Fox Trap

Part V

The following day I left the cave, still bugged by the lack of direction in my life. I walked down the snowy slopes and reached the road where I used to trick people at night. It was the middle of the day, and the place was busy. I turned into my human form, picking an image that I knew to be attractive and eye-catching.

I used the old trick and sat on a lonely rock, my broken sandal in my hand, a look of absolute desperation on my face. It didn’t take too long until a merchant approached me.

“Do you need help, miss?” His face was friendly, and he kept a respectable distance.

“No, thank you.” The words left my mouth without even putting too much thought into them, but the feeling wasn’t there. I had never said no, and I had never missed an opportunity to doom someone’s life, and here I was, stopping what I had started.

As I saw him walk away, I felt relief. There was no thrill of a hunt, no satisfaction of a work to be completed as he spoke to me. All I could think about was I didn’t want to talk to him, or anyone for that matter. The second thought that crossed my mind was when I first met Tojiro and how seemingly uninterested he was in me or my charms. No one could raise my level of curiosity as much as he did.

I walked away, slowly disappearing into the woods, and turned into a fox again. Without purpose, I started strolling around until I eventually found myself on a hill overseeing the town and the busy market street. The place was buzzing with people and stalls. I could smell the freshly cooked food from there, even if there were a great distance. I used to find them boring and simple a long time ago, getting excited over a piece of fabric or fruit slightly larger than the other. Now I discovered it fascinated me. My eyes followed a woman going from stall to stall, touching different clothes until she finally found what she needed. Then I moved my attention to a man talking to the blacksmith, and it seemed they started arguing until the man left.

So many of them, and I knew each was the same but different from the rest. I did that for hours, observing, wondering, and realizing I envied them. They were free in their purpose. If they wanted to be a farmer, scholar, or fighter - the way I saw it- they had a choice. I had one job and didn’t even like that anymore. What was I to do now? I knew what I wanted and where my heart pulled, but that had been just a pipe dream. Something I had deluded myself into could be real, and most certainly, it wasn’t.

As I continued observing, I saw the crowd move unusually, and I followed the pattern. I saw a man walking from staw to staw and stopping at each one. Shopkeepers bowed, and customers stopped and looked in surprise. It wasn’t hard to recognize the man, even from the distance where I stood. Tojiro was dressed as usual with a causal dark kimono, the two swords hanging from his belt. If it weren’t for how he carried his body, he would pass for a son of a wealthy merchant, but how he acted and stood made him stand out. Two of his men were behind, trying to keep the crowds away, but Tojiro was smiling and talking to people as if that was the most natural thing in his life. I couldn’t see his eyes from here, but I could bet there was a shine in them, the same one they had when I first met him.

“That explains it.” A familiar voice behind me startled me. “I guess he is attractive enough for a human.” The tengu continued.

“Were you following me?” I tried to change the topic and avoid any sort of discussion on why I was there.

It wasn’t Tojiro’s attractiveness that made me follow him that doomed night. As someone who could take any shape or form, while I appreciated the aesthetics a human could possess, there was so much more behind it than a pair of intense eyes and a sharp jaw.

“I was curious.” He sat next to me and shrugged. “You are not planning to burn the town, right?”

“Why would I do that….” I looked at him, confused. As much as I was bitter, I was primarily angry at my stupidity. The people below did nothing to me, and while I probably should hate him, I couldn’t force myself to think that way about him. Hating myself was so much easier…such a human reaction.

“We can turn into evil spirits, you know. The pranks you do are not evil, they are malicious, but no one dies.” He sighed. “A broken heart can make you do crazy things.”

“Like pretend to be a dragon?” I laughed, still thinking how destiny had played that one trick.

“You are better off without him, you know.” The tengu ignored my poor joke. “I heard a story once about a lord who took a kitsune for a concubine. He had a wife and many other ladies, but none of them ever gave him a son. The kitsune did, through some spiritual magic or just luck. She was the one who did it. The lord was a great man, but eventually, he died, and his son became the next lord. His rule was a disaster, and once a great family, they sank into nothingness. The gods cursed the boy because a union between a yokai and a human is…unnatural.”

This had been said to me before, and I knew nothing was normal. But why the pull, then? Why now, even if I was so hurt and felt as if my heart was bleeding, I still wanted to dash down this cursed hill and talk to him. I knew I shouldn’t. He lied to and tricked me, but my rage was mixed with the need to ignore all that.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” I shook my head. “He is down there, and I am up here, and that is unlikely to change.”

“And what possibly could this human do to a kitsune to provoke such strong emotions?” The tengu asked.

“He was different,” I sighed. The words started pouring out of my mouth in desperate need to share. “I tried to trick him, but soon I realized he wasn’t one of my usual victims, or so he presented himself. I thought that whatever attraction I felt for him, I felt it because it was real, not just another soul to trap, but something that had a meaning. I felt as if I had a true meaning for him. It was a lie.”

“Ah!” He didn’t elaborate on his exclamation. “Come on. You cannot spend the night here.”