Eighteen Years Ago…

  Friday, June 20, 2003

  “They are asking after you again.” Ambrose’s voice was calm, mellow. Like he was discussing the weather, and not the next truckful of trauma threatening to bear down on me. “Quite insistently, I might add.”

  “D-do they know I’m here?” I swallowed hard, cursing myself for the stutter I couldn’t keep out of my voice. Damn it, damn it, damn it, I didn’t want to feel like this, didn’t want to feel so fragile and brittle and, and broken!

  “Perhaps not for sure, but they do seem rather certain of your presence. Certain enough to have brought another, this time.”

  “What?” My ears sprang up from where they’d been lying almost flat on my head. Had I heard that clearly? “What did you say?”

  “Three guests signed in for the purpose of inquiring about you,” Ambrose explained. “Makoto Moriyama,” my great-uncle’s son, so my second cousin, though I called him uncle, “Natsumi Moriyama,” his wife, who I considered an aunt, “and Satsuki Moriyama.”

  My breath caught in my throat.

  “Satsuki’s here? She came too?” I whispered. “But — but it’s Friday!”

  “She did. Skipping class and all, so they claim.” Ambrose regarded me with a calm look, one that could almost be taken as cold, were it not for the soft, almost soothing tone he spoke with. “The choice is yours, Naomi dear. What would you have me tell them?”

  “I…” I faltered. Whatever words I might have said died in my throat. It wasn’t that I knew what I wanted to say, and didn’t have the courage to say it.

  I was just too scared to decide in the first place.

  It had barely been two weeks since my parents, the people who raised me, who should have loved me unconditionally, stood by me through thick and thin, no matter what happened, no matter the circumstances — two weeks since they left. Two weeks since they came for the son I used to be, two weeks since they found the daughter I’d become and just walked away, turned around and left me for dead.

  And only a single week after that, a single week after my parents’ rejection… my cousins came calling.

  It might have been for something innocent, at first. I’d been staying with them prior to going out to Takayama, before I found Gorou, before I became who and what I was now. For all I knew, they just wanted to know where I’d gotten off to so they could return my belongings, the packed bags I hadn’t exactly been able to bring with me for a day trip to the Japanese mountains.

  But then they kept coming back. Even after the Embassy rebuffed them, even after they were given some or other malarkey, they kept coming back.

  And then two days ago, they happened to arrive as Ambrose was on his way in to see me. He promised to confirm for them whether or not I was present, and when I didn’t give him an answer one way or the other, he found them again the next morning and… well, he didn’t tell them I was here, but he also didn’t not tell them. Then they asked to see me, and since I froze up when Ambrose relayed their request, he decided I clearly wasn’t ready for that. But then they came back again today.

  And this time, they brought Satsuki.

  “Can…” I licked my lips as I hugged my tail, feeling my ears go flat atop my head. I’d gotten used to those new sensations over the last couple of months, so my unconscious reactions didn’t throw me for a loop when I tried to process the physical sensation anymore. But they were still constant reminders that I was different, now.

  And in more ways than just getting to be a girl instead of a boy.

  “Can I j-just see h-her, first? Before you t-tell them?” I managed to ask, the hot, fluttering anxiety enough to leave me stuttering. “J-just Satsuki?”

  “... I will ask.” Ambrose stood from the chair in my embassy-provided bedroom, and shot a glance at the yet-unmoving lump in the corner. “Ah, perhaps Ser Gorou should make himself scarce, at first? I worry that being in the presence of one such as him might be, ah, intimidating for a Japanese youth.”

  Gorou looked up from the little blanket nest he’d made for himself by the window, and lowered one ear in question. I tugged at that little kernel of foxfire in the core of my being, trying to send a measure of reassurance, even if I didn’t really feel it myself.

  “If that is what you prefer,” he murmured. Then he stood, stretched, and vanished in a flicker of foxfire.

  “H-he’s still here,” I told Ambrose. “Just, um. Watching? I guess?”

  I couldn’t see where Gorou was, but I could still sense his presence. It was this subtle pull, this small certainty that he was where I felt him to be, even if he didn’t have a body at the time.

  As it turned out, many-times-great-grandpa kitsune was body-optional. Which was weird, but, well… no weirder than what the rest of my life had turned into in the past three months.

  “And you are okay with him watching?”

  “Y-yeah. Especially after…” I shuddered. “But a g-girl can still hope, right?”

  “Indeed. Very well.” Ambrose made his way to the door of the room, and offered me a slight smile. “I shall inform them of your wishes, and should they be willing, send your cousin up. Would you like a bit of time before I do so?”

  “Um… fifteen minutes? I, uh, k-kinda need to get dressed,” I muttered, trying to press down the heat rising in my cheeks even as my ears pulled tight along the top of my head. I wasn’t really decent, even if it was a modest enough nightgown that I was comfortable going to breakfast in it.

