CHAPTER 7

In all of Japanese history, there was only one antique record of a human outfoxing a fox. On the other hand, there were countless tales of the fox outwitting humans. Kou frankly didn’t like his odds.

“That tale was also a very specific case and only worked because the fox let her guard down,” Kou lamented. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to bring a whole mujina out of Tokyo. I could probably bring him under my protection or something, but I don’t wanna stir something with the kitsune.”

“I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing,” Himiko said, patting him on the head while chewing on her melon bread.

It was one of the times they weren’t actually on a library date. They just agreed to eat lunch together out of nowhere that morning. Most of the gossip about them going out had fizzled out—practically everyone had predicted that they were going to go out eventually since they started tenth grade, anyway—so they were swarmed with a lot less attention than just a week earlier. The cafeteria wasn’t as crowded as usual. Kou wasn’t sure why. He got Himiko her favorite melon bread while he got himself a yakisoba bread, which somehow hadn’t sold out yet as it was a limited-edition menu, so Kou figured that maybe giving that little offering to the mujina had been a good thing.

He wasn’t sure mujina gave additional luck when given an offering, but he wasn’t going to waste it.

“How so?” he asked as he started chomping.

“Firstly, the magic,” she said. “You said he didn’t use any magic apart from transformation, is that right?”

“According to him, at least,” Kou said. “He did undo his transformation before my eyes, so I could tell that he did use transformation magic. It’s also historically attested before.”

“Then isn’t that weird?”

“What is?”

Himiko took another bite, thought as she chewed, then took a sip of her milk. “The no-magic thing. It doesn’t make sense.”

Kou tilted his head. “Why?”

“I only detected one spell,” she said easily. “My dad’s a witch hunter, so he taught me early to detect magic. I know for sure he only used one spell.”

“You sure it isn’t because he has another spell going that was overpowered or something?”

“Nope. Positive. At least, I know my dad wouldn’t have missed it, so I won’t, either.”

“And you’re sure of this because…?”

“I’m better at that than my dad.”

Kou whistled. “Confident, are we?”

Himiko shrugged. “We proved it ourselves.”

“I love that confident side of you.”

She smirked. “So you don’t love me when I’m insecure?”

“I’ll love you enough until you’re not.”

“Oh, you and that sweet mouth of yours.”

Kou smiled in return. “The least these fangs can do for me is make sure I don’t bite more than I can chew.”

“I’ve been wondering about that, by the way,” Himiko took another gulp of milk before continuing. There was a bit of a milk-moustache on her mouth. “Do you actually suck blood? Out of people?”

“It just had to be blood,” Kou replied, wiping a bit of the yakisoba bread’s sauce from his chin, making Himiko realize to also wipe her milk-moustache. “For me, at least. I know that there were also vampires that had to drink only human blood, and there were those who could survive without any human blood as well. I think they were called chipi-chapa or something?”

“Chupacabra?”

“Yeah, that. They could survive only with farm animals’ blood. They had to drink a lot, though.”

“So you’ve been drinking non-human blood?”

“Oh, it’s human.” Kou took a bite into his yakisoba bread again, this time wondering if it’s really a good thing to tell Himiko something like this during lunch. “We usually just take a wee bit of donated blood. I don’t think we ever bought from high-risk hospitals, so we never caused scarcity. Blood donation centers sometimes get bad blood, we just offered to help dispose of them.”

“And that bad blood doesn’t affect you? Doesn’t it make you sick or taste bad?”

“It’s never bothered me before. Actually, I have no idea what makes blood taste good or not. I’ve had dirty blood that tasted alright and I’ve had healthy blood that tasted meh. I think it’s less the physical quality of the blood and more something else.”

Himiko nodded. “It’s not your physical half that needed the blood, after all.”

“Yup. By the way, why wouldn’t it make sense for the mujina to have no other magic going on?”

“Think about it,” Himiko said, taking one brutal bite out of her melon bread. “The story of the one kitsune that got tricked by a man.”

“The Ouji kitsune,” Kou said. “The kitsune were gathering by the Ouji Inari Shrine, one wanted to drink and trick a human, but the human recognized her, so he made her drink until she passed out and made her pay for the drinks.”

“And why do they gather at the Ouji Inari Shrine, again?”

