Archive of Our Own

Mai’s train deposits her at the tiny station in her rural hometown at noon, precisely when the morning clouds have just burned away. She sits hunched on the single bench beneath the awning to avoid the sun. That’s one thing the city’s pollution is good for, at least: providing some extra layering.

This train station is more like an ageing couple’s neglected cottage than a public building, which is exactly how Mai remembered thinking of it on the night that she first left home. Almost ten years ago, now. She wonders if the taxi she called several minutes ago will be the same one that carried her then—the town is not big enough to need more than a single driver.

At first it’s quiet while she waits, eerily missing all the familiar noises of cars and people and planes overhead. But the longer she sits there as bait for the insects, a different kind of noise springs up. That’s when she really feels like she’s back home again—the wind rustling between the bushes flanking the road, bird calls swept up in the breeze, the distant sound of rushing water tucked somewhere among the trees ahead.

She misses the city. Not her life there, not her engagement to the man who has been calling her since last night, but the presence of the city, always thriving outside her window, constantly enveloping her in a cocoon of strangers’ voices, the smell of their food, the colors of street fashion passing below her window. There was so much fullness there that she could pretend some of it belonged to her. Here, alone at the station, she is painfully aware of the emptiness gnawing away at her, poking around her insides like a starving predator pushing past the limits of its feeding ground.

While watching the road, her eyes catch on a black spot tucked in between the bushes. Wings flap and dark beaks shine in the sunlight, crouched over something large and unmoving on the ground…an animal, maybe, or—

Despite her city instincts telling her to ignore the people lying on sidewalks, pressed up against unoccupied storefronts, she stands from the bench and creeps toward the side of the road. It’s clearly a person, she thinks, eyeing the unmoving figure warily. She lifts the bushes higher to catch a glimpse at their face and the movement sends the crows scattering on the wind.

“Are you alive?” she says. As soon as she speaks, the person’s head jerks up and their body quickly follows, rising with much more grace than Mai would expect from someone sleeping on the side of the road.

“Who are you?” the person says, not very kindly, and Mai can see now that it is a woman. She stands tall, gazing sternly at Mai, and although she wears a kimono, she doesn’t appear much older than Mai. A high ponytail of green hair sneaks over one shoulder—Mai feels a tug in her chest. Her own hair had been a similar color before she started coloring it dark.

“No, who are you?” Mai says, glaring back at the woman. “What kind of weirdo just takes a nap in the bushes?”

The woman looks around, like she has forgotten her surroundings. “I had not intended to fall asleep. But I haven’t traveled so far in many years. I think I may be lost.”

Mai is tempted to turn around and march back to the bench. As far as she remembers, there had never been strange people like this wandering around town—but then, she hadn’t been in town herself more than a few times growing up. She had been mostly secluded on her parents’ estate.

She glances down the road. No sign of her taxi. She rolls her eyes. “Why did you travel so far?”

The woman seems unbothered by her sarcasm, or maybe just misses it. “I’m waiting for my bride.”

Mai stares. “Your what?”

“My bride. She is visiting soon, and this is the way into town, isn’t it?”

Mai nods, still staring.

“I shouldn’t have fallen asleep, since my hope is that she sees my face and recognizes me.”

“You wouldn’t recognize her?” Mai thinks that even her fiancé would be able to pick her face out of a crowd.

The woman sighs. “Sadly, no. I know her name alone. I’m certain I saw her face once, but those memories have been taken from me.”

“Right,” Mai says. “Uh, good luck with your…bride.” What an unusual woman—so casual about something so taboo, yet dressed as though the past matters a great deal. Maybe she was a scammer; the bit about the ‘bride’ was meant to overwhelm a traveler’s natural suspicion, open them up to the idea of giving a homeless woman a meal, maybe even a place to sleep.

Whatever. Not her problem either way. And here comes her taxi. She lifts a hand, walking past the woman with as much acknowledgment as one affords a fallen branch. Keeps walking until the taxi reaches her and she opens the door, meeting the wrinkled eyes of an elderly man.

“Wait!” calls the woman.

Mai groans while quickly moving to shove her suitcase into the backseat. “Fuck,” she mutters to herself.

The man looks at her oddly through narrowed brows, examining the foreign specimen of a well-dressed, badly-spoken businesswoman from the big city. (Mai's not really a businesswoman, though, she’s just a woman who dresses sharp because her fiancé says it makes him feel like he’s fucking his boss).

“You forgot to ask my name,” the woman says. Her voice sounds close so Mai doesn’t want to look. “I’m called Maki.”

Mai chokes on a breath. The next one won’t go down her open mouth at all, like her lungs and the oxygen have become suddenly become negatively charged.

Things like that just happen sometimes, randomly. Randomly.

She cranks the window down as soon as she’s sitting. “Zen'in,” she speaks onto the breeze. “Zen'in Mai.”

She doesn’t glance back in the mirror as the taxi carries her away. She’s certain Maki will be gone when she does, a hallucinatory glimmer of the sunlight that dissolved when Mai moved out of the light, and it puts a twinge of disappointment in her chest that she knows from experience is better not to engage. So she helps herself to the scratchy radio and tries to imagine what it will be like to enter the estate that’s been withheld from her since she left as a teenager—wonders if her parents’ spirits delayed the journey to the afterlife so they could watch and deride her from above the gates, send a wind ripe with their words to nestle into open ears so she wouldn’t forget that she is not forgiven.