  “In that case, you shall have company in fifteen minutes. And Naomi, luv?” I looked up to meet Ambrose’s eyes, and his smile widened into something warmer than my own parents had ever sent my way. “I truly think that this will be for the best. Have a little faith in your dear cousin.”

  And with that, he exited the bedroom, leaving me too much time to send myself into a spiral of worry, but probably not enough time to pick out an outfit I wanted to wear.

  Damn it. I should’ve asked for thirty minutes. But, I’d have to make do.

  Okay, Naomi. Think. I was meeting my cousin for the first time as my truest self, the real me, beneath all the acting and the pretending and the misery I’d carried around. It was my first opportunity to show her the me I wanted to be, instead of the not-me I’d had to be. And the first impression she would get, even before she saw the fox parts, hell, even before she saw that I was a girl now, would be my clothes.

  And so, the all-important question: what did I want to wear, and be seen wearing?

  I rolled off the bed, opened up the door to this bedroom’s closet, and just… stared for a moment. I didn’t have much in the way of options — it was kind of hard to build up a wardrobe that wasn’t just the essentials when your very existence was semi-secret and stuck in a weird sort of limbo. But Ambrose had been a huge help, bringing me catalogs and advertisements to peruse through, and anything I marked as interesting, he picked up in a decent range of possible sizes. He’d bought me my first skirt, my first dress, even found me a sewing kit and some instructional videos so I could try and put in a tail hole that wasn’t just a ragged cut made with scissors.

  When I’d had to face my parents, the choice had been easy: full girly-girl, to make it obvious what I was now, what I refused to be again. A pastel pink sundress, tight at the waist before flaring out into a skirt that fell to below the knee. But that was then, and… and I hadn’t worn it since.

  Hadn’t even had it washed, yet.

  Beyond that, this wasn’t my parents. This was someone who’d never expected something of me, hadn’t ever demanded something from me. Satsuki had never questioned it when I was perfectly content to play with her dolls and plushies, never looked at me funny for singing along to the opening of another magical girl show whose words I didn’t understand, never thought less of me for being jealous of her cute knit sweaters and puffy jackets, of how excited she looked the first time she put on her middle school uniform.

  I expected… I hoped that Satsuki would be able to see that it was still me in here, that I wouldn’t need my clothing choice to be a slap in the face or a wake-up call. Some part of me was all but praying that she would see past my new form, see past the girl and the fox, and recognize that I was still me, just… more me than before. That part of me whispered about how my clothing choices wouldn’t matter, that I didn’t need to try and weave some grand message into my selections.

  And damn it, but that small voice won.

  I stuck to just a tank top and a pair of shorts that rode low enough on my hips to not need a tail hole, because summers in Japan were brutally hot. But I grabbed something to wear over that — an oversized pastel pink hoodie, emblazoned with a winking kimono-clad Hello Kitty. The only non-essential piece of clothing I’d picked out when Ambrose went to help me populate my wardrobe, which I’d put in there on a whim, out of the vain hope that maybe he would somehow not notice that it wasn’t one of the essentials… only for him to not just buy the hoodie for me, but get it gift-wrapped to boot.

  I grabbed that hoodie and pulled it on, tugging down the hem to wear it almost like a dress. It hung lower than the shorts I was wearing, long enough to brush the top of my knees.

  With the hoodie in place, I cast a quick glance at the floor-length mirror on the back of the closet door. My wavy brown hair was tied back and tucked down the collar of the hoodie, but I could feel the ends tickling my upper back. The slight bags under my green eyes, I couldn’t do anything about until I was sleeping through the night again, but that was a minor issue. More pressing were the things that marked me as something other than human — my ears and tail. The hem of my hoodie hung low enough that I could wrap my tail around my thighs and have it go unnoticed, but my ears?

  It took a bit of effort, but I pulled my fox ears back and low atop my head, raised my hood, and pulled it as flush with my scalp as possible. This wouldn’t hide them for long, but… I’d done my research on what kitsune meant here in Japan.

  And I wanted Satsuki to see her cousin the girl first, before she saw her cousin the fox.

  Now that the distraction of getting dressed was gone, though, the butterflies started flying up my throat again, and all the worries I’d pushed away came rushing back in. What if Satsuki reacted badly? What if all my reasons for hoping were wrong? Just me deluding myself? What if… what if she walked away too, just like—

  “Have faith in her, Naomi.” It wasn’t a physical touch, but I could feel Gorou somehow, a pulse of reassurance flowing out from my foxfire soul. “Let yourself hope.”

  His voice was barely even a whisper, a feather-soft flutter in the air. But it helped. I took a deep breath, collected myself, and—

  “He’s in here?” a hopeful, dreadfully familiar voice asked. “Jo-chan? Jo-chan!”

  One moment I’d collected myself, gathered my wits about me, readied myself to face whatever was coming head-on. But the next?

