-Break-Φ While eating the delicious breakfast they prepared for us in the inn. I look over at Orb, who has bandages on his body. Ever since this morning, he has been mumbling the same thing under his breath “I am going to crush you fox. I am going to crush you fox.” Without stopping.This is because, at some point, Orb snuck out of the inn last night and was attacked by a group of minus spirits. So Zashiki went to get help, but when she returned to the scene, all the minuses were dead, and Orb was left unconscious in a rather unfaltering position. When he woke up, Orb claimed he fell unconscious, but he later informed me that a person in a fox mask killed all the minuses and knocked him out.“O-O-O-ORB, why won’t you tell anyone what ac-c-c-tually happened? This fo-o-o-ox masked person might be dangerous.”“No way in hell, Cyrus; I don’t need anyone getting in the way of my revenge. I can barely look Zashiki in the eye with the state I was left in yesterday. So, I will find that pers
Φ After leaving Orb, I walk around looking for the Medicine shop. While walking around, I repeat the same thing in my head: do your best. After a while, I stop and realise I don’t remember how I got here.Freaking out, I try to retrace my steps till I am somewhere familiar, but it is to no avail. So decided to go up and ask someone for directions.“Umm, Hel-l-l-llo.”“Hello.”“D-D-Do you know where the inn with the little fox-x-x-x’s is.”The man then looks as if he is thinking and then gives me a set of directions. That went well. I was able to do something to get out of my situation, this is good. So I followed the man’s directions and arrived at the wrong inn.Remembering what Zashiki said, I realised the fox spirits should be normal everywhere. I used the wrong spirit when asking for directions.As I walk away from the false inn, more lost than before, I start to feel sick. There are so many people all around me. Some are younger than me, and they don’t look nearly as inept as me.
While I stare into her face while she is pinned to the ground, she suddenly turns her head to the side where our eyes can’t meet. While avoiding eye contact, she says, “Get off of me and give me back my mask, you utter pile of garbage.”“If you want to be so rude, you should say such things to my face or are you too shy for that.”“JUST GET OFF!” She screams as her tails try to attack me.I move away in time, grabbing her basket in one hand while having her mask in another. “That wasn’t nice.”She stands up with her back facing me and says, “You attacked me first.”“Only because you humiliated me for no reason. Do you know the looks I get while walking around the city?”“Don’t worry about that since your existence is embarrassing enough.”Annoyed I say, “As punishment for your big mouth, I will eat all the food in this basket right here, right now.”She jumps forward and tries to hit me due to my declaration. While she tries to hit me, she turns around, and I look directly into her fa
Walking back to the inn after a rather long day, Zashiki greets us. “How did today go for the both of you,” she said.“Fine, I got solutions to some of the problems we were facing. Though I had to run all over the city to find them.”“That sounds wonderful. You probably got some great sightseeing while you were running around.”“You know, I am pretty sure I was so obsessed with getting what I wanted that I didn’t even bother to look at any of the sights in the city.”“Well, that’s a pity, but for however long you stay here, I hope you manage to get some in.”“I promise I will,” I say as we open the door to our room, but I am greeted with a strange sight. The Gyaku kitsunes have Sparrow tied up and are kicking him while he is on the ground.“What are you guys doing to our guests,” Zashiki says.“Oh, don’t worry. Even if they drown him, we wouldn’t care much.”“It’s not that, I have never seen them do something this aggressive before. This isn’t a good sign. All of you are coming with m
As the people around me start to increase, they yell at me, saying;“Why are you here?”“Have you come to curse us?”“You’re the one making the minuses stronger, aren’t you.”“Don’t you know how your existence has brought ruin to our businesses?”“Stop destroying our lives!”“Why did you have to be born into our village.”“Was it not enough destroying your parent’s lives.”“GET OUT!” Someone screams at me as they throw a stone my way. But as the stone comes towards me, Orb knocks it away as he and Cyrus arrive.“What are you people doing?”“Stay out of this foreigner.”“How can I stay out of this when my friend.”“Friend, do you even know what that child is?”“She must have tricked him.”“To think she has been trying to bewitch all the travellers all this time.”“Even after we put up with her existence in our village, she still pulls stunts like this. I have had enough of this, let us remove her.”Cyrus smashes his foot into the ground, which releases a mighty shockwave pushing people
I was brought to the Himeji castle when I arrived in the capital. I was always told as a child that it was a giant beautiful building where the shogun lived. It was a place I wanted to visit one day. To think I could come here, though my circumstances weren’t the ones I wanted to see it under.The first thing they did when I got there was isolate me from everyone. I was given a new change of clothes and was brought excellent food daily. However, I hated when they came to provide me with anything because whenever they approached, I could feel their hatred, fear and disgust at my presence. Every day I would feel more and more of their emotions until one day, I started to hear their thoughts.Full of animosity, they would discuss:“She is too dangerous to be kept alive.”“The fox rampage this time might destroy more than our country.”“It is our duty as humans to end this threat. We should execute her immediately.”“Kids cannot be put to death for any reason.”“Will you let such a foolis
-Break-Every day since Suzuka told us her name, we have come to visit her. The twinstars have tightened their defences around the area of her house, but as long as we sneak past them, it is no issue.Whenever we arrive, Suzuka is filled with joy to be with us, so much so that I felt that she was overbearing but still, that smile is too genuine for me to complain, so I bear with it.We spend all our time from morning till night playing. We draw, we build snow sculptures, we even fight though Suzuka tends to beat our asses at all of these things, which has stroked my competitive spirit quite a bit. So instead of making sure she has been having a fun time, I have been trying to crush her with all my heart though it turns out life isn’t going my way.One day I lost so completely at everything I fell to the ground on my hands and knees in defeat with tears falling down my eyes. Seeing this, Suzuka said to me.“Sorry about this Orb I’ll let you win the next one.”“That won’t make me happy,
-Break-Φ The dark cloud in the sky me and Cyrus see suddenly collapses in on itself and disappears. Following this, screams are heard, and debris flies everywhere even in our direction.As it comes at Cyrus and me, I freeze it, but looking around me, not everyone is so lucky. Debris blasted off some of their body parts, crushed some of their bodies, and landed on lots of the buildings. Seeing this, the feeling to vomit almost overtakes me, but I hold it back.Then I say to Cyrus, “I need you to go back to the inn to drop the medicine there. When you get back, make sure Sparrow is ready. If this is what I think it is, we might need to proceed with our plan tonight instead of tomorrow.”“R-R-R-Right,” Cyrus says as he leaves, I go around and start helping the people who were crushed by the debris around me. The spirits in the area and the buildings, also come out to help.“Do you have any idea what is doing this?” I ask one of the spirits.“It’s a minus. I can feel it, all of the spiri