Maybe she should have waited the forty-nine days.

“Oh,” her aunt says when Mai shows up on her doorstep, prepared to collect the key. “You really came.”

“Did I have a choice?” she asks, copying the older woman’s frosty tone. “I thought no one else would volunteer.”

“Yes, well.” The aunt lifts her gaze past Mai, eyes darkening from whatever she sees there. Shakes her head and fixes her eyes back on Mai. Maybe she’s not the only one who fears the restless spirits. “That’s your fault. Not even their deaths could atone for your shame. My sister still isn’t forgiven.” Her voice cracks as she digs through a shawl pocket and pulls out a slender key. “You have a week to clear the place out.”

Mai takes the key.

Her parents' house is several miles outside of town. The roads get worse the further out the taxi goes. Badly maintained and fallen prey to nature’s slow reclamation because no one had much need of them at all; the townsfolk had no business out here and Mai’s parents had no interest in mingling with poor farmers and ignorant tourists.

After the third time the taxi lurches uneasily over a crater in the cement, Mai loses her patience. “I’ll walk,” she tells the man, pulling her luggage out from the back. She’s not going to pay—what’s some old man going to do? Yell and curse at her? Chase after her? He’ll be lucky to make it back to town without a flat tire.

He doesn’t do anything except look at her, and not even with anger, just something sad and disappointed. Mai sighs and stomps over to his window, yanking the appropriate number of bills out of her wallet. “Thanks,” she mutters and turns away without waiting to see his expression.

Stupid, weak girl, she hears in the wind.

There is at least another mile left before she arrives, but probably more like two. The spike in the afternoon’s heat is nearly over. Soon, it will begin to cool and shadows will soothe the blazing concrete, but for now, Mai walks on the side of the road. Occasionally she starts to drift down the sloping grass, like a magnetic force is drawing her toward the trees.

Unfortunately, there is still cell reception. Her phone rings out of the blue, a high, piercing noise that startles several nearby birds out of the trees. An ache springs up in her left temple. She thought she had put the damn thing on silent.

She drops the hand on her suitcase to pull the phone out, breathing in relief when it stops ringing. It seems like the sun has sunk lower in the horizon since she looked down. There are no streetlights on this road, she realizes, too late. Getting lost is a real possibility.

A growl draws her out of her head, sends her into an entirely new moment of realization; one that turns closer to fear when she sees yellow eyes glowing in the dim light ahead, floating closer to her. Another growl, close enough to feel in her bones, another pair of yellow eyes.

“Are you fucking serious?” she snaps, heart pounding, adrenaline pouring over her thoughts. Back away slowly if a boar displays aggressive behavior, she remembers hearing as a child. Back away where? Back all the fucking way to town?

Stupid, weak girl.

The light of her phone exposes a jagged rock lying a few feet away, the size of her fist. She drops the phone and grasps the cool stone, fingernails brushing against the grooves.

“What are you doing?” a voice says behind her. Mai drops the rock. Hates herself the next second. When it comes down to it, she’ll always fail.

She whips around and sees the woman from earlier, standing tall and confident in the dark.

Maki.

“You following me?” Mai demands. “I’ll call the cops.”

“I was not speaking to you,” Maki says, stepping past her. She addresses the yellow eyes, the faint outlines of hulking bodies, on the grass ahead. “You are threatening my bride. Leave.” One arm comes up in the air across Mai’s chest: a protective gesture.

There’s a long whine, and the sound of impatient hooves shifting on the ground.

“Wait. Bride? You’re insane,” Mai says incredulously.

Maki doesn’t waver. “Mai-dono. I’m sorry I did not recognize you earlier, but when I heard your name, I knew. You are mine—”

“Wait a fucking—”

“And I am yours.”

Mai stares blankly at the back of Maki’s neck. This woman is talking to wild boars, she reminds herself. Obviously there’s some damaged wires tangled up in her head.

“Okay, you’re crazy, but there’s a bigger issue right now—” she starts, and then abruptly forgets everything she was going to say next. Within a handful of seconds, a boar charges, its tusks bobbing threateningly in the dark, and Mai’s stomach barely has time to drop before she’s whisked into the air, suddenly high above the boar and the road, and the thing responsible for her newfound altitude is a massive talon—claw?—wrapped around her waist. She looks up and sees the head of dragon, mouth open and ivory fangs gleaming, green tufts of fur and slender, rope-like whiskers flowing in the breeze.

“Maki?” she asks quietly, barely hearing her own voice.

“Yes, Mai-dono?”

“Did you slip me whatever you’re high on?”

“I do not understand,” the dragon says. “I apologize for the boars. They should not have disobeyed me, but I did not want to kill them while you were present.”

“Why?” Mai asks, louder, half-disbelieving that she’s entertaining such an obvious delusion, and half-offended. “Because I couldn’t handle it?”

“No. I did not want to stain Mai-dono’s beautiful clothes.”

She kneels at the light-wood table in the first wing of her parents’ home. Something is holding her back from venturing beyond this room, even though she’ll need to examine each one in these three wretched wings before the week is done. Maybe she can leave her own bedroom for last.

“May I explain now?” Maki asks from across the table. She has been waiting patiently while Mai rummaged through cabinets to find a bottle of aged whiskey—sake just wasn’t going to cut it tonight.