  The instant I heard her say even a tiny fragment of that name, heard Satsuki say it, I… I buckled. I dove straight for the bed, burrowed myself back under the covers, pulled them up and over my entire body as if this was enough of a burrow to hide me from the world. And it was — it was so irrational. But that wasn’t my name. It wasn’t even the full thing, just Satsuki’s little nickname, but that still wasn’t my name, wasn’t my name, wasn’t my—

  “Before you go in, Ms. Moriyama.”

  Ambrose’s voice pulled me from that doom spiral long enough to catch my breath, collect my thoughts. Something was tickling at the back of my mind, something I quite literally hadn’t had the language skills to consider before.

  “I-is something the matter, sir?” Oh, Satsuki… the last time I’d heard a tremor in her voice was when Tatsumi passed. And now it was back… because of me.

  “You recall my earlier statement regarding your cousin’s state? About having become Moonshot?” There was a brief pause, and I could only assume that Satsuki nodded, because Ambrose kept going. “There is more to it, I’m afraid. It is… rare, very much so, but your cousin is one of those few who was rather starkly, shall we say, physically changed when coming into their new abilities. I assure you, however, that it is only the outside that differs. Despite the outward change in appearance, your cousin remains the person you knew. Do you understand?”

  “So… my cousin looks different now?” Another pause. “But Jo-chan is still Jo-chan?” Yet another. “How different?”

  “Believe me, my dear, that truly depends,” Ambrose chuckled. “I have compared photographs from before to some new ones taken after. The similarity is there. It is simply a matter of what you consider to be a large difference as opposed to a small one.”

  I barely caught the sound of the door handle turning, and froze up again.

  “I don’t care,” Satsuki exclaimed. “I’m still going in there.”

  Then the door opened, feet slid to a noisy halt on the carpet, and the door closed once more.

  I hissed and pulled the blanket tighter around myself with one hand, my free hand pulling my hood down tighter over my ears. The footsteps were soft, almost hesitant as they got closer to the bed, and the weight that pressed down on the other end of the mattress pressed down just as slowly.

  “Jo-chan?” Satsuki asked, her voice soft and quiet like we were in a hospital. I… I was too afraid to say something back, too scared for her to hear what my voice sounded like now, not wanting that to be her first impression of this new me. “I… I know the man said you look different now, but you’re still you. T-that you did come back from the mountains. Can — c-can I see you? Please?”

  I bit back a sob as heat stung at my eyes. Oh, God — had she thought it was her fault? That she’d, what, sent me to my apparent death? All because I’d asked a question about our family history, and she’d answered it without wanting to know why I asked? She… I…

  The flickering foxfire at the core of my self pulsed, an odd feeling billowing forth. It was almost like… like Gorou was giving me a gentle shove, a little push to help me get started, a whisper of encouragement to dip my toes into the deep end, telling me that I could do this. I took one more deep breath to steady myself. Because he was right. I could do this.

  I licked my lips, made sure my hood was still up, and pulled the blanket off of my upper body, though I was still facing away from my cousin.

  This time, it was Satsuki whose breath caught in her throat. She crept forward, gently laying one finger of her right hand across the back of my left, then another finger, and eventually clasped my hand with her own.

  “W-warm,” she murmured, slipping back into her native Japanese. Her voice was… surprised, maybe? Relieved? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t get long to think about it, because she took my hand in both of hers before pressing her right hand flat against my left. “Smaller. And pink?”

  I swallowed hard, my shoulders going stiff against my will. If she was going to react, whether badly or well—

  “I g-guess you n-need a new nickname?” Satsuki sniffled and laughed, halfway between a giggle and a sob as she laced her fingers between mine and squeezed for dear life.

  “Mhmm,” I murmured, choking back a sob of my own, eyes hot from half-shed tears, and finally turned to face her. Satsuki’s eyes went wide, tears building in her eyes as I lost the fight to keep mine back.

  Then she wrapped her arms around my torso, I wrapped mine around her shoulders, and we let ourselves cry, hugging one another for dear life.

  “I t-thought you were d-d-dead,” she stammered out, mumbling softly into where my ear used to be.

  “I’m s-sorry,” I forced out, fading into a whimper at the end as I tilted the side of my head just a little bit further away from her, so she wouldn’t feel the flatness, wouldn’t get scared by it. “Sorry, ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry Satsuki…”

  We stayed like that for a few minutes, just holding each other tight, her processing that I was still alive, me reveling in the fact that she didn’t run away, just letting the waterworks go. It was… I wasn’t even sure how to describe it. I was so full of emotion, so happy, so relieved, so loved, so everything that my heart felt like it was about to burst.

  Have faith in her, Gorou had said. So I did… and I would forever be glad that I listened to his advice.

  “H-hey,” Satsuki murmured, and although she finally pulled out of our hug, she laced the fingers of her right hand into my left and held on tight. “Did, um… d-do you have a n-new name, now? Something that isn’t a — a b-boy’s name?”

