Archive of Our Own

“What are you, seven? Get up.”

Through still-bleary vision, the girl saw a figure looming over her futon. Her mother opened the shades, which seemed unfair, since she’d have to shut them again when she got dressed anyway.

“Do you want to ruin your pillow? Do you want to ruin your posture, for that matter? You need to sleep normally.”

“Sorry,” the girl said, and released the pillow from her embrace.

“You’ll make us waste another doctor’s time when you develop back pain. But get up, you’re late as it is.”

Her mother marched downstairs without another word to her; the words what did I do to deserve this child? were spat out under her breath, but that wasn’t for the girl to answer. Her mother was only partly the religious type, despite the family she’d married into.

What would it have been like to wake up next to Hinako? Sakuko Igarashi had been wondering that this morning. To hug her, to touch her. A cute nose. A firm grip. And, in holding that special person, both of them would be safe —

The abrasive rumble of her room’s sliding door opening had cut off those thoughts.

Her dreams had remained as they were recently. Her friends choked to death in their sleep on a heavy, putrid, sulfurous smog; the unlucky ones woke up as it was happening. Buried under moss and soil and rot, and a mountain of things forgotten, was a god screaming herself hoarse. On top of that, a pile of corpses; one in particular buried among them. And, alternately: that person holding her as if nothing had happened, and that person hating her because it had. Sometimes both.

It had been some months since the news of a wealthy, out-of-town man’s proposal of marriage to Hinako Shimizu had finally made its way to her. Among other injuries was the fact that she hadn’t been told directly: it had been whispered outside the family shrine and she’d doubted it; again, in the grocery store; a third time, from her mother’s mouth at dinner, and with that she’d gone upstairs and, not knowing what else to do, cried and hugged her pillow, and hated herself for being a coward. She’d continued to do this since then.

“But Hinako didn’t even tell me,” she quietly reminded herself. “She broke a promise and didn’t even tell me.”

As had become part of her new morning routine, she opened a dresser drawer.

Sakuko had been keeping old things inside. Pencils, erasers, a wad of gum fished out of a trash can. A special one: stale toffee candy, still-wrapped in wax paper. Every day she found another item that had served its purpose to her and added it to the drawer. One-hundred items over one-hundred days was her goal. Old things for the god underground.

She closed the shades, dressed herself, and did her hair.

The other girl had said that her pigtails were cute. She’d said those exact words. Her mother, too, used to say how pretty her hair looked, bragging to other parents at the playground about her girl’s darling little head. Now her mother said that she needed to grow up and learn how to make herself appealing to normal people. That the only men who like girls with childish hairstyles are freaks (like her, was the unspoken implication). A fashion magazine lay somewhere in one of her room’s corners. She had looked through it and gotten frustrated, because what was the point of finding a new hairstyle if trends would change again anyway.

But here was the truth: regardless of how she presented herself, she felt like she’d been bathed in some horrible gray sludge, her body cut open, stuffed with maggots and rot, and she couldn’t even keep that inside her without it all tumbling out. The wound festered and decayed, becoming soil for some terrible flora. Sticky filth mucked up her hair. She had felt this way for most of these past months.

On the brighter side, being bullied outright was a rarer occurrence as a high school junior than it had once been. Even if her classmates could see how disgusting she was, they mostly had the maturity not to comment on it.

There had been an initial fight. A question, an accusation; tears from both of them. And then, for a few weeks, Sakuko had hissed traitor, traitor, whenever she saw the other girl, because that was how girls exacted revenge on one another. But then she began to remind herself of her mother, which began to make her feel ashamed, and so now she just tried not to run into Hinako at all, even if that was just another form of the same cowardice which had led her here.

She took the long way around the building to and from class. She used the bathroom on another floor. An underclassman had whispered something once as she passed, so it wasn’t as if all of the kids were mature; but then she’d indignantly scolded the girl about being considerate of peoples’ different circumstances, which was enough to make the whispering stop, but she wondered whether that was also the sort of thing her mother would say.

Despite all of this, running into Hinako — as she did today — was unavoidable. Both of them had been wandering around the building during lunch, and the other girl offered her a wave from across the hall along with a fragment of a once-familiar smile.