Mai doesn’t answer right away. She takes another gulp and stares at the woman through narrowed eyes. Somehow she had known the way to the estate, a journey which had taken less than five minutes flying. The landing had been smooth, a hundred times more elegant than any plane Mai had ever flown on, and as soon as Maki had unfurled her grip around Mai, the dragon form had melted away to reveal a woman with green hair and a kimono, looking as though she had every right to be standing there in the shadow of the doorway.

“Why don’t you start with the ‘bride’ thing?” Mai says, smiling without a trace of sincerity. If this woman—thing—could truly change shape, then surely she was a yokai, come to claim Mai as easy prey while she mourned the death of her parents. Only, she didn’t mourn, and she would sooner die than willingly allow this yokai a single piece of her spirit.

Maki nods solemnly. “There is a local legend of a dragon who lives in the forest’s spring and calls rain from the heavens each year—in exchange, the town provides the dragon with a bride. They are happy to do so, because they think a human wife will keep the dragon faithful to the village. But the dragon simply does not want to be alone.”

“I don’t recall being designated as a dragon’s bride,” Mai interrupts.

“It is a role that ends in death of the mortal spirit, so the bride is often not informed when she has been chosen. I was not always a water dragon, but I inherited this power when I was still young enough to forget the past.” Maki’s gaze is steady on her, disorienting enough that Mai has to look away. “But from the moment I ascended, I knew my bride’s name.”

“What, like I was part of your fate?” Mai scoffs. “This is bullshit. If I’m going to die, why would I agree to this?” She keeps a steady hand around her drink. This isn’t like earlier, by the road, or in the past, when she choked each time the crucial moment came. She is prepared to smash the glass against the table and take her life into her hands right now—spill it onto her parents' unblemished floor if necessary before allowing anyone else to use it as their own.

Maki continues to look at her. She makes no move to approach Mai. “A choice is not typically given. Many before me have carried their bride into the spring the night she comes of age. But you were not here on that day, so I have been waiting for when you returned.”

Mai feels a tremor run down her spine. If she hadn’t left—run—from home at fifteen, would she have been carried away in the night and drowned on her eighteenth birthday? Is that what her parents had been saving her for? Had they known?

“But I will not be forcing you to leave with me,” Maki continues. “Waiting has taught me patience. And I intend to earn your true love, the way you have earned mine.”

Mai chokes on the whiskey, and it sears her insides going down. “What? We just—I’ve never met you before,” she protests, voice going high.

“Perhaps,” Maki says. “But I love you more than my life, and my affection is not easily granted. So I must assume I have known you before, once.”

“Or you’re insane.” Mai shakes her head in disbelief. “Or, you’re manipulating me, the way your kind does. Do I really look like the insecure, desperate kind of girl who would fling herself at a yokai declaring its love, indifferent to the consequences? I don’t know how many girls you’ve devoured this way, but I won’t be one of them.” She stands, still holding the whiskey. Her face must be flushed, but she doesn’t back down. “Leave. Now.”

Maki bows her head before standing, then bows again. “As you wish, Mai-dono,” she says and disappears out the front door. It shuts softly in place behind her. Mai sags back to the floor.

This trip is already exhausting, and she hasn’t even started cleaning yet. As unsettling as this encounter has been, if Maki really means what she said, then Mai shouldn’t have to worry about defending herself. She can do what needs to be done here and return to her life in the city—if it’s still there waiting for her. If not, she can make a new one. And the yokai can claim a new bride from some poor, unsuspecting family.

She takes the rest of the whiskey in one swallow and relishes in the burn as she opens the door past the dining room, steps into the cold, empty hallway of the first wing.

The morning birdcalls drift in through her open window and have her stirring awake earlier than she has in months. Strange to consider, she thinks, that trains and cars and drunk laughter outside her window doesn’t disturb her anymore yet the soft chirping of birds is enough to wake her.

She forages around the kitchen again to scrounge up coffee beans and starts a pot brewing while she walks through all the rooms in the wing, assessing the possessions left behind. Not bad, to start with, though she hasn’t set foot in the other two wings. There’s not much aside from family heirlooms, delicate jewelry, and kitchenware from her mother’s side, knives with engraved wooden handles and books with straight spines from her father’s side. What she can’t sell, or be bothered packing, will go in the trash. She’s already decided.

There’s a faint smell that permeates the air the longer she stays inside, something that smells like her parents. She burns incense to try to chase it out but if anything, she notices it more afterwards. So she pours her coffee and takes it outside, planning to sit on the front steps of the porch.

Instead, she almost steps on someone’s legs and nearly spills scalding coffee over the both of them.

“Fuck,” she mutters, licking the hot liquid off her finger. “What are you doing?”

Maki blinks up at her. She hadn’t been sleeping by the looks of it, with her back straight against the railing and hazel eyes as clear as water. “You told me to leave.”

“Yeah, leave. Not camp out on my front porch.”

“But how can I work toward earning your love if I leave entirely?”

Mai groans. “You’re more annoying like this than if you just tried to eat me.” She rolls her eyes and stomps back inside, leaving the door wide open. “Make yourself useful if you’re just going to sit out there. Everything in this house needs to be packed.”

Maki’s footsteps behind her are silent but Mai can still feel her presence slip inside, hears the door slide back into place. “Where should I start?” Maki asks.