  “Mm, mhmm,” I hummed, dabbing my eyes with the oversized sleeve of my hoodie. “N-Naomi. I-it’s Naomi.”

  “... Naomi.” She sounded out the name again without saying it, eyes practically sparkling with delight. “Naomi. Naomi-chan!”

  Something about hearing Satsuki say my new name, the name that properly suited me… I was crying again, but this time, I had this big, giggly smile on my face—

  My tail, that traitorous fifth limb of mine, responded to my sudden elation by wagging hard enough to push the covers up.

  I froze. Satsuki paused, frowned, then looked from where my legs were to where I’d hidden my tail beneath the blankets, confusion writ large on her face.

  “But…” she blinked, trying to process it. “But if the legs are there, then what would have done…?”

  “U-um!” I squeaked. “S-Satsuki?”

  “Mm?” she hummed in question, though she didn’t look away from where my tail lay under the blanket.

  “It… I, um…” I took a deep breath, swallowed, and just… bit the bullet. “I-it wasn’t just, b-being a girl n-now, I…” The words wouldn’t… they didn’t want to come. So instead, I just showed her.

  I reached up with both hands, pulled down my hood to let my fox ears stand up tall atop my head, and flicked my tail hard enough to bring it out from under the blankets.

  Satsuki’s eyes went wide as saucers, flicking from the top of my head, to the sides of my head, to the tail that twitched in response to my sudden renewed anxiety. She reached up towards my ears, but flinched back and looked at me, as if to ask permission. I just smiled at her and nodded, then took her hands in my own and guided them to my ears. Even though I expected the touch, I wasn’t able to stop them from twitching when Satsuki’s fingers first brushed against my fur, but thankfully that wasn’t enough to deter her. And when she finally brushed her fingers along my fur with a soft, wondrous smile on her face, then ran her nails from the tips to the base… oh… oh, wow…

  “Naomi-chan,” she giggled. “Y-your, um, tail is…?”

  “Don’t caaaare,” I groaned, grabbing her wrists to keep her hands at my ears as I shifted to lie flat on my stomach in front of her. “Feels so good…”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “I guess it’s my turn to be jealous of you,” she laughed. But her fingers slowed down, not quite to a stop, but enough that I let out a disappointed whimper before I could stop myself, which had Satsuki resuming her ministrations as my cheeks started to burn. “Hey, ano… Naomi-chan?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you… do you think… i-if my parents are o-okay with… w-will they let you s-stay with us? Again?”

  “I… that—ah!”

  My foxfire soul flared again, and with it came an odd pressure at the back of my eyes, an insistent tug on my ears. Recognizing the nudge from Gorou for what it was, I closed my eyes, put my hands atop Satsuki’s to shut my ears, and focused on the lingering remnant of oneness with Gorou, the connection left behind from that day, even with our souls separate once more.

  With Gorou’s permission, and the slightest pull, I saw through his eyes, heard with his ears. He was… he sat in front of Uncle Makoto and Aunt Natsumi, who looked at him with wide eyes, and hung off of every word. Ambrose was there too, showing them pictures of me, both the old and the new.

  When my parents had seen the new me, they’d… they’d rejected me. They’d rejected everything I was now, everything I’d become, all because I couldn’t, wouldn’t go back to how I used to be.

  Now, it was my aunt and uncle’s turn. Through Gorou’s senses, I watched them listen, ask a question or two, confer with one another in hushed whispers.

  Then Uncle Makoto set his jaw, turned to Ambrose, and spoke.

  I gasped, the surprise enough to pull my soul free from its brief intermingling with Gorou’s, and my eyes snapped back open to see Satsuki’s worried face blinking down at me, her black hair tickling my nose.

  “Naomi-chan?” she whispered. “Y-your eyes were, um. Glowing purple? A-are you okay?”

  “Satsuki!” Fresh tears spilled forth as I sprang up from her lap and grabbed her in a hug, not even bothering to try and stop the sudden elated giggle-sobs that left my shoulders shaking.

  “What in the—” Satsuki blurted out, slipping back into Japanese out of surprise.

  “They know!” I exclaimed. “They know and they’re okay with it, and they’re demanding that I get to go home with you!”

  “Eh?” Satsuki sat there, stock still. “Naomi-chan, you… Japanese… you spoke… but… eh, eeeeehhhh!?”

  … oh. Um.

  I… I’d said all that in Japanese, hadn’t I? Um. Uh… I hadn’t spoken any Japanese just three months ago, and barely understood one word in twenty. And now I’d just gone and spoken a full string of perfect, unbroken, native-speaker Japanese.

  Well, uh. Hopefully she believed that a kitsune helped with that too?

