Kitsune

by Peter Likarish
Grinnell College

Honorable Mention story in the 2004 Nick Adams Short Story Contest

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Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited.

Kitsune ran hard in the chill morning air, lithe legs pumping in a futile effort to hold back time. Her breath formed momentary puffs of cloud at regular intervals. She was late. Still, running made her feel free and powerful, no longer caged by the buildings around her. The sound of her feet on the concrete followed Kitsune as she pounded along, deftly weaving her way around the sidewalk's other inhabitants; all of whom trudged wearily to their myriad destinations. She could feel her lips pull back over her teeth, forming into grin. A woman in a knee-length coat stopped as Kitsune approached, momentarily startled from morning reveries by the sharp smacking of the girl's footsteps echoing off the nearby buildings. The woman grinned back at the girl and turned; her eyes following Kitsune as she passed, remembering fondly an age before you were expected to walk conservatively in dress slacks. When you wore jeans every day. When you could wear a hat topped with floppy ears that bounced as you ran. When you didn't zip up your jacket but let it stream around a scuffed and abused backpack that bounced in time with the ears on your head. Then the girl was gone and the grin faded, the woman turned and the pedestrian traffic reasserted itself, quickly pouring into the empty space left in her wake.

Kitsune ran down the last block and up the steps, pushing her way through one of the double sets of glass doors set into the brick façade. The floor was white tile, flecked with black and gold -- school colors -- and scuffed by the soles of those who passed before her. The lobby had already emptied of students; she could hear the last loud voices making their way down the halls, cut off in mid-sentence by closing doors. Her legs burned from the exertion and the sensation was seconded by her lungs -- every breath left them feeling raw from the biting cold. Even as she stood in the lobby catching her breath, the smell of cold became increasingly faint, dissipating from the folds of her clothing in the artificial heat of the lobby. She sighed as the bell rang, late on the first day, what a cliché. At least after four years I know where my classroom is. Still breathing hard and shallow Kitsune turned left, walking quickly to the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor. Dust, stirred by the feet that climbed the stairs two at a time, momentarily whirled through beams of morning light spilling in through windows set in the far wall.

At the top of the stairs she turned left again, passing two sets of heavy, solid doors. Each door had a small safety glass window that provided a momentary glimpse of the same, familiar scene: rows of desks filled with students, muted shuffling sounds as pens and papers were retrieved from bags, teachers attempting to establish quiet, blackboards as yet unsullied by a year's work. Here we are… At the third door she exhaled quickly, centering herself before turning the knob and pulling the door toward her. As she entered the room she froze, half in and half out of the door. Something's different. Heads turned to look at the late-comer and from each a pair of eyes regards her curiously. Kitsune didn't notice. Her own eyes focused on the back of the man currently facing the blackboard. New teacher -- odd, he didn't even turn when I came in. In his left hand, the man clutched a piece of chalk, moving it slowly across the board. Aside from the occasional creaking desk or muted cough, the only sound in the quiet room was the barely audible whispering noise the chalk made moving across the board. The only time I've heard a classroom this silent is when someone's in trouble. It seemed unlikely that anyone, no matter how proficient at the art, could have had time to cause any trouble that early in the morning. Of those who glanced up at her entrance a few wore smug grins, somehow deriving pleasure from their classmate's discomfort. She forced her lips to relax, resisting the sudden desire to snarl at those individuals capable of deriving pleasure from another's discomfort. The man facing the board had still not so much as glanced at the class. Instead, his concentration seemed to be centered on the deliberate progress of the chalk. So far it has traced "Mr." in cursive and then paused as if in consideration. Or perhaps waiting for me to take a seat. Shrugging off her own discomfort, Kitsune made her way to the only open seat, front row, third from the left. She struggled out of her coat, letting it flop over the back of her chair before lowering herself into the desk. She then proceeded to reach into her backpack and pull from it a new notebook and a black pen. The noise produced by her shuffling seemed unnaturally loud to her ears, a sensation only exacerbated by the slow scrape of the chalk as it began to travel across the blackboard again. By the time she had settled herself into the desk with her pen and open notebook before her, the name was longer by several letters. What an odd name -- it looks far more like something I'd expect to see back in Japan, not here. She was still pondering the partially completed name when she felt a tap on her left shoulder. Kitsune turned her head to see Andrew grinning and pointing at his watch. She rolled her eyes in mock irritation, producing a wink from Andrew. He must have been a little late too if he's stuck in the front of the class. Giving him one last scowl, she turned back to the front of the class.