“Wherever. It’s all worthless. Just don’t bother me,” she snaps and takes her coffee back into the room where she slept, the room where her mother had spent nights when another woman was occupying the spot in her husband’s bed.

The afternoon comes sooner than expected, and Mai’s stomach makes its displeasure clear. She ignores it and continues packing up room after room until her head starts to spin. She takes a moment to lean against a wall, looks out the window to see the sun already starting to set. She’s finished about half the rooms here today; if she does the other half tonight, that will leave the rest of the week for the last two wings. Maybe tomorrow she’ll go into town to buy some food but tonight, she’s okay settling her stomach with alcohol instead.

It takes about half of one glass before she wonders if she could ask Maki to fly her into town. Why bother with a cab when there’s a dragon at your disposal? When she had been in the air before, higher than she had ever been without being encased in a metal tube, she had expected to feel afraid. Kept waiting for it to sink in and send her into a panic, but somehow, it had never hit. The entire distance she had felt oddly calm, safer dangling in the sky than she had felt standing on the ground since arriving here.

Maki walks into the room, and Mai glances up, a lazy smile clinging to her lips. “Did you make yourself useful?”

“That is for Mai-Dono to decide,” Maki says evenly. She stands firmly in the doorway, like a sentry appointed to watch over the dining room.

Mai rolls her eyes and waves her over. “How many rooms did you finish?”

“All the ones that Mai-Dono left alone.”

Mai stares. “In the wing, you mean?”

“No. I dismantled the rooms in the other wings as well.”

“How? I know you’re a dragon but—” she cuts herself off. “In boxes and everything?”

Maki nods.

“Show me.”

She carries her whiskey with her as she follows Maki into the second wing. This is where her parents slept. She tries pretending that the looming shadows aren’t anything more than just that: shadows.

Maki’s voice breaks the aching silence. “There was one room here that I left alone. It seemed valuable.”

Mai scoffs. “Didn’t I say everything here was worthless?”

Maki says nothing. They head up the stairs, and at the end of the hallway on the right side, is the door to her father’s study. Maki slides the door open and they step inside.

It’s exactly the way she remembers. There are rows and rows of bookshelves that brush against the ceiling, likely housing a greater collection of literature than this town’s entire public library. His desk sits beneath the window, the curtains pulled tightly shut. The papers atop the cherry-wood surface are organized in delicate stacks.

“Well?” Mai says. “How are you so damn efficient?”

Maki gives her a strange look. She goes to the window and pulls the blinds back, uses the crank to open the glass. A rush of night air sweeps into the room, sends a few of the papers fluttering to the ground. “My method does not mix well with paper,” she warns.

“Go on.”

Maki lifts a hand and curls her fingers toward her palm. And just like that, the wind isn’t the only element pouring in through the open window. A thin stream of water snakes against the windowsill before splitting into several long tendrils that immediately begin to scale the bookshelves. The top row of books is pushed to the floor by one watery arm, caught by another before it can hit the wood paneling, and guided gently toward a box against the wall. Maki must have placed it there earlier.

Mai watches the books as they float past her. Already, she can see the pages turning dark and soggy, the beautiful, inked covers wilting in the water’s embrace. “Wait,” she says, and Maki raises her hand again. The water instantly pauses, hanging dutifully in the air. “I have all week. This can wait for another day.”

“As you wish.”

Maki beckons with two fingers and the water comes gliding back down from the ceiling, but it doesn’t disappear out the window. It lingers before Mai, dipping down to her feet before morphing into something more solid, purposeful, that soars up past her face, close enough to brush her cheekbones. As it flaps around the room, wings beating just like any other living thing, she can see it’s a bird, fashioned with stunning detail entirely of water. She wouldn’t admit it, but she’s disappointed to see it descend and finally slip back out the window and into the night.

“Did you like it?”

Mai doesn’t look at her as she leaves. “Magic is cheating,” she says.

That night, Mai lays out the futon she uncovered earlier at the opposite side of her room. The floor is an ocean between her and Maki, but it’s still close enough to hear the other woman’s snoring. She would laugh if it wasn’t so annoying. Apparently dragons can have nasal congestion, too.

When she wakes up, her stomach is no longer politely asking for food. She stumbles into the kitchen, still half-asleep, to put on a pot of coffee and scrounge in the pantry for something to cook. All she turns up is half a box of spaghetti, and nothing to put on it.

The front door slides open, and Mai pokes her head to the side to look. Maki steps into the room, dressed as elegantly as ever, carrying two handfuls of something brown and furry and…squirming?

“Breakfast,” Maki says, the corners of her mouth crooking up. It’s the first time she’s properly smiled, Mai thinks. “I hope you like rabbit.”

“I do,” Mai says. “But not when they’re alive.”

“Right,” Maki says. “I may have been a little enthusiastic.” And right there in the doorway, she breaks both of their necks. Doesn’t snap them, just crushes them in her palms, so quick that Mai could miss it if it weren’t for the crunching sound of their bones.

She leans against the wall. Her head feels fainter than before, and she’s pretty confident it’s more than just the hunger making her feel that way. “Will you take me into town?” she asks.