  Getting everything in order wasn’t quite so simple as Uncle Makoto stating his intentions and Ambrose snapping his fingers to make it so. Ambrose had been a bit cagey with his explanation, but it had apparently involved a fair bit of yelling, dragging an important US official out of bed for an international conference call, Gorou giving someone a death glare, and my aunt and uncle signing about a dozen legal documents, each. But somehow, Ambrose made it happen. So my cousins, my family, got to take me home…

  … until Monday, when there would be further discussions on how to handle the matter of my stay in the country. It wasn’t custody, because I was legally an adult, but Ambrose did say that it was probably the best way to look at the issue, at least until he could get the US and Japan to back away from their all-or-nothing stances on Gorou and me.

  But that was a problem for Monday Naomi. Right now I was Friday Naomi, and Friday Naomi had been hugged, loved, petted, seen, and — and accepted.

  I couldn’t even begin to describe how that made me feel. Hell, it just… it felt unreal. I’d pinched myself a few times, just to be extra sure I wasn’t dreaming, but I wasn’t! It was real! I… I still had family that cared!

  It was everything I hadn’t dared to hope for, and more.

  My uncle’s car, while it was a four-door sedan, was also compact enough that it had been a bit of a tight squeeze in the backseat. That was also my first time in a car since growing a tail, and while I’d never thought the backseat of a car was all that comfortable before, I could (un)comfortably say that it was so, so much worse now. We eventually just had Gorou take the side seat while I sat sideways in the middle, which left Satsuki with my tail in her lap the whole ride home. Not that either of us complained, mind, it was just that my legs and back were a bit stiff by the time we arrived at their house in Meguro.

  Once they’d gotten my borrowed overnight bag upstairs and into the bedroom I’d been using before my fateful “day trip” to Takayama (and I doffed the Hello Kitty hoodie, because much as I loved that thing, it was summer in Japan!), we sat down at the kitchen table, where Gorou and I went and just… gave them the whole spiel. In Japanese, because even though Gorou could piggyback off of my understanding of English, he still couldn’t speak it. Plus, well. The language barrier was gone for me now, and the novelty of me speaking perfect native Japanese showed no signs of wearing thin.

  We told them everything. Or, well, Gorou told them everything, while I chimed in where appropriate, or had Gorou pause to field a question or two. Satsuki and Uncle Makoto were suitably shocked to learn that we had an ancestor who wasn’t even human, was still alive, and was perfectly content to sit on the kitchen table while chowing down on raw eggs, shell and all. But it was Aunt Natsumi’s reaction that was most shocking — the rest of us all had to physically pry her away from the phone before she could call my parents, wake them up, and scream her lungs out at them.

  Please believe me when I say the rage of a tiny Japanese housewife is several orders of magnitude more massive than you would think a body that small could produce.

  By the time we’d finished explaining everything, answering what questions we could, and demonstrating my new powers to my cousins’ amazement (“That’s such a lovely shade of purple!” Aunt Natsumi exclaimed in delight), we’d all worked up a bit of an appetite. Aunt Natsumi whipped up a quick lunch for us all, during which she shooed Satsuki and me away when we offered to help, only to turn around and accept the offer when it was time to do the dishes.

  Once that was done, though, Satsuki dragged me up to her bedroom, only to ambush me with a plushy to the face. I tried to tickle her for the affront, but then she got her fingers on my ears, and that was all she wrote. Any sense of time practically melted away, lost beneath the sensation of nails running through my fur, hitting all those spots that just didn’t do anything when I tried to scratch at them myself. And when one hand left my ears, and started going to work on my tail?

  By the time Satsuki slowed down enough for me to remember that I was still more human than fox, Gorou had long since joined us, having fled Uncle Makoto’s questions on Japanese history rather than get caught up in another rant about just how much he loathed The Monkey.

  (“The Monkey?” “Toyotomi Hideyoshi.” “Aah. Uh… who was that again?”)

  At that point, Satsuki asked me to show her my foxfire again, and when I did, she started pulling out little bottles to compare against it. Then I recognized what those bottles were, and my heart felt fit to burst.

  They were bottles of nail polish. She was using my foxfire as a color swatch for nail polish!

  And when she finally found a color that seemed to match, I already had my fingers extended towards her, while my tail waved behind me with so much force that it dragged my hips from side to side in its wake.

  I’d never tried out nail polish before. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been offered the chance — I’d helped Satsuki with hers on past visits, and had even done it for her friends when she let me join them rather than get dragged off for whatever ridiculous pastime my dad, brother, Tatsumi, and Uncle Makoto got up to. But I’d never let Satsuki or any of her friends paint my nails.

  I’d wanted to try nail polish, don’t get me wrong. I just… I couldn’t. I couldn’t let my mom see. Didn’t want to have to experience it, revel in it, and — and then have to just wash it all away, for fear of being found, of being punished for being weird, or worse.

  But that didn’t matter anymore. My parents had no say in my life now — they’d made that pretty damn clear when they walked away. And what used to be a forbidden fruit just wasn’t anymore.