Not knowing what else to do, Sakuko began to follow her from a safe distance. After making up her mind to say something, she knocked on the outside of a locker, which caught the other girl’s attention. Initially, she seemed guarded, unaware that she’d been followed; but then there was a second wave and a second fragment of a smile, and for a moment if felt like all of the fragments could be put back together in some way.

“Hi,” Sakuko managed to say, before she turned her head away because she couldn’t bear to look directly at Hinako anymore.

“…I didn’t expect you to say hello to me,” the other girl responded. “Hi.”

Traitor was the next word that Sakuko wanted to say, but she stopped herself.

“How are things with Shu and the others?” she asked, not knowing how else a conversation between them would start.

Hinako sighed.

“Shu is in your class, isn’t he? You’d know better than me.”

“I can’t tell. He’s quiet around me.”

“Hah. He would be, wouldn’t he? Maybe that’s just how a guy like him treats girls.”

With Hinako’s wry laughter, the two began to feel more comfortable around each other.

“I’ve… missed talking with you,” Hinako said, which finally coaxed Sakuko into approaching her, and immediately she began to feel warmer, and safer, and cleaner.

“Me too. I’ve missed you, Hinako.”

Something inside her had threatened to spill out with those words, but she righted herself just in time. Hinako gestured for them to keep walking around the building, and there was a sense that each girl was still trying to figure out what to say to the other.

“Girls really are mean sometimes, aren’t they?” Hinako remarked after a while. “The track team has been treating me like I’m inconveniencing them. Like I’ve gone from being the one who makes them look good by winning, to being someone who makes them look bad… also by winning, I guess. From their perspective.”

“That’s… That’s mean.”

“We originally met because of this sort of thing, too, didn’t we?”

They had. In the early days, the other girls would accuse Hinako of this-and-that: it’s no fun playing with someone who plays with boys, it’s no fair training with someone who trains with boys, it’s no fair competing against someone who’s tall like a boy. Hinako had been glad to meet a girl who didn’t ostracize her, because she was an outsider, too.

“Is it mean to say that I’m glad that we met? Then. And now.”

Hinako shook her head, and a third fragment of her smile appeared.

“It’s not. I’m planning to retire from the team at the end of the term, anyway. It’s not just because of that, but it definitely doesn’t help, either.”

“I guess I’ve missed a lot of changes, haven’t I?”

The question came out sounding more accusatory than Sakuko had meant it.

“It’s not like you’re the only one,” Hinako replied. “What’s new with you?”

“…Bad dreams. And I miss the rabbits.”

The answer came out sounding more pitiful than she had meant it, too.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Hinako said in a conciliatory tone. “You know… I bet you could talk to the middle school staff about an arrangement for the rabbit hutch. They could use a mentor for the kids. You knew the vice-principal pretty well, didn’t you?”

She did, for reasons which Hinako had never seemed to quite understand. These things happened when you were labeled a problem child for disrupting overnight field trips and the like. When you were so afraid of the dark that you used to cry when teachers turned out the lights.

“I could. I bet there’s all sorts of things the newer kids don’t know about taking care of them.”

“You always did a good job. The kids could call you Sakuko-sensei… Or, I guess it’d be Igarashi-sensei.”

She had missed this. Hinako had missed spending time together, and she had missed it, too.

“I missed you, Hinako,” she said again, and this time she felt herself beginning to break altogether.

“Thank you. You know, everyone acts like it’s a done deal. But… we… haven’t even met each other yet. It’s basically still just a formality at this point,” she said. There was something firm in her look; it gave the impression that she wished Sakuko could’ve understood this months ago.

“Just a formality?”

“Yeah. I haven’t even made up my mind. This hasn’t been easy for me. At all.”

Hinako took a deep, long breath at the admission, as if finally setting down a heavy burden.

“Hinako…”

If she was going to break, she may as well break. Sakuko took her friend’s hand and felt as the first tear rolled down her cheek.

“I understand. It isn’t even your choice, is it, whether some man proposes to you. I was the one who abandoned you.”

“This wasn’t how I wanted it to go. You and I should’ve talked before word got around. We… You… deserved a chance to say —”

“I’m sorry,” the shorter girl continued. “Obviously, right? How could you marry someone who you haven’t even met? Who you haven’t even kissed?! I’m sorry for all of the horrible things that I said!”

“Sakuko, let go of my hand, please.”

Hinako pulled back, but Sakuko didn’t let go.