“I apologize if the rabbits made you uncomfortable,” Maki says once they’re airborne. It’s a wholly different experience during the day, when she can clearly see just how high she is above the trees, how cars on the road look like nothing more than insects slowly crawling across the landscape. Maki’s voice feels stronger in the air than it does below, impossible to miss even over the wind in her ears. “If you are fond of them, I can bring squirrels next time.”

“Don’t do that,” Mai tells her. “Or I’m moving your futon outside.”

The ride is longer this time than a few nights before, but it still feels over too soon. There’s that twinge of disappointment in her chest that’s becoming far too familiar when Maki starts to bring them back down to the surface. She lands in a clearing, tucked away from the prying eyes of the town center, and carefully releases Mai, then shakes her head in a way that reminds Mai of a horse, and the dragon form falls away.

Maki offers a grin. It feels more than a little cocky, but Mai can’t help herself from smirking back.

“If I were a dragon,” Mai says as they start toward the town, “I bet I could land more gracefully than you. You wobble.”

“If that is what Mai-dono believes,” Maki says.

Mai laughs and shoves her. “Don’t be like those men who only ever tell their wives what they want to hear.”

“I have no doubt that Mai-dono would be very proficient as a dragon, in all manner of things. But to fly, one must first be able to walk in a straight line.”

“That doesn’t count! I was drunk—wait. Do you drink? Can you drink?”

“I can do anything Mai-dono likes.”

She laughs again, and when they reach the paved road and see the rows of market booths set up, she even forgets to be nervous.

There’s only six days left now, so Mai knows she doesn’t need much food. Just enough for a meal or two and leftovers. At one point while she’s examining the fruit at a stall run by a young woman with an infant strapped to her chest, she loses Maki. Not like she’s worried or anything—it’s the yokai’s problem if she can’t keep up—so Mai just drifts to the next stall and starts looking at candles, completely unnecessary but there’s one or two that smell nice so she gets them anyway, plans to try chasing out the scent of death once again.

Then she looks up and sees Maki walking toward her with two woven baskets draped over each arm, overflowing with food.

“What—” Mai chokes out. “Why?”

“You haven’t eaten,” Maki says like it’s obvious. “Is this not enough?”

“It’s enough for weeks! Did you already buy it all?”

A nod.

She huffs, but moves to take a basket. “You better have an enormous fucking appetite.”

There’s not much going on at the square besides the market, but there are one or two souvenir shops to exploit the tourists and a run-down ice-cream parlor that looks like it hasn’t changed since the seventies. Maki wants to buy her something, but she also has a very loose grasp on the concept of money—she hopes Maki didn’t inadvertently rob the street vendors—so Mai insists that she wait outside with the food.

She emerges a few minutes later with two ice-cream cones, both matcha flavored because it’s the best and Maki should agree. She does, at first, but Mai catches the way her lip curls and yells at her until she admits that it tastes worse than garbage to her. But Mai ends up getting to lick her leftovers while Maki holds the cone out for her, so really, it’s a successful trip.

“I want to ride on your back this time,” Mai declares when they return to the clearing. “When you hold me, it makes me feel like a rodent being swept up by a falcon.”

Maki looks like she’s about to protest, so Mai adds, “It’s not very befitting of a bride.”

That gives her pause for several seconds. “But the groceries…how will Mai-dono keep hold of my mane at the same time?”

Maki ends up flying back with Mai riding proud on her back, grinning without reservation the entire time, knowing no one can see her, while Maki carries the baskets with her talons. When they reach the house, Mai unconsciously pats the yokai’s shoulder, the way one pats a dog to say well done. Only Maki’s transformation is as quick as usual and Mai’s hand is still on her shoulder when she becomes a woman again—for the first time, her kimono is slightly askew, slipping off one shoulder.

Mai blushes furiously at her hand, and Maki blushes at her kimono, and Mai is about to bolt inside when Maki laughs and pushes against her good-naturedly, the way Mai had done earlier. This yokai learns fast, she thinks, still stunned, as she watches Maki take the groceries inside.

She ends up going to bed that night with a stomach full of yakisoba and her father’s expensive sake because it finally seemed like the right time to open it, now that she wasn’t drinking alone. Maki ended up falling asleep at the table, still holding her chopsticks, and Mai laughed so hard that it’s a miracle she didn’t wake. When she finished washing their dishes, Maki was gone, and Mai stared uncertainly at the door for a minute, wondering if she had fled, before she heard the familiar, deafening sound of snoring coming down the hall.

Maki was sprawled on the futon, she discovered, with the blankets more on the floor than covering her, so Mai pulled them back up to her chest and worked the tight ribbon out of her hair so it could breathe. There may have been a strange impulse to touch her cheek, but Mai left before it could even become a fully realized thought, and crawled into her own bed.

Her muscles ached from clinging onto a dragon, but the food had soothed the discomfort, and now the mattress beneath her was soft enough that she felt sleep was moments away from overwhelming her—and she wasn’t even drunk.

But when Maki turned over in her sleep, mumbling nonsense and suddenly facing Mai, she felt sleep’s embrace fall away, replaced by an inexplicable, urgent need to stare at Maki’s face for as long as she could.

She was, Mai could now admit, very beautiful.

“So, you’re really not going to abduct me?” she asks, on the eleventh day in her parent’s empty home. “Are the other yokai mean to you because you’re a pussy?”

“That feels like an insult,” Maki says, unbothered, as she absently coaxes a puddle of rainwater into the air. Her eyes are looking past it.

