The Tanuki, the Laundry and the Sacred Pudding Incident

The day began with one singular, catastrophic problem: Someone. Had. Stolen. The. Pudding. Not just any pudding—Kaede’s sacred yuzu milk pudding, which she kept hidden at the back of the ice box like it was a national treasure. It had a handwritten label that read, in terrifying brush strokes: “TOUCH THIS AND BE REBORN AS A DUNG BEETLE.” So, naturally, it vanished. “WHICH OF YOU UNCULTURED, PUDDING-THIEVING GOBLINS TOOK IT?!” Kaede bellowed from the kitchen like an angry tengu. Yuna sat at the table with an innocent expression that could’ve won her sainthood. “Maybe it... evaporated?” Kaede stared her down. “It was milk-based, Yuna. It doesn’t just evaporate, it rots and betrays you slowly.” Ren, polishing his practice sword in the corner, murmured, “Check Haru’s room. It smells like crime and poor decisions.” Meanwhile, up in the forest behind the shrine, a certain tanuki spirit—let’s call him Chōbei—was lying belly-up on a mossy rock, bloated and blissful. He had never known human cuisine could be so divine. That strange pale girl with the unblinking eyes always left little offerings. Bits of bread, old rice crackers, half a takoyaki once... but this pudding? It was holy. Chōbei hiccuped and rolled over, already plotting his next snack heist. Back at the shrine, Kaede declared a household investigation. She made Haru scrub the back garden with a toothbrush ("TO TEACH YOU HUMILITY"), forced Ren to write 500 characters worth of apologies to the pudding, and assigned Yuna a tragic fate: laundry duty. Yuna sighed dramatically, dragging a basket twice her size across the gravel courtyard. “I was born in snow, not sweat.” From the top of the porch, Haru called, “You were born in a shrine, not a kabuki play. Calm down.” “I am calm,” Yuna huffed. “This is just my face when I suffer.” She reached for a bedsheet and tried to hoist it onto the drying line—only for it to immediately collapse on top of her like an aggressive ghost. “Mmf. I have become the laundry.” A moment later, a shadow loomed beside her. It was Ren. He wordlessly helped lift the sheet off her and draped it across the line with mechanical precision. Yuna blinked up at him. “I thought you were writing an apology poem to pudding.” “I did. Seventeen haiku. It’s laminated.” Kaede’s voice echoed from inside, “AND TRANSLATED INTO ROMANJI OR I SWEAR—” Yuna turned back to the laundry, muttering, “This house is a sitcom waiting to happen.” By dusk, the pudding mystery was still unsolved, though the doll altar (now just decorative and covered in dust) had somehow gained a sticky spoon and a yuzu-scented crime scene. Haru was grounded. Ren had achieved poetic vengeance. Kaede was stress-mopping the entire shrine. And Yuna? Yuna sat on the veranda, watching the last rays of gold drift across the treetops. Her hair shimmered like silk threads under a silver sun. “I’m too young for this drama,” she said to no one. Chōbei the tanuki peeked from the bushes, eyes gleaming. “...but if you bring me another pudding, I’ll start leaving you bits of roasted chicken,” Yuna added casually, not turning around. There was a rustle, then silence. A deal had been struck. As night fell and the mountain exhaled its chill breath over the shrine, the stars blinked above, amused. The white-haired girl of Hakushindō, burdened with a wild family, pudding politics, and invisible tanuki trades, lay down to sleep. No spirits were bothering her. No ancient dolls whispering. No snowstorms stirring. Just another normal, slightly ridiculous day. She was six. She had time. For now, she was just a girl. Even if that girl was quietly plotting dessert-based divine negotiations with minor forest gods. Ren’s Emotional Meltdown (And Other Events That Happened in Exactly 3 Seconds) There were three things Yuna Tsukimori had learned by age six and a half: à If Ren starts whistling before breakfast, it means he’s about to break something. à Kaede does not believe in subtlety. Or forgiveness. à Haru doesn’t have emotions. He has... emotion updates that happen once a decade. Which is why what happened on a perfectly normal morning would go down in Tsukimori Family history as: “The Incident.” It began, as most great disasters do, with socks. Yuna was in the entryway, trying to put on her tiny boots for a quick snack errand into the village. She was humming the theme song of her imaginary tanuki idol group (The Snacku Snackus), when she noticed something strange: Ren was just standing there. Staring at a small drawer in the hallway. Unblinking. Breathing shallow. Holding one sock. That’s when Yuna knew something was terribly wrong. “...Ren?” she said slowly. He didn’t move. She walked up behind him, peered around his shoulder. In the drawer were six socks. All lefts. Not a single right in sight. He whispered, voice cracking like a dying scroll, “I have... no matching pair.” Ren dropped the single sock. Ren fell to his knees dramatically, fists clenched, staring into the drawer like it had just insulted his ancestors. Ren shouted to the ceiling, “IS THIS THE FRAGILITY OF ORDER?!” Yuna blinked. “…Well, someone’s gonna need a snack and a hug,” she muttered, backing away slowly like he was a wild deer on a breakdown. Kaede rushed into the hall wielding a mop. “Did someone break a dish?” “No,” Yuna whispered. “He broke himself.” Ren’s emotional meltdown lasted only three minutes. He eventually folded all the left socks into strange origami cranes and declared, “I shall wear asymmetry with honor.” Then went off to train in the courtyard like a tragic poet from a drama nobody wanted to reboot. Yuna stared at him from the veranda while crunching on a rice cracker. “He’s in his Artsy Era again.” Haru appeared beside her, covered in hay and shame. “What happened to him?” “Socks,” she said. Haru blinked. “That’s… dark.” “Deep,” she corrected. “Do you think he’s possessed?” “No. Just Ren. Same difference.” That afternoon, Yuna finally made it to the village with Kaede—who insisted on dressing like a full-on shrine maiden just to buy daikon. Yuna, meanwhile, stomped around in her too-large boots, munching on mochi and pretending she was the reincarnation of a snow queen with a superiority complex. (“Bow before me, mortal cabbage!”) They passed the town’s noodle shop, the rice vendor, and old man Nakamura who kept offering Kaede his sixth marriage proposal. (“Still a no,” Kaede said, without looking up from the eggplant.) Yuna stuck her tongue out behind her sister’s back. Nakamura winked at her. “You’ll be a heartbreaker someday.” “I already am,” she replied sweetly. “I’ve emotionally ruined two tanuki and one boy with a crush on my pencil case.” By the time they returned home, the sun was dipping behind the trees. Ren was back to normal. Sort of. He was standing on one foot, balancing a rock on his head, and muttering poetry about impermanence and sock betrayal. Kaede just nodded once and said, “He’s healed.” Haru was trying to train a beetle to sit. He had named it Takashi. Yuna laid on the engawa, face to the sky, arms flopped like a dropped puppet. “I love this family,” she sighed. “But I’m one tea spill away from becoming a wandering hermit.” Kaede stepped over her. “You’ll never survive alone.” “I have pudding connections, Kaede.” “...Fair.” And as the stars crept into the sky, Ren stood proudly with two mismatched socks, Haru played a flute that sounded suspiciously like a kazoo, and Yuna sat beside her mother weaving ribbons into her hair. No demons. No curses. No haunted dolls. Just life. Silly. Strange. Beautiful. Even if her brother had just challenged a laundry basket to a duel.