“I’ll forgive you for everything! If… If you forgive me…!”

The other girl wrenched herself out of Sakuko’s grip. And in the look that Hinako gave her, Sakuko saw disgust. A folded-up paper fox left on top of her middle school locker: Igarashi spends so much time with the rabbits that she smells like rabbit poop. Why can’t she be more considerate of the rest of us? She felt the way she had felt when she read that.

The tears flowed freely.

“…Hahah. Obviously not. You hate me, after all, don’t you?”

“Why can’t you just listen…?” Hinako asked, barely under her breath, as she continued to back away.

“Even though you said you’d tell me if I ever really smelled like rabbit poop! But… But…! I wasn’t even worth telling about this! All of what you said now was a lie, wasn’t it?! Just tell me that you hate me! Liar! Traitor…!”

A shadow came over Hinako’s face, and her next words were as terse as they were sharp.

“If all you want to do is make me feel guilty, then don’t talk to me. And don’t follow me around.”

With tears now running down her face as well, Hinako turned around and headed back to class.

“I make you want to vomit, don’t I?” the girl muttered to herself. “You didn’t even ask about your money. Even the money you loaned me is worthless to you now. Well, you make me want to vomit, too.”

But saying that reminded her of her mother, and then she really did want to vomit.

Sakuko re-entered her classroom as the end-of-lunch bell rang. Anyone could have guessed that she’d been crying again, and Shu and Rinko exchanged a glance from across the room. Rinko passed by his desk under the pretext of getting up to sharpen a pencil.

“Someone needs to talk to her,” she said to him.

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” he replied, and that got Sakuko crying again, because he was lying, too.

There were many things that the girl liked about rabbits.

They were soft. They were cuddly. They were cute when she drew them, and cute in person. They got closer when she had food to offer them, and after they got to know each other, they let her pet them. Pet rabbits needed people, and since she was the one who took care of them most, they needed her.

Sakuko stroked the head of a familiar gray rabbit inside the hutch at her old middle school. A few of her old friends were gone: the one with spotted fur, the one with the small foot. And there were a few new faces, watching her cautiously from their hay-lined dens.

“Why did she have to wave to me…? It would’ve been better to keep ignoring each other.”

She’d cried herself dry again after school and ended up here. Even a freak, who could only be friends with rabbits, at least still had rabbits to confide in. She let out all manners of scorn and bile, hideous filth and rot that came spilling out of her. What if Hinako got bullied and needed comfort. What if Hinako got hurt and needed care. What if Hinako’s face rotted off and that man didn’t want her anymore. She wondered these things, and then regretted it, since it just made her feel more and more ashamed of herself.

“Excuse me? This area is off-limits for non-students.”

A man’s voice called into the hutch, and Sakuko heard the crunch of hay beneath heavy footsteps as he entered.

“...Oh, Miss Igarashi?”

The vice-principal wasn’t anything like a friend who she’d keep in touch with, but she did know him. His face immediately softened and he put on a smile, which seemed a little fake to her, but at least it meant that she wasn’t about to get yelled at.

“Good evening, sensei. I… I missed them.”

He knelt in front of a rabbit and laughed as he gave it a pet.

“The rules still apply, but it’s good to see you. How has high school been?”

She didn’t know how to answer.

“I’m surprised that you didn’t bring Shimizu along, too. Things must be feeling lonely with her engagement news, huh? Moments spent with your school friends really are precious. Everyone grows up faster than you’d think. Pass my congratulations on to her, of course.”

She nodded, and remained quiet. This was a particular type of adult: the ones who meant well, but didn’t understand, and she didn’t know how to make them understand. Though this one seemed to understand at least a little bit. He reminded her of her grandfather.

“Hinako… said that maybe you all could use a mentor. For the kids. A mentor on how to keep rabbits.”

“A mentor? Hmm.”

He stood up and folded his arms.

“You should focus on yourself, Igarashi. The children here are doing fine. The rabbits are here so that everyone can learn from them in their own way.”

“I see.”

“But… If you write up a proposal for a guest lecture, I can pass it along to the home ec teacher. I’m sure you could be awarded credit from the high school for doing that.”

It was something.

“Maybe I’ll do that. Thank you.”

She saw a rabbit poke its head out at her. Snow-white fur, and large, observant eyes. She lowered her head to its level and put out a hand.