“Because it’s … oh.”

Ouji Inari Shrine was a major Inari shrine, located in Ouji, Tokyo. While there were numerous shrines everywhere in Japan, they sometimes housed specific gods. Inari shrines were that kind of shrine: they were meant to worship Inari, the deity of the rice and bountiful harvest.

Inari was often described as a fox—a kitsune.

Inari shrines were power spots for the kitsune, and one with the strongest mystery in Tokyo was the Ouji Inari Shrine. It was said that the kitsune used to gather there on the yearly, creating kitsunebi or foxfire when they did. The story of the man who tricked the kitsune was one such occasion.

That yearly gathering was also why Tokyo was considered kitsune domain.

The kitsune should’ve detected Kurotarou entering their domain. It was precisely what Kurotarou himself said: they don’t like it when someone intrudes, especially if it’s another animal like a mujina.

So why didn’t the kitsune detect Kurotarou when he first entered Tokyo?

Heck, wasn’t the sharp noses of the kitsune the exact reason Kou was trying to rack his brains up to find a way to sneak Kurotarou out of Tokyo?

“You said this was only the first,” Kou said. Himiko nodded. “What’s the second?”

“The reason,” she said. “The reason behind it all. It doesn’t add up.”

This time, Kou tried to give it a little more thought first. “The reason … there are a few things here. There’s the reason he used the magic to transform—he wanted to avoid being hunted like a wild animal. This caused the reason behind the haunting—the form of a human being. He probably chose nopperabou out of habit, spells you’re more used to are easier to cast when you’re panicking.”

“Then there’s the reason the mujina stayed there,” Himiko supplied. “And also the reason the mujina even came here to begin with.”

“The reason the mujina stayed here was to look for someone…,” Kou actually put his yakisoba bread down for a bit, “because he felt compelled to … huh.”

And also the reason the mujina even came here to begin with.

Weren’t they one and the same thing?

Kou took a sip from his carton of juice. The mujina came here, to begin with, because of a compulsion that he couldn’t explain. He came to the middle school building specifically because of the same compulsion. He stayed because they were looking for somebody, because he was sure that he felt compelled to, at least until he regained their senses and found himself in the middle of kitsune territory.

Why was he undetected?

What compelled him to come?

Who was he compelled to look for?

“You’re right,” Kou said. “It doesn’t add up.”

“I could’ve also been wrong,” Himiko said as she finally finished her bread. “He couldn’t have only been emanating one magic. If the one magic I detected was transformation, then he was probably armed with another spell that I was less privy too. Either that, or the spell had fulfilled its purpose and dissipated.”

“And that is?”

“Shrouding,” Himiko said. “No way the kitsune couldn’t detect the stink of a mujina coming downtown. They would’ve at least sent someone to look into it, but there hadn’t been any movement yet.”

“Couldn’t they have known that I’m here?” Kou asked as he finished his own bread. “I mean, not to toot my horn, but I’m pretty sure my family’s pretty strong as vampires. Couldn’t the kitsune have just avoided messing with us?”

“That doesn’t sound like them, I think.” Himikio licked her fingers, then sipped her milk for a bit before continuing. “They were never the type to fear greater power. They’re the type to work around that. Human kings? Human military? They’d worm their way into human society to toy with them. Gods? Tamamo-no-Mae was no less than one herself, what’s to fear? The kitsune are pretty bad at obeying authority and pretty good at acknowledging them. Avoiding your family shouldn’t be on their cards.”

Kou fell silent. Actually, now that he thought of it, it was weird that he had never come into contact with the kitsune, especially given how Tokyo was, in Kurotarou’s tongue, kitsune territory. Shouldn’t they have considered at least his dad? Why hadn’t they knocked on the Kokonoes’ front door? So weird.

And then, the entire Kurotarou affair….

Compulsion. Kou couldn’t help but think back to the rogue oni—bloodlinking was a way to entirely override all thinking. It was why Lucy Westenra behaved entirely like a vampire after she was turned. Heck, even the still-human Mina Harker couldn’t resist Dracula’s influence: she had to be sealed within a holy circle to make sure she couldn’t leave before Dracula’s curse was cancelled.