The chalk lifted from the board and the man lowered his arm, finished with his slow ritual. He spun swiftly on his heel, moving agilely for a man of his bulk. What the ... no wonder everyone's so quiet. On first glance, she can't help but think: round. After blinking, the second glance confirmed the first impression. The new teacher is as wide around as he is tall. And on top of his globular shape sits an even more circular head. Badly thinning black hair is plastered atop a pronounced forehead. His ears lie back against his head, barely visible behind his rotund cheeks. It is feasible that, given only a cursory glance, the face could be mistaken for that of a jolly fat man, rosy cheeks and all, but to do so would be to ignore his other features. The eyes are small and wide-set, two small wells of black absorbing nearby light. They're blank, expressionless. But the mouth is the worst. Where an ordinary person would have two rows of pearly whites, he possesses, rather, two jagged rows of triangles. When he smiles the jutting points of his upper teeth just touch their corresponding pairs, creating a row of hourglasses interspersed with black diamonds across his mouth. Reminds me of the dental work of cannibals from south-east Asia I used to see in magazines.

"Ah-hrumph, hello then, welcome to world history," his voice was deep and powerful and filled the silent classroom in a rush. "As you can seem, my name is Mr. Marugao. I am obviously new to all of you but hardly new to this world ..." He continued to speak, pacing back and forth in the front of the room as he did so, gently tossing the chalk in the air and catching it in his outstretched palm. "Now. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the syllabus I am going to pass around. Note, in particular, that any truancy on your part will be dealt with most severely." He stopped, and for the first time since she had entered the classroom; looked directly at Kitsune, "I will not tolerate anyone wasting my time." His black eyes shone fiercely but Kitsune hardly noticed, she couldn't tear her gaze from his smile -- his lips curled back in a snarl, his open maw exposed rows of gleaming white triangles.

* * *

In spite of its inauspicious beginning, the rest of the school day passed into a routine whirl of meaningless activity and boredom. Almost from her first day of high school, Kitsune had come to see that, in many ways, high school was just a holding pattern while you waited to be old enough for the rest of your life. Teacher's faces blurred into one another, distinguishable only by the particular subject they were forced to force upon their students. Even the teachers seem bored with the yearly repetition of the same staid, tired speeches. True, there were the occasional sparks of light, the teacher who actually gave you some insight into a subject and, more importantly, the way life actually worked. But the fonts of knowledge were few and far between; separated by vast, barren realms of geometry and government. Kitsune hadn't paid attention to school since that realization. It was just something to do before moving on, going elsewhere; a novelty maybe, but if so, one soon tarnished. But now something had her attention, she couldn't stop thinking about her new teacher. Mr. Marugao. Her other teachers continuously and half-heartedly attempted to drag her attention back to their worn material, suspecting her of daydreaming. But there was nothing pleasant about her thoughts. They circled back again and again to the teeth crafted specially for tearing, the beady eyes, the very roundness of his person. She couldn't remember a time she had been so intimidated. Who would even *think* of hiring that man as a teacher. Fixated on the singular topic of her new teacher, Kitsune found that the day could drag itself out interminably. Seconds multiplied and became minutes, thoughts and speculations spiraled through her head. Ungrounded fears lingered while the uneasy sensation of being watched settled soundly on the back of Kitsune's neck. Kitsune fought hard to maintain her composure and pay at least nominal attention to what was being said around her, but she longed to be out of the school. She smiled sadly, recalling fondly the sense of freedom she had felt only that morning running along the street; a steady stream of wind, people and sundry objects all blowing past her. Yet, despite all her psyche might do to prevent it, time eventually passed, and Kitsune breathed a sigh of relief at the final bell. She gathered her belongings and, without stopping at her locker, catapulted herself through the school doors into the cool afternoon air.

* * *

On first glance, Sakura Square was a disappointment. It was not so much a square as yet another monolithic concrete edifice in a forest of the same. Only a few Japanese shops clustered under a towering apartment building, the entire complex colored the off-white of old cement. The twenty odd stories of apartments catered to a predominately Japanese clientele, but the scanty shops below the tower in no way created the potential for a self-contained community. There were a few restaurants, all with foreign-sounding names that meant little to a native Japanese speaker but whose exoticism excited the Americans. A grocery store occupied much of the lowest level of Sakura Square, its aisles chock full of foods and other items imported from Japan. From rice to sake sets, the owners had been meeting the needs of an oft-neglected community for generations. It served a large enough niche market that the store did a brisk business from open to close. The only other current tenant clustering under the apartments was a book store, containing row upon row of last month's manga, much of it sitting on the shelves until it was old enough to be put into a pile at one end of the store. Any manga in the pile could be purchased for a dollar.

