Chapter 14: Rain DayIt had been raining since before dawn.

  Yuki woke up to the sound of it drumming on the roof and the particur gray quality of light filtering through the paper screens.

  She y there for a moment, thinking that it was, objectively, a good sound. She’d liked the sound of rain before, and apparently, she liked it still.

  It was one of the steadily accumuting pieces of evidence that her core preferences had survived the transition more intact than she’d expected.

  She y there for another minute thinking about cold spots and cw marks—because that was what her life was now, apparently: thinking about magical infrastructure the second she regained consciousness. Then, she forced herself to get up.

  By midmorning, the shrine paths were running with water.

  Kuroki checked them anyway—she always checked—and came back with damp sleeves to report that the south trail was flooded past the second bend, the west path was passable but not advised, and the barrier markers were holding.

  “So, we’re staying?” Yuki asked.

  “Unless you want to try purifying something in ankle-deep rainwater.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  So, they stayed.

  Kuroki took over the main room table to work on her equipment.

  Sword grip rebinding, oiling the leather straps on her travel pack—small repairs that she apparently kept a running list of and addressed on weather days.

  She moved through the work with her usual methodical patience. No wasted motion.

  Yuki attempted calligraphy.

  She’d been attempting calligraphy for two weeks.

  Her characters were improving, in the sense that they were now clearly identifiable as letters rather than extremely confident guesses.

  She’d already filled three practice sheets and ruined two good scrolls. Tsukuyomi had reviewed one yesterday and called it “earnest,” which was absolutely not the same thing as "good."

  She set up at the far end of the table and worked on a prayer scroll.

  The house felt smaller in the rain—the walls closer, the amber light from the oil mps pushing back against the gray day.

  Outside the window, the forest was reduced to dark shapes behind a pale curtain of water.

  They worked in quiet, which by now had become a comfortable quiet. It wasn't the careful silence of two strangers, but the easy kind, where neither felt the need to fill the space.

  Around midday, Yuki ran out of paper.

  She went to the storage room, a small, cluttered space off the main building where supplies were kept, and where Kuroki’s travel pack had been slowly colonizing one shelf by mutual, unspoken agreement.

  Yuki navigated the familiar terrain: rice on the left, mp oil beside it, paper should be right—

  Her elbow caught something on the shelf.

  She spun around just in time to catch the cloth-wrapped item before it hit the floor, but the fabric slipped in the catch and the item tumbled loose into her hands.

  It was a book.

  It was small, fairly thick, with a cover illustration of a moonlit road and a lone figure walking it.

  The brushwork on the title was flowery and dramatic: The Red Road Home.

  She looked at it.

  She opened it to the middle—because she was the kind of person who opened books to the middle if given the opportunity—and read:

  She pressed her hand to his chest. His heart answered hers like a question finally asked out loud. Yuki closed the book.

  She opened it to a different page.

  He had traveled ten provinces and climbed a mountain and crossed a frozen river in winter, and he had done all of it for her.

  Looking at her now, he found he could not regret a single cold step. She closed it again, suppressing a grin. The stoic, deadly samurai read mushy romance novels.

  Curious, Yuki flipped open the front cover.

  There was an inscription on the inside fp.

  It was written in different handwriting from the rest of the text—softer, more informal, the handwriting of someone who wrote often and quickly: For a long road. Don’t lose yourself on it.

  She squinted at the signature. For a wild second, she thought it said Yuki. She looked closer.

  The brushstrokes were rushed. Yuri. Someone named Yuri. A sister, maybe.

  The footstep in the hallway was distinct and very close.

  Yuki had approximately two seconds.

  She shoved the book back onto the shelf—exactly where it had been, hastily rewrapping the cloth—grabbed the stack of paper she’d come for, and spun around.

  Kuroki was standing in the doorway.

  Grey eyes flicked to Yuki. To the shelf. Back to Yuki.

  “That’s mine,” Kuroki said.

  “I know.”

  “I—”

  “You dropped it,” Yuki said smoothly. “I put it back.”

  Kuroki’s expression didn't shift, but the silence stretched thin. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “I won’t.”

  Kuroki stepped aside. Yuki walked out, her heart hammering a completely unnecessary rhythm against her ribs. Behind her, she heard Kuroki retrieve the book from the shelf and the soft rustle of cloth being rearranged.

  They both went back to the table.

  They both resumed what they’d been doing.

  Neither of them looked at the other for approximately five minutes.

  (But something had changed. She reads romance. She had a sister named Yuri who gave her books for long roads. Yuki did not think about this. She thought about nothing at all. She was very, very focused on her calligraphy.)

  The rain eased slightly in the afternoon, settling into a steady, quiet drizzle.

  Yuki finished a scroll that was, without a doubt, the best she’d done yet. The characters were precise, the spacing even, the ink pressure consistent across the full length.

  She set it aside to dry, looking at it for a moment, and felt a genuine wave of satisfaction.

  She gnced over. Kuroki was still at the table, her maintenance work mostly done, sitting with a cup of tea and watching the rain.

  Yuki poured herself a cup from the pot that had been keeping warm and sat down across from her.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Kuroki didn’t look away from the window. “Probably.”

  “What did you want? When you were young. Before the cn had pns for you—what did you want?”

  The rain continued to fall. A minute passed. Maybe more.

  Yuki was starting to think she’d asked the wrong question, but she’d learned enough about how Kuroki operated to know the difference between a silent no and a silent considering whether to answer. This was considering.

  “To see what was past the eastern mountains,” Kuroki said finally. “We had a view of them from the estate wall. I used to stand there before anyone else was awake and try to see past the treeline.”

  “Did you ever go?”

  “Not to the east.” There was something almost dry in her tone. “I’ve been in seven provinces. None of them in that direction.”

  “Is that regret?”

  Kuroki didn't answer right away. When she did, her voice was careful, but certain. “No. It’s a remaining reason.”

  Yuki turned the phrase over in her mind.

  A remaining reason. Not a wound. Not something lost to the past. Something that was still there, still waiting, still intended. She liked that. It was a good way of holding onto something.

  She thought about whether she had remaining reasons of her own. Things she still intended to do.

  Two weeks ago, the answer would have been nothing—everything from her 'before' felt dissolved, gone with the body she’d left on a Tokyo street.

  But now, sitting in this small room with rain drumming on the roof, a half-finished calligraphy scroll drying nearby, a map of cold spots pinned to the wall, and a mountain full of people she was starting to desperately want to protect...

  She had some, now.

  She didn’t say this out loud.

  Evening came in stages—the rain lightening, the gray shifting to darker gray, and finally fading into actual night. Kuroki got up to do the perimeter check.

  She did this in all weather, because that was simply true of her in the same way that the rain being wet was true.

  She put on her travel coat.

  She had a sister named Yuri who gave her books for long roads. She had wanted to see the east and still did. She did perimeter checks in the freezing rain because that was her duty.

  Yuki picked up her calligraphy brush. She started a new scroll, because the completed one had been her best, and she was determined to improve on it.

  I wonder what kind of story she’d want, Yuki thought. Then, she forced herself to fold the thought over, put it away, and press her attention back into the ink.

  The character she was writing came out perfectly.

  She didn’t notice she was smiling until her cheek muscles told her.

  Author's Notee

  Hey guys! Just a quick note — chapters up to 30 are now live on Patreon if you want to read ahead! Feel free to check it out, and thank you so much for reading! ??

  Reincarnated as a Male Kitsune