“Ahh, right, you haven’t met the new ones, have you?” the man asked. “We had a litter last year.”

“Bunny-bunny-bunny…!” she called out, happy to see its curious little face. It lowered its ears and withdrew into its den, but she had always been good at coaxing them out. A friendly voice. A hand that smelled of food.

“Aww. You don’t need to be afraid. I’m a friend. Let’s be friends!”

It lunged and bit her. She gasped and wrenched her hand free.

“Oh!” the vice principal exclaimed. “Are you okay? The younger ones are a little jumpy…”

Once, she had tried to sew herself a new chihaya. She’d gotten beautiful white fabric adorned with floral prints. In a moment of distraction she lost her focus, and the belt on her mother’s cast-iron machine drove the needle straight through the side of her finger, ruining the beautiful white fabric with her blood. She remembered that feeling: numb, followed by a thunderbolt of pain of a sort she hadn’t realized she could feel. It left a bitter, tinny aftertaste: the humiliation of having ruined something she loved.

Without answering the vice principal, Sakuko grabbed her schoolbag and ran out of the hutch. She thought she might’ve passed Shu and Rinko on the road to the middle school, but neither of them stopped her, and she didn’t hear them if they’d tried. She ran all the way home, and cried again.

They had first met each other outside the school building. The middle school campus didn’t have a dedicated track, so the track and field club practiced by running laps in the field. Sakuko would stay after school tending to the animals, waiting for the coast to be clear of other students so she could safely head home. And then they had run into each other. Hinako startled her. She thought that she was about to get called weird again. By someone who would steal her books. By someone who would turn her bag inside out, or mockingly ask when she had last bathed. But, instead, Hinako said:

I’ve seen you around here a lot. Let’s be friends, so you don’t have to avoid me anymore. Girls can be mean, so I’d like to be friends with a girl who I don’t have to avoid, either.

Every time that Sakuko suspected she was about to be betrayed or abandoned, Hinako circled back around, like she did when she was running laps around the field. And then Rinko found the both of them. And then, over the next several years, one thing led to another.

Between the two of them, Sakuko’s home was usually the better place to visit, though it still had its problems. They had been in her room after school, talking about Shu, and about Rinko’s feelings for him, and about his feelings for Hinako, and about Hinako’s resentment of how he handled them. As if he could simply pretend that such a delicate issue didn’t exist, all while still being so obvious about it.

When he gets like that, I’m not even one of the boys to him anymore, Hinako muttered. I’m not even even a human being. Just a nothing that he can’t admit he’s attracted to. It’s like his idea of respecting me is pretending that I’m not a girl at all, even though I respect him as a boy.

Sakuko fell silent, because she had come to understand her feelings for Hinako, as well. Moments like these, when they took quiet refuge in one another: she wanted them to last forever, with far greater urgency than any of their middle school promises. But she didn’t want to add yet another burden to her friend.

Somehow, though, one thing led to another again, and she asked:

Then, do you want to practice kissing with me? Girls do that sort of thing all the time. I’ve read about it.

Hinako looked at her, and just as Sakuko began to feel that she’d made a mistake, Hinako opened her mouth:

We could try.

They awkwardly shuffled around on the floor. Sakuko ended up kneeling in front of her taller friend. She kissed the other girl first: hesitant, tentative, a single, brief press to her lips. Then, Hinako kissed her: deliberately, deeper, and they sustained it for who-knew-how-long. She felt something soft and white blossoming inside her. Hinako touched one of her pigtails. And then pulled away.

If it’s just for practice, then we should stop here, the other girl said.

Sakuko nodded, and then asked: Did it feel good?

Hinako looked past her and sighed. It did, she finally said. And now we know what it’s like, and Rinko and Shu don’t.

They laughed together while sitting on Sakuko’s futon.

The girl’s bad dreams continued.

The angry god told her that she’d been cursed. Pus, maggots, filth: all signs of the fox’s curse. Mangy things, with sharp teeth and rotting gums, which stole away girls and children and rabbits. Sakuko didn’t fully understand, since she’d always dedicated her ceremonies and offerings to Oinari-sama. But if there was a curse, it could be her job to break it. She felt satisfied with this task. It meant that she was needed. She had suffered a lot, so it was only fair for someone to still need her, to make all of her trouble worth something.