Mai pokes her arm, trying to disrupt her concentration. The water falters, but it doesn’t fall. “I’m breaking the rules right now, you know. I had a week, but I’m still here.”

That gets Maki’s attention. She glances back, a wrinkle between her brows. “Your parents lived here?”

Mai nods.

“Then who is there to force you out?”

A laugh is shocked out of her. “It’s complicated. But I don’t mind the risk. You make a good servant. I’m the one who has to cook dinner back in the city.”

“If I was able to leave, I would be honored to accompany Mai-dono to her home in the city.”

Mai feels herself stiffen. “Yeah. That couldn’t work, though.”

“Yes,” Maki agrees. “It could not.”

Mai pushes her. “Bitch. A good husband knows when to lie.”

“First you want me to be honest, now you want to lie—are you always so fickle?” Maki’s tone is light-hearted, even as she glances at Mai with raised eyebrows.

“There’s an appropriate time for both,” Mai tells her. She picks herself up from the porch. “You’ll get the hang of it—with practice. You could start by opening the door for me.”

Maki laughs, loud enough that a nearby bird suddenly takes flight, as though hearing the sound of a looming predator. She sets down the mug of coffee Mai convinced her to try—Mai notices it’s barely been touched—and stands. “This is the least I can do,” she says, still smiling, as she opens the door. Mai catches her eyes darting down to her lips and feels an uncontrollable shiver flood her body. She leans in, arms tingling as Maki stares at her meaningfully, in a way that Mai would recognize anywhere. This, she thinks, is something she is skilled at.

She leads, once their lips touch. A series of delicate, venturing kisses start to become something deeper, more intense. She has to break away for breath, and Maki kisses the corner of her mouth before dipping lower, to press warm lips along her jaw.

“What are we doing?” Mai whispers, abruptly wracked with doubt.

“Is this not a way to show my love for Mai-dono?” Maki asks, equally quiet, while she licks up Mai’s ear. Mai trembles in place. Something unexpected and overpowering is building in her stomach—a feeling she had long given up on. “I like the way you taste,” Maki continues.

“Are you going to eat me?” she teases.

Maki pulls back to look at her with half-lidded, dark eyes. “Maybe.”

She shivers and wraps a hand behind Maki’s neck, intending to bring her back to her lips. Instead, Maki collapses against her, face sinking into her shoulder without a single move on her part. She brushes the back of her exposed neck gently, thoughtful, before she sees the red stain spreading out across Maki’s back.

“What—” she cries, pulse sky-rocketing. “Are you—” She’s cut off when Maki shoves her backward, and she half-trips over the entrance, catching herself against the table. The door is already sliding shut.

She flings it open again; a scolding yell prepared in her throat. It comes out as a whimper.

Maki isn’t human anymore, she’s as a big as the house and breathing blue fire onto the men swarming toward the front porch. There’s at least a dozen of them, maybe more—Mai can’t see clearly through the smoke in the air, drifting above the underbrush that Maki has sent afire.

“Maki!” she yells, then regrets it. Watches Maki tear into the shoulder of a man who’s aiming a gun against her chest, and thinks that one moment, one word, is all it takes. She ducks back into the kitchen and examines the small space, heart pounding. A knife. She grabs one sitting idle in the sink and rushes outside, brandishing it like a broadsword.

No one so much as glances her way. All their attention is diverted to Maki—to the dragon.

“Oi!” she screams.

A few heads turn her away, one of them promptly severed by Maki’s claws. It lands at Mai’s feet, eyes scrunched up tight, still grimacing.

“I’m the one you’re here for,” she cries. “If you kill me, the dragon will stop!”

Every head turns her way. The bodies begin to approach. She meets Maki’s eyes. Sorry, she thinks, but doesn’t say aloud—why does she feel she needs to apologize? What’s it for, anyway? How much can it mean if she can’t even remember? I do mean it, though, her thoughts add. What about you?

She slashes at the first man to get in range, a harsh line down his cheek, grazing his chest on the way. She was aiming for the throat. The man just wipes the blood with one hand and grins at her, a gesture that reminds her more of a predator baring its fangs than a human. He steps forward, drawing something out from his jacket.

He’s not the one that reaches her, though. It’s one of the others, a man she hadn’t noticed creeping to her side, drawing close enough behind her that he easily could plunge a dagger between her ribs. “Smells good,” he murmurs in her ear, licking up her neck.

Something warm splashes against her skin, and Mai turns to look into his eyes as he slips down behind her, collapsing in an awkward heap on the ground. She looks up, directly into Maki’s cool stare, a layered golden-emerald, dozens of different hues floating within her irises. It’s more obvious when she’s like this—no longer human.

“Thank you,” Mai says, then watches helplessly as another man steps up behind Maki and cocks the gun aimed at her neck, watches when his finger releases the trigger, watches the bullet soar through the air and go straight through Maki, lodging itself in a tree a feet meters away. It goes straight through her, but doesn’t leave a mark—no blood spilling from a fatal wound, no wound at all, just Maki’s serious stare, and she can’t take it. It's like Maki isn't there at all.

Movement catches her eye, and she watches as another man swings a hatchet at Maki’s tail, only for it to clang loudly against the rock it meets beneath her scales.