At present, Kitsune wandered amongst the aisles, perusing, passing the time while she waited for Andrew to finish soccer practice. The first aisle contained shoujuo, manga specifically targeted to young females. She rolled her eyes. What self-respecting female would read that trash. The plots were a study in melodrama, poor excuses for fiction loosely strung together on heart-strings. After glancing around briefly, she beat a hasty retreat to the next row, propelled both by the mind-numbing subject matter and the fact that the storekeeper was anxiously approaching her. From the look on his face, he was either going to recommend several titles that he was "just sure she would love" or remind her that "one actually has to buy something, this wasn't a library." The next row was hardly any better, despite standing in stark contrast to the previous one. The second aisle contained manga deemed suitable for boys. Space aliens, giant robots, swords, guns, violence, blood shed and of course, impossibly proportioned women. Who came up with this stuff? Sigh. Onward. Now this one's a little better at least. Before her were stacks of a fairly recent popular trend in Japanese manga, historical comics. An old man stood in the aisle as well. His face looked Japanese. He was short and hunched over, his thin body mostly hidden, wrapped in a tan overcoat. He had several selections tucked under one arm. Kitsune smiled and muttered some pleasantry as she passed him, running her fingers across the spines as she walked, waiting for one to grab her attention. As she neared the end of the row the man turned and spoke to her in Japanese, "Onako, kitekudasai." She turned politely toward him. Seeing that he had her attention, and that she understood his Japanese he continued, "Namaewa nandesuka?"

"Kitsunedesu." She didn't ask his name, he didn't offer one.

"Sodane ..." He laughed; the sound was reedy and came from deep in his throat. It was more of a cackle. Kitsune smiled at him, his colloquial manners were endearing. He reminded her of countless Ojii-san from her years spent in the Kanto prefecture. He reached under his arm pulled out one of the manga. He glanced down at it and his expression grew more serious. Then, holding it in both hands, he thrust it at her, "Kono honwa, yondahougaiidesu. Totemo iimangadesuyo." Kitsune gently picked the manga from his hands, the cover was fancifully worked. The picture on the front was of a forest, done in a fashion that evoked a style of pictures she had seen mainly on scrolls -- very dreamlike -- and from out of a bush, a pair of golden eyes stared. The title meant "fox" in Japanese. She flipped to the back and opened the first few pages, experiencing a moment of disorientation produced by reading from what was considered the back of the book in the U.S.

Satisfied with the old man's recommendation, she bowed and thanked him. He nodded gruffly, brushing off her thanks and turned back to the stacks in front of him. Kitsune proceeded to the front of the store. She couldn't help but grin at the change of expression on the store owner's face. It truly was amazing how quickly teenagers could go from being hooligans-no-doubt-bent-on-some-destructive-errand, to a customer. She paid, picked up her purchase and walked out into the quickly fading light, the bell on the door jangling brightly while the shop keeper cheerfully admonished her to come again.

Sakura Square truly existed to serve as a meeting place; a concrete point at which to socialize and congregate. The Japanese and their associates made do with the chained picnic tables on the 2nd floor balcony. The tables were metallic and old. At one time they had been painted a bright green but time, weather, and high school students had successfully removed most of the coat, leaving a sullen gray surface marked by chips of green paint and graffiti. It was at one of these tables that Kitsune's friend currently sat. A plaid floppy hat sat atop his curly hair, its two dangling strings framing his heart-shaped face. A red scarf was wrapped loosely around his neck, although a rather large portion of the scarf hung down his back, scarlet on his blue, puffy jacket. The jacket made him look slightly ridiculous; it was so stuffed with padding that it would have been sufficient on an arctic expedition, and it definitely looked out of place in the fading autumn light. The awkwardness instilled by the jacket upon his person was already forgotten, and he sat chatting happily with some other youths. One of them smoked, the rest turned down the proffered cigarettes.

Kitsune, clutching the plastic bag containing her purchase moved toward the group.

"Hey guys," she said from a few feet behind them. Andrew jumped slightly, turning at the sound of her voice.

"Hey Kitsune, you need to stop sneaking up on me ... come on over," Andrew patted the peeling paint of the bench beside him.

"Maybe if you didn't talk so much you'd stand a chance of actually hearing what's going on around you." Kitsune threw herself into the empty seat, flipping the end of the red scarf into Andrew's face. Andrew grimaced, more at the scarf than Kitsune, "Yeah, yeah, I know. My parents still think I'm eight. My mom decided there was a chill in the air," he shrugged uncomfortably in the jacket.

"You could just 'lose' the jacket ..."

"Yeah right, then the next time I'd have two, 'just in case'."

They talked for a few minutes more, mostly in English with a few Japanese phrases intermixed. Andrew's attempts were broken and awkward, especially in contrast with Kitsune's silky, controlled speech. But there was no doubt, he was getting better. She thought back to the somewhat shy boy that had approached her a year before asking her to help with him Japanese. He's come a long way ... some day he might actually get it. In truth, she was thankful for any opportunity to speak her native tongue. It had not taken her long to pick up English, and she now spoke with a degree of fluency that made her almost indistinguishable from a typical American, but she still missed hearing Japanese spoken. The others on the bench sat watching them, bemused by the polyglot conversation.