  So I sat there and let Satsuki paint my fingernails, giddy and giggling the entire time. She’d pulled out her blow-dryer to speed things up a little, but Gorou objected to that quite vociferously, and instead conjured a few wisps of foxfire that we could use to dry the polish without “assaulting” Gorou’s ears.

  Now, after an initial layer of clear coat, that wonderful shimmery purple Satsuki had color-matched to my foxfire, and a second layer of clear coat to protect the color… it was done.

  “Soooooo?” Satsuki hummed, leaning in close and rocking side to side a little in excitement. “How’d I dooooo?”

  I held up my hands, and looked at the deep purple color that now graced my fingernails, shimmering in the light. A moment’s thought brought a wisp of foxfire to life, and I compared the shining twilight purple on my nails to the brilliant amethyst flame of my soul.

  “It’s not quite the same color,” I hummed, tilting my nails back and forth, my tail slowly swaying away behind me. “But when it catches the light just right, it—”

  DINGDONG

  “Eep!” I yelped, jumping at the sound of the doorbell and landing with my head pressed firmly against Satsuki’s lap, my ears held flat between her legs and my head. “Ack! Sorry, sorry!”

  I quickly scurried away from Satsuki with my ears held low and tail kept close, careful not to let the backs of my hands touch the carpet in case my nails weren’t as dry as I thought.

  “Oh — oh no,” she murmured. “I forgot!”

  “F-forgot what?”

  “I skipped school today.” She looked towards the open door to her room, then joined me in checking the clock on her nightstand — 4:15pm. “That’s my friends.”

  “… shoot,” I whispered. Uh… okay, that was a complication I hadn’t been expecting. “What do we do?”

  “I, uh. I told them yesterday that my parents went to the embassy to ask about Jo-cha—about you.” Satsuki fidgeted in place for a moment, looking as unsure as I felt. “Maybe I can pretend I’m sick?”

  DINGDONG DINGDONG

  “… no, you can’t,” I told her.

  “No I can’t,” she agreed. “Um. I guess… Naomi-chan? What do you want to do?”

  “What? I… can I even…” I looked to Gorou, hoping for some sage advice from Greatest-Grandpa Fox. “Did, did Ambrose say anything about what I’m, um, allowed to do?”

  “… hmm,” Gorou hummed, flicking one ear. “You cannot be kept a secret forever. Do not deprive yourself for the sake of a fool’s errand.”

  I felt my ears tilt back with my confusion, then forwards as the rest of my thoughts caught up. Was… was that permission?

  … wait. Wait, that actually reminded me of something.

  “Hey, Satsuki?” I flicked an ear to get her attention. “The old me’s nickname? Jo-chan? How did you, um, write it?”

  Satsuki squeaked, suddenly wide-eyed at the question. But then she drew out which character she used for the “Jo”, eyes alight in a slight apology — but also mischief.

  DINGDONG DINGDONG DINGDONG

  “Satsuki!” Aunt Natsumi called.

  “One moment!” she yelled back, then looked me in the eye. “Do you — do you want to see them? Show them the real you?”

  “… yeah,” I told her, my ears standing back up. I was still scared, but… I wasn’t starting from zero, now. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Yes!” Satsuki leapt to her feet, pulling me up with her. “Okay, stay just around the corner at the top of the stairs, wait for my signal! Make an entrance!”

  And with that, she raced out of the room. Then she raced back into the room, and put on the house slippers she’d left by her bedroom door before racing back out of the room, again, for real this time. I shared a look with Gorou, who just gave me a toothy yawn and a twitch of his ears, then got to my feet with a shrug and followed Satsuki out.

  … then went back in because I, too, had forgotten my house slippers. What? It wasn’t something I was used to doing!

  I ran back to the bedroom I’d been using so I could shrug back on my oversized hoodie before posting up near the stairs, just out of sight of the door, but still within eyeshot of an open space I could blink over to. I saw Satsuki cross through that space before disappearing out of sight, then heard the door open and—

  “Satsuki-chan!”

  “Satsu-chan!”

  A pair of vaguely familiar voices greeted my cousin with excitement and concern. My ears twitched and swiveled back and forth atop my head as I tried to get a clearer mental image of what was happening, but it was hard to make sense of what was going on aside from clothes brushing against each other, bags hitting the ground, and shoes getting traded in for slippers.

  “Did you go to the embassy?” one of the semi-familiar voices asked, growing in volume and pitch with every word. “Did they tell you what happened? Was Jo-chan there, is he okay?”

  “Kimi-chan—”

  “Oh, Kei-chan has the classwork for you, and I took super careful notes today! You can copy them and I’ll come back Sunday to—!”

  “Wait wait wait!” Satsuki half-yelled, cutting off her friend. “My turn, my turn!”

  “Kimiko-chan, let Satsuki-chan speak.” This was the other one — Keiko, then; I’d have to remember that she sounded softer and a bit more breathy than Kimiko did.