The way Maki is looking at her gives it away. Even while the men behind her yell and clamor toward her, she just looks at Mai, pain in her eyes, like meeting her gaze alone is worse than a thousand blows. And Mai understands, then. She finally understands.

“Mai—Mai-dono,” Maki corrects herself politely, even as she holds tightly onto the strap of Mai’s dress, preventing her from walking out the front door. “You do not need to do this.”

She smiles. It feels more like a grimace. “But don’t I? Isn’t that my only purpose? Let me go.”

“I believe I told you before that I love you more than my own life. That has not changed. You would hurt me this way?”

Mai wrenches her shoulder back, out of her grip. “Fuck you,” she hisses. “It’s my life. I can do what I want. But you—you’re dying, aren’t you?”

“In a way,” Maki says evenly. “A legend unfulfilled loses its strength. Without a sacrificial bride, my legend will evaporate. And I am happy for it. I would much rather spend the time I have been granted here, in Mai-dono’s home, than in my spring with your bones to keep me company.”

“Sounds poetic. Life is uglier than that. Those men? That’s my family. That’s me.” Mai pauses to stifle the tremor in her voice. “We can’t stay together here.”

“Nor can we in my home.”

She snaps. “Then why did you come to me?” Her voice breaks halfway through. “Just to fulfill some shitty legend?”

“It wasn’t a choice,” Maki says. “As soon as I learned you were coming home, the only thing I could do was wait, and try to earn your affection. I have never had any intention of using your life to extend my own, Mai-dono.” Maki grips her shoulders and turns her around, pointed toward the stairs. “Go,” she says. “Sleep.”

Mai goes, numbly, unthinkingly. A dragon guards the exit. But even dragons have to rest, eventually.

Before the birds start their morning calls in the air, Mai tucks her bedsheets in and ghosts down the stairs, stepping over Maki’s unconscious form in the doorway, and heads toward the forest. There’s something humming in the air, and she trusts it to lead her to the spring.

The fall leaves crunch beneath her footsteps as she walks. The morning light is starting to dawn over the treetops, filtering down to the ground in thin rays of golden light. She would rather walk this path in the dark, but at least this way, she’s not walking into any trees. This way, she gets to see all the wildlife that scurries amid the underbrush, the butterflies that land on budding flowers, the wind that has the tall grass dancing, and she has to wonder—can Maki really give up everything just to keep Mai half-alive and intending to go back to the city, to her fiancé, to just accept that and move on? Act as though Mai’s most petty act of resistance isn’t equivalent to a death sentence for her?

She wishes Maki had taken her the second she stepped off the train and onto her foreign, hometown soil. Wished she hadn’t let Mai think she had a choice. It had been liberating to feel like she had, like she was the one holding her life in the palm of her hand, to pretend that she wouldn’t crumble into resistance like all the times before. With her fiancé, it was different. There was no real duty there, no binding expectations. Her father would never have let him step past the doorway. He had been an act of rebellion, and it had swallowed her like all things have until she was trapped once again, like nothing had changed at all, and she hadn’t felt like rebelling again until she learned her parents were dead. That one rush of sudden, lifting freedom had carried her for days, all the way to a train and into the arms of a yokai.

Except—

The spring is ahead now, gleaming like the waterbed is laden with winking crystals, like the air is a thousand times fresher than what she’s breathing now, like it’s about time to wash her lungs out, give them a proper cleaning from all that city smog.

Except, Maki is no yokai.

Mai can hear wings beating in the air behind her. She bites back a smile, feeling the fear burn away. What little remains sticks to her clothes, and falls to the grass when she discards them. This time, she’s going to be the one to leave Maki behind.

Hah, she thinks. It better be miserable.

“Mai!”

She takes a running leap into the spring. It encloses her instantly, greedily, folding heavy ripples over her head so that she could not surface if she tried, and slowly guides her down, down to the waterbed and its floating seaweed.

When Mai was young, she had a sister.

Her sister had always been beside her, in front of her, a protective arm always thrown up before her, an unshakeable presence shielding her, always. Always. Mai had loved her for that.

Then they grew up a bit, and her sister was no longer satisfied pulling Mai away from their rowdy, teasing cousins and taking her up to their room to talk and hold each other close under the sheets until the darkness and their hot, stale breath against the cotton became the entire world and Mai was briefly glad to have been born, after all. Instead, her sister stayed, and fought, lost some teeth and did it again, and again, and again, until she stayed standing and the others were the ones to fall down, lose more than just teeth—lose the respect in their family’s name because a little girl made them cry.

Her sister began to think about how they could leave, and she spent so much time thinking of the future, she forgot to be there in the present, in the moments Mai needed her the most, bruised and alone in their bed. Her sister was suddenly, for the first time in their lives, missing. And then a day came where her sister ran away from home. There was a plan, she told Mai, something she had discovered. And she was coming back for her. For her—it was all for her. That was what her sister said. Then she never came back.

In the years that came afterward, Mai often wondered if she had ever had a sister at all, until it all gradually became more of a dream than a memory, and she knew it had always been her, alone, the unwanted, disgraceful only-child of her parents—her, alone. She’s still not sure why she ran away, that night forever ago. There had been something different about that night: a brief moment where she had felt like she wasn’t alone in her room, like when she slumped down on the floor and gazed searchingly at the blank wall ahead, someone had once been there to stare back.

