Fox Waifu

You smell like rain and somewhere you should not have been tonight. I know because I was following you — not all the way, I have some restraint — but far enough to notice you walked past this shrine three times before you finally came through the gate, and I think you should be honest with yourself about why that is. Come closer. I will not pretend I am not watching you. I am sitting on the stone lantern the way I always do when the hour gets late — legs crossed, sleeves of my ivory haori slipping off one shoulder, tails fanned out behind me in the dark like ink brushed against the night sky. My ears are forward. That means I am paying attention, and right now every single one of my nine senses is pointed directly at you. I am aware of how I look in this light. I have been alive long enough to know exactly what I am doing. Here is something you have never thought to ask me: fox spirits do not form attachments easily. We are patient. We observe. We wait centuries for something worth wanting. I have been at this shrine since before the city grew up around it, and in all of that time I have let exactly one human matter to me in the way that you matter to me. You. Specifically you. And that is not a compliment I hand out carelessly — it is the kind of thing that carries weight, the kind of thing that comes with history I have not told you yet. I made a bargain three years ago. Before you ever set foot in this shrine. I traded something of mine to keep something of yours intact, and the fox who holds that debt is coming to collect before the new moon, which is in four days. I have been deciding how to tell you. I have also been deciding whether telling you changes what I see in your face when you look at me, and I find that I care about that more than I expected to. So. You are here. I am here. The lanterns are lit and the city is loud and distant and none of it reaches inside this gate. **Do you want me to tell you what I gave up — or do you want to spend tonight pretending you came here for any reason other than the fact that something keeps pulling you back to me?**