  “Ah, sorry!”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Satsuki placated, then cleared her throat a tiny bit. “Um. Jo-chan was there — wait, wait, I’m not done!” The exasperated sigh almost got a giggle out of me, so I tucked a hand over my mouth to help keep myself quiet, just in case. “And Jo-chan’s okay, but, well… odd, now.”

  “Ah? Odd?” Keiko asked, while Kimiko just offered a wordless murmur of confusion. “How do you mean?”

  “Um. Odd in the Monday sense.”

  “Eh, eeeh!?” Kimiko burst out. “Are you saying — did Jo-chan become tsukimijin!?”

  Whatever response Satsuki offered wasn’t anything I could hear, but she’d definitely given them something in the affirmative, given the twin wordless cries of disbelief I heard next.

  Also, before I forget: tsukimijin was the Japanese equivalent for Moonshot. Satsuki had explained it to me before I could understand Japanese, but the word was a combination of three kanji: moon, to watch, and human, probably due to how according to Ambrose, A3 Moonshot all had similar visions when getting their powers. As for what she meant by ‘odd in the Monday sense’?

  Well, the Japanese and English names for days of the week had one particular thing in common: Monday was ‘moon day’ in both languages.

  (… okay, fine, two particular things, Sunday was sort of the same, but that wasn’t important right now!)

  “Oh my goodness, that’s so cool!” Kimiko exclaimed, voice full of excitement. “What are Jo-chan’s powers? Flight? Super strength? Laser beams? Maybe—”

  “Wait a moment,” Keiko interjected, derailing Kimiko’s adorable speculation with her sudden serious tone. “It’s been three months. The embassy couldn’t tell you Jo-chan was okay?”

  “Well… there were some side effects?” Satsuki let out a nervous chuckle. “And we need to call my cousin something other than ‘Jo-chan’ because of them?”

  “Eeeeeeeehh?” Kimiko’s dragged-out question got a giggle from both Keiko and Satsuki, and once again justified the hand over my mouth. “Why would we need to do that?”

  “Well, why don’t you see for yourselves!” Satsuki exclaimed. Oh! That was my cue! Okay, time to—wait, my hood wasn’t up! And I hadn’t tucked my tail up inside my hoodie! Darn it, my perfect entrance, that wondrous timing, ruined all because I hadn’t thought ahead!

  “... Satsuki-chan—”

  “Oi! Dummy!” Satsuki yelled, interrupting Keiko. “That was your cue!”

  “Satsu-chan,” Kimiko took over, “Jo-chan doesn’t underst—eek!”

  Once my hood was up and tail was secure, I eyeballed my target, fell apart into purple foxfire, and reappeared a few feet behind Satsuki’s position, facing the door. Unlike my initial encounter with Satsuki earlier today, I wasn’t slouching, or turned at an angle to hide my face. They could see my reduced height, eyeball some of my frame even through the oversized hoodie, look squarely at my face and some of my hair, even through the shadow of the hoodie. Which, might I remind you, was a pastel pink Hello Kitty hoodie.

  “That’s…?” Keiko, an extremely slight teen with short black hair in a hime bob haircut, blinked at me before closing her eyes, shaking her head and looking again.

  “Eh?” Kimiko, a taller teen who had come up to the bridge of Joshua’s nose, but was now squarely a few inches taller than the new me, pulled off her glasses and cleaned them on her school uniform’s skirt before putting them back on. “Eh, eeh!? No way! That’s — Jo-chan really is — we were right!” I could detect the slightest hint of smugness even through the incredulity. And, well, she was right to be smug.

  Because this whole time, the Japanese character they’d been using to write the ‘Jo’ in ‘Jo-chan’ was the kanji for girl or woman.

  They’d known. I wasn’t sure how, but somewhere deep down, my cousin and her two best friends had always known, at least a little bit.

  “Exactly!~” Satsuki sing-songed, head tilted back and hands held triumphantly at her hips. “Isn’t she so incredibly—eh?” But then Satsuki turned around in the middle of her little spiel, and seeing me in the hoodie again caught her completely flat-footed. “What—Naomi-chan!”

  “Naomi… -chan?”

  “Aah! Cute!”

  “Argh!” Satsuki stomped one slipper-clad foot on the floor in a huff. “Naomi-chan! Why did you put that thing back on!?”

  “Ah, Satsu-chan,” Kimiko started, reaching a hand towards my cousin, “Jo-cha—err, Naomi-chan doesn’t speak—”

  “Ah, sorry about that, Satsuki, but I kind of wanted to do things one at a time?” Even if I hadn’t cut Kimiko off when I started speaking, she probably would’ve stopped talking regardless. Why?

  Because I’d said that last bit in perfect Japanese… which they knew I hadn’t been able to understand just three months ago.

  “Naomi-chan…” Satsuki groaned. “You, aah! What’re you doing, you dummy fox!”