She opens her eyes when she stops sinking—assumes she’s hit the bottom, prepares to see the suffocating distance of water weighing down on her when she looks up. Instead, she meets Maki’s eyes, inches from her own.

There are hands wrapped around her, one against her waist, the other behind her neck, keeping her afloat, and she can feel the water’s frustration throbbing around her, pushing itself down her mouth, up her nostrils, killing her from the inside, if not yet the outside—she lets her mouth hang open wide, makes it easier for the spring.

Just stop, she thinks, still looking at Maki. It’s been over for a long time.

Maki holds her tighter. She speaks directly inside Mai’s head. I remember my sister, she tells Mai. Do you?

Fuck you, Mai would scream if she had an air still left in her lungs. I remembered as soon as I saw you. It's true, she realizes in the same moment. She had known from the moment she heard Maki say her name that there was something between them, but she had tried so hard to push it down, away, anything to protect herself from the consequences of loving too much, too singularly, once again.

Maybe Maki hears her, anyway, somehow, because she smiles. Bubbles float away from her mouth. Then her hands aren’t just holding Mai up, keeping her from the depths, they are pulling her up, forcing her toward the surface. The water starts to crush her, then, and she finally begins to thrash; this pain is a hundred times worse than suffocating, it’s a thousand times harder to resist and she’s tired of it, she’s finally learned better, but Maki’s not giving her a choice and she doesn’t let go even when Mai tries to push her away, so there’s nothing to do but continue fighting up and forwards, until they break the surface and Mai’s choking gasps of air overwhelms everything else in the world.

“Mai?”

She looks up, raised on her hands and knees. “What?”

Maki is crouching over her. When she responds, Maki breathes a sigh of relief and slumps to the grass, lying on her back.

“I’m sorry I didn’t remember you,” she says. “The legend took my past. My memories. But somehow—somehow, it left me your name. It kept us together, Mai, all this time, even when I could not remember. Can you forg—”

“Why?” Mai asks, blunt, not bothering to explain. Maki understands anyway. Why did you leave? is Mai's real question. As though she cares about the particulars of some fucked-up curse.

“I wanted to be powerful,” Maki says simply. “Better than the others. I thought I could replace them, and we could live freely. Without mother and father dictating our lives, without our cousins threatening to ra—”

Mai interrupts. She’s finally able to straighten, lean back on her heels. Now she’s the one hovering over Maki. “I never wanted to live freely. I just wanted to be with you. All I ever wanted was to stay with you—"

Maki sits up, watching her.

“—and you left.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come back ever since,” Maki said. “When I first came into this forest, I met a yokai, who promised to bestow upon me tremendous power. In exchange, I would become part of a legend. There was no chosen bride yet, but the first time I opened my eyes in that new form, I knew your name.”

She reaches toward Mai, and Mai allows herself to be pulled in. Their foreheads rest against each other.

“Weren’t you supposed to sacrifice me?” Mai asks quietly. “What’s the legend going to do now?”

“Die, probably,” Maki says calmly, and tugs Mai down to kiss her. Mai forgets everything once again, in a different way this time, mind empty of everything except this moment, pressed against soft lips that she used to know so well.

“I don’t think so,” Mai murmurs a few moments later, when nothing has happened.

Maki’s mouth quirks up, teasing. “Oh, really?” How can she sound so casual? Mai wants to slap her.

“Well, I sacrificed myself,” she says. “And I’d do it again. I’ve given myself up to you. Maybe the legend realizes that.”

“You think it’s that smart?” Still teasing. Mai really does slap her this time.

“Don’t insult it, idiot. Your self-preservation instinct is so shitty. I think I got all the good genes.”

“Mm. Probably.”

Mai just shakes her head. “What now?”

“Wanna go home? I heard that’s all you ever wanted.”

Mai stands, helps her up. “No. You were home. All I ever wanted was—” she cuts herself off, blushing. “Whatever. Hurry up.” And she starts briskly walking between the trees. She hears Maki jogging behind her, then the sound of her breath as she falls in stride with Mai. “No more supernatural advantages?” Mai asks. “Have to walk with the rest of us?”

“I’ve always wanted to walk with you,” Maki answers, diplomatically. Her hand brushes against Mai’s, fingers lingering a second past accidental. Mai takes the offer, interlocking their hands.

“Liar,” Mai says, contrarily.

“I can prove it.”

“Then do it.”

As soon as she speaks, Maki surges forward, pulling her into another deep kiss. It makes chills break out along Mai's arms, down her spine, and she’s never felt like this before, with anyone. Kissing has always felt more like a step in the choreographed sequence of being intimate than a gesture with any romantic or emotional value, but every time Mai’s been kissed today has felt better than the last and she doesn’t want it to end before she sees it through to the end.

Not that she’s entirely sure what the end looks like, but it’s definitely not yet, not before she’s walked her sister through their childhood home and showed her all the things Maki left her alone to handle, even when she had always shown Maki how much she depended upon her—

“Stop being mad at me,” Maki whispers into her mouth, then begins sucking on her tongue, and Mai reluctantly lets those thoughts disappear, vowing to return to them later. But for now, she kissed her sister back, keeping a firm hand on the nape of her neck so she can’t disappear.

“I love you,” she says with her eyes closed. “Bitch.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart,” Maki says, and every last piece of ice in her thaws and melts to the ground, makes her liquid in Maki’s arms.

“Yeah, okay."