Kitsune smiled and waited while Andrew thought for a moment, his face grew serious: "Atarashi rekishii no senseiwa totemo hennandane?" She spoke Japanese so infrequently now that she unconsciously translated the phrase into English: The new history teacher's very odd isn't he? The smile faltered on her lips, she nodded and switched to English, "Yeah, what a weirdo, and his smile ..." Kitsune half-mimed a shudder as she experienced a cold wave creeping up her spine -- a sensation that had nothing to do with the chill that crept into her thighs from the near-frozen metal on which she sat. Andrew laughed, not very convincingly. "... And I'm sure that's not his real name."

"How do you figure? It almost sounds Japanese," Andrew said uncertainly.

His intuition impressed Kitsune, "That's the thing, it is a Japanese word. In Japanese, his name means 'round face' or ... 'moon face'."

Andrew raised an eyebrow, "You serious? I guess it's fitting." He lifted his arm and pointed, "Maybe he's from there."

Kitsune scooted closer to him, leaned back against the bench, stretched out her neck, and laid her head on his shoulder. She felt the thrill of contact with another living being. Her eyes traveled along the length of his outstretched arm to his extended finger. It pointed at the faintly illuminated full moon hanging suspended in the purple of the late afternoon sky. Kitsune took her head from his shoulder and gave him a skeptical look.

"I'm serious. He's definitely odd enough to be from another planet."

"Mr. Moon-Face, eh?"

"Yeah, a regular man-in-the-moon."

"All right, so in any case, what's he doing at our school?" Kitsune asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Andrew replied solemnly. During the tenure of their friendship Kitsune had learned that Andrew was nothing if not sincere in speech. They sat side by side for several minutes in comfortable silence, listening to the conversation that had developed concurrently with theirs on the other side of the table. Then, "So what's in the bag?"

Kitsune drew the manga from the bag and handed it over. He spent a few moments glancing perfunctorily at the pages.

"What's it about?"

"Well ... it's about foxes."

"There used to be foxes by my house when we lived in the suburbs. Their screaming always creeped me out at night; they sound like crying babies. But that doesn't really explain why anyone would write an entire manga on one." Andrew gestured at her with the manga, looking at her quizzically, waiting for more.

"Okay, foxes aren't just animals in Japan, they're spirits; mythological figures. They're tricksters."

"So they enjoy screwing with people's minds?" Kitsune shrugged, "Yeah, that's the gist of it." She smiled, "Although it can be quite complicated. Have you ever heard of the kami Inari?"

Andrew shook his head.

"He's the rice-god in Japan, obviously a pretty important guy. Anyway, some foxes were sworn to his service, they're called Myobu and they're generally seen as good omens. At one point every castle, town and monastery would have had a shrine to Inari, and its entrance would have been guarded by two white foxes. Then you have Nogitsune, they're the ones that run around tricking people."

"Why?"

Kitsune looked a little surprised, "Because they can. I don't think it's really something they consider, just the way they are." She found herself getting caught up in the explanation, Andrew's inquisitiveness made him a good audience. "They can't die, but they can be killed ... They exist on a different plane, a different level of reality, but they can live for a long time on this one, close to a millennium. The older a fox is, the more tails it has, the really powerful ones, the ones that serve Inari, and a few others, have 9 tails."

"That's pretty cool, kind of seems like they'd get in the way at times. You'd be a little conspicuous while working your trickery ..."

"Oh, they were also shape shifters. The really good ones could perfectly mimic the human form, although their tails are always there, usually just hidden away."

Andrew nodded thoughtfully, "So what type of tricks are we talking about?"

Kitsune shrugged again, "It varied. Some seduced men; they're really good at doing the beautiful women thing. Some just wanted to trip you up. There were some really evils one that toppled entire kingdoms. The one thing you don't want to do is cross a fox though, they'll get revenge and you're lucky to end up dead."

"Charming," he leafed through a few pages, "So what's this one about."

Kitsune's eyes skimmed the story on the open pages. "It looks like this fox," she pointed to the page, "has made a bet with another fox that she can make the Buddhist monk lose faith. Here, turn a few pages. Unfortunately for the fox, she falls in love with him right before he's killed by the head of the local mob in town. Next page. Of course, the fox gets revenge--I told you that you don't want to screw with a fox -- but she can't bring her love back to life. The fox wanders off heart broken, sad no?"

Andrew nodded, musing, "Interesting story. So, as a kid in Japan, did you believe in this stuff?"

Kitsune's eyes looked amused, "I still do. Anyway, it's getting late, I've got to get home."

Andrew promptly stood, offering his arm. "Here, I'll walk you home?"

Kitsune stood and stretched, then brushed past his arm, "Nah, that's all right, it's not far. See you tomorrow though."

"Bright and early. Shitsureshimasu."

***

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Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited.

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