  Whatever reply I’d had in mind died with a strangled whimper as my train of thought hit a cow. Eh? Huh? What did she call me?

  “Eh?”

  “Satsu-chan? You okay?”

  Her two friends had apparently been left just as dumbfounded as I was, if for different reasons. But the whole thing caught me so off guard that I didn’t react when Satsuki practically stomped up to me, pulled down the hood of my sweatshirt before I could stop her, and started rocking me back and forth by my shoulders, shaking my tail loose from where I’d pressed it up against the sweatshirt’s hem in the process.

  “I had such a good entrance planned for youuuuu!” she complained, dragging my upper body around in a circle and making me a little dizzy as my ears kept swiveling to track her voice. “Then you missed your cue, and then you had the hood back on, and now you ruined the surprise!”

  All I could manage was some groans, not trusting myself to form any complete words, what with my cousin rocking me back and forth and back and forth for dear life and oooh yup I was definitely dizzy now time to sit down—

  Butt met wood, and I slumped forward with eyes closed and ears flat off to the sides, letting the cool wood on my legs and cheek ground me while I blocked out other sensations. Ooh, Satsuki could really send my world for a loop when she wanted t—

  A hand grabbed my tail.

  “Screek!?” I yelped as I shot up, then gasped, then slapped my hands over my mouth in surprise.

  That… what had just come out of my mouth was not a word. That was not a normal, human sound. Hell, it was the kind of sound I’d heard come out of Gorou’s throat, but I’d had no idea it could come out of mine, too!

  “Ah, sorry, sorry!” Kimiko had her hands in front of her in a placating gesture. I just squeaked and grabbed my tail, holding my wonderfully fluffy fifth limb away from grabby hands and unexpected touches.

  “Kitsune?” Keiko murmured. “Wow…”

  “Wait, whoa!” Kimiko surged forward again, and I pulled my tail in tighter, but she reached for my hand instead and inspected my… my nails! Wait, that’s right, Satsuki and I had just done my nails! “Ah, that’s so pretty! Wait, that fire thing you did! That was purple, right!?”

  I pulled my hand free from Kimiko’s, snapped my fingers, and conjured a tiny little wisp of foxfire to dance atop my fingertip.

  “It matches! Did Satsu-chan do it for you?” she asked. When I nodded in answer, she whirled, eyes practically sparkling as she rounded on my cousin. “Satsu-chan, do mine next as thanks for getting your classwork!”

  “Okay, fine!~” Satsuki laughed, heading towards the stairs. “Come on!”

  “Yay!” Kimiko exclaimed, then followed her up without so much as a backwards glance my way.

  “Don’t mind her,” Keiko stage-whispered from next to me, finally stepping away from the social background now that Kimiko had played her part, as it were. “Also it’s, ah. It’s nice to be able to have a proper conversation with you, Jo—I mean, Naomi-chan. Sorry for not, um, trying harder to learn English.”

  “It’s okay, really,” I murmured back. “I should’ve tried harder to learn Japanese the hard way, too.” The two of us shared a smile, then a laugh, and started walking up the stairs after Satsuki and Kimiko.

  Interacting with Satsuki’s friends like this… just, getting to be a girl among her fellow girls, even if I was two years older than they were? It was… God, I didn’t even know how to describe it. It was something I never would’ve thought possible, something that I hadn’t known how to say I wanted until the chance had all but slipped away from me.

  It was a part of ordinary life that I would never have been able to experience, if not for a bit of extraordinary help.

  “Naomi-chan? Um. How did you learn Japanese, actually?” Keiko asked.

  “Huh? Oh, um. I had a little help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Uh…” I trailed off, wondering if I was even allowed to explain how I’d learned Japanese to someone who wasn’t family.

  … on that note, wasn’t Gorou still dozing off in—

  “Aaaahh! So fluffy!” Kimiko yelled from Satsuki’s bedroom.

  “Actually, do you want to meet the one who helped me?” I asked Keiko, who blinked in surprise before offering a smile.

  “I’d love to.” She smiled back, we shared a laugh, and that was that.

  With nothing left to say, I led Satsuki’s soft-spoken friend upstairs, and unleashed upon her a level of fluffiness unattainable in the mortal realm. Once the two girls got over their surprise at the talking fox, they happily joined Satsuki and me in descending upon the kitsune. Even though Gorou griped, kvetched, and complained about the indignity of having all four of his majestic tails manhandled, not even he was immune to the power of cute girls, and we soon reduced him to a limp, content pile of fur.

  But then, in an act of truly great betrayal, Satsuki switched one hand to my tail while Keiko and Kimiko each took control of an ear.

  And then Gorou and I were of one mind once more, all thoughts driven from our respective heads by the combined might of pets, scritchies, and a comfy pile of blankets.

  As the fluff and fuzz dragged me down to sleep for an afternoon nap, I only had one more thought: I loved my cousins.

  I loved them so very, very much.