobody noticed.

  He wasted no time. Fleet sprang to Suzume and Kazuk, jaws snapping around the thick ropes that bound their wrists. Another slash from his teeth—he had no practice in this, but desperation guided him. He worried at them until the ropes frayed and broke.

  Suzume’s eyes were huge, her mouth parted in shock as Fleet the fox freed her.

  “Fleet—how did you—!”

  Somehow, even as a fox, Fleet smiled. Then, while D the Kappa King was still going on and on, the three of them disappeared.

  ---

  That was then.

  Now, he was down, down, down in the Umibozu’s realm.

  He was drowning here, just as helpless as before, but the memory lit a spark. Kazuki trusts me.

  Fleets lungs screamed but he wasn’t afraid

  And I trust him.

  The black water around him was implacable at first but then Fleet saw something getting closer - two ghostly lights coming towards him. They resolved into eyes, eyes on the head of a... man? It was a creature shaped partly like a man and partly like a manta ray, with wide fins stretching across his back like dark grey wings. But the figure had arms...

  It was Kazuki!

  Fleet saw him gliding through the water just above the sea floor like an alien angel. Though his manta-like “wings” gracefully undulated in the water, Fleet saw Kazuki’s arm curled protectively around Kuro the cat. It was the kegare, Fleet realized. It had changed him, remaking him into something that could survive the sea, into something that could live, into something that could save himself and Kuro and Fleet.

  Then Kazuki reached out through the water with his spare arm and glowing eyes, through the darkness of the sea...

  ...to Fleet.

  ---

  [Achievement Unlocked: Trust Issues]

  [Next Chapter: Surface Tension]

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