She woke up early on her day off. She put on her robes at the shrine — the purest thing she could think of to wear — and returned home to load her handbag, emptying the dresser drawer of its one-hundred items. It was mid-morning when Shu and Rinko knocked on the Igarashi household’s front door.

“Was there a festival today? Or… a ground-breaking for a new well?” Rinko asked.

“There’s a curse that I need to break.”

Rinko and Shu looked at each other.

“You look cool in that, Sakuko,” he said, with a smile that reminded her of the old vice principal.

“Thanks. The god underground likes you, Shu. You won’t have to be awake if bad things happen.”

The other two looked at each other again.

“…Huh. I hope that I’d be awake so I can do something about it.”

“You can both come inside,” Sakuko said. “My parents are out with granddad.”

The home’s main room had a small sofa: a gift from a client of her father’s employer. The other two sat on it together; Sakuko sat on the floor.

“You know, we came here because we’re worried about you,” Rinko said, breaking through a suffocating silence which had begun to gather in the room. “It’s been hard for everyone, but I know that it’s been especially hard on you.”

“Thanks. I thought I saw you heading to the middle school last week, but you didn’t say anything.”

Why did her words keep coming out sounding more accusatory than she meant them to?

“Hey, come on,” Shu retorted. “It’s not like you said anything to us, either. You seemed like you were in a hurry.”

“A rabbit bit me,” Sakuko explained, holding up a still-bandaged finger.

“Not a wild one, I hope?!” Rinko asked; the first genuine-sounding thing that Sakuko had heard from either of them. “We heard… We figured, that you might have gone to the middle school, but…”

“Yeah, it was one from the middle school. Don’t worry. I had our school nurse take a look at it. It’s going to be fine.”

“Sakuko, we love you. You’re scaring us.”

“It’s going to be fine,” Sakuko repeated, and then realized that was holding back tears again. She tried to hold them back even more, because she didn’t want to seem like any more of a burden and she didn’t want any more putrid curse-pus to leak out from her. That is to say: she already felt small around them, and she didn’t want to have to feel disgusting, too.

Shu got off of the sofa and sat on the floor across from her.

“We’re all going to miss Hinako. As… As a man, I’m not showing it as much, but I’ve been crying, too.”

Those words, coming from him, overflowed through her insides. He had hurt Hinako. By not being honest with her. By disrespecting her through that dishonesty. By making her into a girl-who-was-not-a-girl because he still saw girls as lesser individuals. But, more than that, she felt what might have been one of the filthiest things inside her of all: she knew that he was her rival, and that filthy part of her was glad that he had been crying.

She felt herself break, and she started to cry again anyway.

“I feel,” Shu continued, “like a failure of a friend. Because we haven’t been able to do anything. Not for her, and not for you. I’m sorry.”

And she felt filthier still.

Rinko got off the sofa, too, and approached Sakuko with open arms.

“I’m sorry, too. I think of it as my job to look after you, and I’m going to miss her, too.”

She tried to pull the girl into a hug, but Sakuko slapped her away.

“Don’t touch me!”

“We love you, Sakuko…!”

“Stop trying to trick me into believing that!”

Rinko gasped. She looked at Shu, who did not look back at her.

“Rinko, you want her to leave! You want her gone! You want her gone so you can have him! You’re one of the people bringing the fox’s curse to us! You expect me to believe that you’ll miss her?! Don’t bring me such a disgusting lie!”

“Hey, that isn’t fair to —” Shu began, but she cut him off.

“Shu, you’re part of why she’s leaving! It’s good that you’ve been crying! You deserve to cry! You hurt her! How about you take responsibility for that?!”

He looked at the floor.

“And, as for me… I’m weird! I’m a burden! I’m disgusting! It’s worse when people make me think I’m not! And Hinako is a traitor for making me think that she wouldn’t leave me like everyone else…!”

“I know you were good friends with her, Sakuko,” Rinko attempted to interject, “but isn’t this a little…”

She didn’t want to explain that she had been in love. She didn’t want to explain that, just like Shu, she hadn’t had the courage to express her feelings when it mattered. She didn’t want Shu to see her as a rival the way she saw him. And she didn’t want to become abnormal in their eyes in yet another way, without Hinako there to protect her.

“…Traitor…!” she simply repeated, drowning all of her fears in a pool of filth.

