The Sun Prince

Ch22 P1 - Yumi Is a Gossip

Tanuki. They spent their days carousing, swiping sake and shaking their giant balls in people's faces. To foxes, they were the dissolute younger siblings that the humans moaned about in their own families. Irritating but harmless.

And Kuro had just eaten one.

Swallowing repeatedly as acid stung the back of his throat, Kuro stared at the Shogun. Any moment, the Shogun would burst out laughing at the joke. A tanuki would probably have even joined in, preferring joviality to reality.

But the Shogun didn't laugh. He dismissed Kuro.

Kuro stumbled down the path, every muscle twitching and jerking his limbs about. But he had no attention to spare to them when the contents of his stomach threatened to violate the Shogun's garden. If he failed, he knew who'd next be on the dinner menu.

Tanuki. Tanuki. He kept seeing the tanuki pup running from the two human brats. The pup rising up on his hind legs, pounding on his belly like a drum, as he claimed he was strong enough to join the Night Parade. No other phrase would have proved he was a child as much as that. And Kuro had eaten him.

He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut, but since the pup was in his head and not on the path in front of him, it didn't help. He reached for his logic. Logic told him he probably hadn't eaten the pup, since the city was full of tanuki, but that the pup was probably being run down and ripped apart by dogs, if he hadn't already.

"Bah!" Logic wasn't helping.

He'd thought the Shogun a human bully, power-hungry and greedy as only humans could be. But he wasn't a human enemy, or the hero Ren thought him to be. He was a demon in human skin. Kuro needed to get out of the Capital before he was forced back into the Shogun's company.

He ran the rest of the way to the teahouse. If the Shogun refused to give him the money for his shrine, fine. But Kuro had earned that money. He'd earned the shrine. He'd take it by cunning. And he'd save Ren. All Kuro needed was his fine fox mind. And money. And for money, Kuro needed to sneak into the Shogun's treasury. And for that, he needed Yumi.

He slammed open the front panel so hard it jammed in its groove. "Ren, Yumi, we—"

But there was no them. The teahouse was empty, the scent of human faded. Kuro trembled, but like the door, he'd jammed.

They'd left. Kuro left the panel as it was to keep the barrier down and checked the garden. They weren't there either. He checked the closet, but while the nest remained, Ren did not. The Kusanagi was also missing.

Kuro collapsed against the closet door. Gone, gone, gone. The only thing that could make this worse was the onmyouji sneaking up on him and shutting the entrance panel. Kuro jerked up, but he was alone. The entrance was just as empty as the rest of the house. Of course the onmyouji wasn't there. He was too busy rounding up tanuki for the Shogun's dinner.

Kuro rubbed the skin between his eyes. He had to get a hold of himself. He had to think. Think of something besides how he'd entrusted one task to Yumi and Ren — keep the other from leaving — and they couldn't even manage that. He wanted the comfort of his fox form. He needed it. But he needed to stay human more. He needed to get unfrazzled and stop thinking about the bits of tanuki dissolving in his stomach.

He focused first on his breath. At the start, his chest rose and dropped faster than rabbits pounding mochi. He'd pass out soon, so he elongated each breath. Breathe in, one, two, three, four. Breathe out, one, two, three, four.

Calm smoothing out the frantic lines of his mind, he thought perhaps Ren disappearing was a good thing. Perhaps it was even — Kuro inhaled, not able to believe he might actually think this about Ren — clever.