Sure, Mina Harker didn’t go through the baptism of blood, but a powerful bloodlink could cause that kind of effect. Bloodlinking was half of the baptism of blood. It’s a simple ritual that couldn’t be underestimated.

Worse yet, bloodlinking wasn’t by itself a spell or a curse—it was closer to a Contract, and a Contract wasn’t traditionally considered magic. When Faust made the deal with the demon Mephisto, he wasn’t doing magic—it’s all the miracles Mephisto conjured afterwards that were magic. If Kurotarou was bloodlinked, not even witch hunters would’ve been able to tell.

That said, though, Kurotarou was different. First, Kurotarou didn’t lose his mind. If he truly was influenced through bloodlinking, like with the oni, Kurotarou would’ve been way more aggressive: like how the oni attacked a man, Kurotarou would’ve made much greater damage than what he’d done. In other words, even if he was bloodlinked, the bloodlink must’ve been weak.

Secondly, two consecutive cases of nightwalkers being bloodlinked somehow, ignoring the Authority? Kou could understand the Authority weakening enough to cause at least one or two oni to slip up and disobey, since the oni were bound to both the Authority and their own ruler. However, the mujina—like Kurotarou so gracefully said—didn’t form communities. They had no such hierarchy.

Unlike oni, they had nobody to obey but the King.

While bloodlinking could account for why Himiko didn’t detect any extra magic, it didn’t account for the rest of Kurotarou’s behavior.

Most importantly, Kou felt that this was something simpler—much, much simpler. It’s making his brain itch. I know this, but why? What is going on?

“How likely do you think you’re wrong?” Kou finally asked. Himiko’s look was grim.

“Frankly? Unlikely,” she said. “I’m not kidding—I’m good at magic detection. That said, it just doesn’t make sense for Kurotarou to be able to enter Tokyo without raising some kitsune flags, so this would be my first time being wrong.”

A mujina. Entering kitsune territory. Undetected.

Kitsune and their keen smell.

Kitsune territory. Tokyo.

Ouji Inari Shrine.

Ouji kitsune….

“There’s another alternative,” Kou said slowly. He took his final bite and finished the yakisoba bread, taking his time chewing the thing before swallowing because he didn’t like the thought that just crossed his head. “And I hate considering this at all.”

“What’s that?”

“That you’re right,” Kou answered. “Kurotarou only used one magic—transformation and nothing else.”

“So why did the kitsune not detect him?”

Kou sighed. “Because they couldn’t.”

Himiko stopped. Slowly, her eyes widened in horror. “You mean—”

“Yeah. The problem’s not your detection—it’s theirs.”

“Are you saying something happened to the Ouji Inari Shrine?”

Kou shrugged. “I can’t say. I’m just saying that it’s a possibility. After all, for any of this to happen, something’s got to give. It’s either Kurotarou had more than one magic and you misdetected, or he only had one magic and the kitsune misdetected. Both can’t be true at the same time.”

Actually, if the Ouji Inari Shrine and the kitsune of Tokyo were weakened for some reason, it would also explain how the oni could enter Tokyo to begin with. As Chi said, the oni avoided human power centers like a plague because of the long history of bad blood between the two races—Minamoto-no-Yorimitsu slaying Shuten-douji, Watanabe-no-Tsuna cutting off Ibaraki-douji’s hand, Sakanoue-no-Tamuramaro killing Ootakemaru … there’s just no more reason for the oni to so daringly engage humanity anymore.

Then, out of nowhere, two of them? Going rogue? In Tokyo, of all places?

Even the oni were very cautious of the kitsune. After all, of the monsters known as Nihon San Dai Youkai—Three Great Evil Youkai of Japan—two were oni and one was a kitsune. They knew full well how powerful a kitsune could be. They wouldn’t have dared to enter kitsune territory so thoughtlessly.

However, if the kitsune there were weakened….

Kou properly finished his juice and folded both the carton and his yakisoba bread wrapper. Himiko didn’t give her reply to his hypothesis, but they both knew the implication: if Himiko’s detection was right, then something big was happening. Everything that held Tokyo together was coming apart at the seams, and Kou wasn’t ready to know who was behind all this.

All he could do was silently pray that he was wrong. Maybe God would give this poor vampire a chance for once.

*