“We’ve all… really failed each other,” Shu said to none of them, his voice carrying an uncharacteristic tremor. Rinko began to respond to him, but stopped before she’d spoken a word. Instead, she turned to face Sakuko, folded her hands, and knelt in front of her sobbing friend.

She then spoke as calmly as a girl in her situation could.

“From my perspective, all girls have to act like something we’re not. Maybe this isn’t how you think about things, but to me, it feels like getting away with something when I pull it off. I know that you’re struggling, even with things that I don’t understand. But you know that you’re not disgusting. I don’t know why you believe that, but that doesn’t make it correct.”

Rinko took a deep breath, and looked back at Shu. They made eye contact, and he gave her a nod with a meaning only known to the two of them, and perhaps not even that.

“You’re not such a good person, after all, Rinko,” Sakuko said through gritted teeth. “You enjoy deceiving people…? We’re all disgusting. We’re all cursed. We all brought this curse on ourselves.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Rinko said, her brief facade of maturity cracking. “If I were to say that I felt clean about my feelings right now… that would be a lie.”

Shu gestured towards Rinko’s bag, and she nodded. The two of them really were getting closer.

“But, we didn’t just bring you the curse,” Rinko said. “We brought you treats, okay?” And she stood up to pull a small lidded tin out of her bag.

“Shu and I made them for you last night with my grandmother. You can take as long as you want to finish them, but I want the tin back when you’re done.”

Rinko offered Sakuko the tin, and she was ready to hate whatever was inside. These treats wouldn’t exist if Hinako wasn’t gone. Enjoying them would be the same as enjoying Hinako’s absence. And Rinko had just made them to have an excuse to get closer to Shu. She was nothing but a prop in another girl’s courtship, someone who was profiting from Hinako’s absence. That made her even more upset.

But she opened the tin and found an array of bean-paste treats and round cookies all decorated to look like rabbits, and she couldn’t bring herself to hate them.

Her sobs began to subside.

“The benefits of a family that owns a home oven,” Rinko remarked.

Shu stood up to get closer to the two girls.

“Sakuko, I’m going to find a way to make things right,” he said. “I’m going to take care of everyone from now on.”

His words were unconvincing, but Sakuko had already cried herself dry again.

“Poor Hinako, right?” Rinko asked. “If she saw us all in such a state over her… she’d probably make a face and say I need some air and storm out. Something like that.”

Her words were laced with envy and resentment, but Sakuko couldn’t find the words to lash out again.

“Thank you for the bunny treats,” was all that came out of her mouth.

Even though they were still treating her like a burden. Like an animal that wouldn’t leave its den without the lure of food. She was quiet, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t angry.

“This curse stuff… Is it something we can help with?” Shu asked. “We can come along with you. As long as you aren’t gonna go cutting off the heads of fox statues or anything, right?”

Sakuko shook her head.

“No. It’s shrine business. I can do it myself.”

Even though she hated being alone. She deserved it, though. This was her penance.

“We understand,” Rinko said. “Just remember to bring back my tin. I’m… I’m going to be really, really upset with you if you don’t bring it back. Do you understand me?”

There was an unspoken weight behind her request, which compelled Sakuko to nod.

“I’ll return it.”

“We love you, Sakuko.”

They had kissed a second time.

Their relationship had maintained a fragile-feeling normalcy after the first time. The friends were all walking home together. Rinko was talking to Hinako about makeup, and Shu said that it didn’t seem like her style. Sakuko said that she always looked pretty, that her nose was especially cute. The group had split apart as they crossed the bridge by Rinko’s house, and then Hinako’s hand had brushed against hers. She invited the other girl to come by her place again.

Sakuko put her hand on the door to her room and hesitated to lead Hinako inside, because she felt that they were crossing a significant, frightening threshold. Sakuko had wanted to say something: I love you; do you like me; do you think about kissing me again as much as I think about kissing you. But before she knew it, their faces had drawn close to one another, and Hinako’s lips were on hers as the two of them pressed their bodies against the closed door. She whimpered and touched the other girl’s hair.

Then, a creaking floorboard told them that they weren’t alone. And what Sakuko said, instead of what she wanted to, was I’m sorry. Hinako hastily asked something about getting her 500 yen back as Sakuko’s grandfather passed them by. Then she left, and she stopped coming by Sakuko’s house after school.

Some time after, she’d gotten quiet at school, too. And then Sakuko had found out why.

Whether they had an argument, or a misunderstanding, or an encounter with another student that she’d somehow ruined just by being there… Hinako had always come back around to her. After a particularly difficult incident she’d requested to borrow money, which had indeed kept her coming back around, for a time. So, when the god underground in her dreams told her that she and her friends had been cursed, she believed it, even as she also blamed her own cowardice in that moment.

She had always been interested in the history of Ebisugaoka’s folk practices, and her mother resented that enthusiasm. Her mother resented many things, while her grandfather didn’t; that was why she’d taken after him. Her mother resented that, too. A nice, pretty girl, with the charm and appeal to land a modern, upstanding boyfriend: her mother had wanted that, rather than a weird, troublesome, abnormal freak. She wondered, sometimes, about what her mother had wanted at her age.

Gravel, twigs, and dirt crunched under her geta as she approached the large fox carving by the Western end of the mountains. She stopped at every fox to perform a purifying prayer. With each one, she felt the curse’s burden begin to lift a little. She felt the repeated prayers begin to wear down the skin on her fingers.

“…Unexpected… Appreciate that the documents were… Your father…”

She heard a man’s voice in the distance.

“It’s no bother at all, of course. He wanted a notarized certification that the arrangement would be able to settle those financial affairs, and, of course, the Tsuneki house is happy to oblige. That it also provided me a chance to set your heart at ease with a reunion in person after so many years, no matter how brief… Nothing could’ve made me a happier man.”

“It was considerate of you.”

She heard Hinako’s voice, too. Her body tensed up as the other girl entered her sight from the other end of the trail, accompanied by a tall, young-looking man in expensive-looking attire. Her body tensed up because she realized who he was.

She had imagined someone far older and stranger — why? — but, his height aside, he barely looked older than they were. He looked somehow familiar, even.

“It’s still officially family land,” the man said. “Though the main house has relocated, we maintain a deep connection to the faith here. Shall we offer a prayer together?”

He made eye contact with her, abruptly stopped speaking, and tilted his head curiously. Of course he would. The stark red and white of a fully-robed shrine maiden in the woods was a curious sight. Hinako looked to him, and then to where he was looking. She didn’t wave at Sakuko, but she managed a hesitant nod of acknowledgment.

Uncomfortable silence enveloped them. The man finally bowed his head and offered a greeting.

“Of course, you must be with the local shrine. You must forgive me: It’s been so long since my early boyhood here that I’ve fallen out of acquaintance with the town’s clergy.”

“Hi,” Sakuko said with a reluctant bow. “Hi, Hinako.”

Hinako nodded at her again, her composure already buckling under clear discomfort.

“A classmate,” she managed to mutter to the man. “Kotoyuki, this is Sakuko Igarashi. Her family runs Sennensugi shrine.”

“Ah! I recall the name Igarashi. Your grandfather was the former head priest, was he not?”

“He still is,” Sakuko replied. “I’m breaking a curse.”

The man tilted his head again.

“We should leave her to her business,” Hinako said. “She takes these things seriously. She’s… a very loyal servant of the gods.”

He looked the girl directly in the eye: a sharp, piercing gaze that belied his gentle manner of speech.

“Miss Igarashi, might I then request that you perform a prayer especially for my prospective fianceé? She might be embarrassed by my telling this to a classmate, but despite her bold demeanor she has quite the delicate heart. A blessing to bring her comfort in my absence would be most splendid. It can be our secret, perhaps?”

The girls looked at each other, neither speaking nor moving. The man — Kotoyuki — looked down at Hinako and lightly stroked her shoulder.

“Oh, dear. Have I already said too much? My manners have always been so clumsy around schoolgirls…”

He barely looked older than they were.

“We can pray for you together, Hinako,” Sakuko said. “Let’s go to the fox statue.”

“Okay,” the other girl replied between measured breaths. “Kotoyuki, would you wait for us?”

“Of course, my dear.”

As they passed by the man to visit the statue, Sakuko recognized the peculiar aroma of fox musk on the air, and her body tensed up again. Hinako kept her distance from her. It was nothing like when they used to walk home together, even a few months ago.

Sakuko said another prayer by the stone-carved fox. Hinako bowed and clapped appropriately; she had always possessed a certain assent for the spiritual.

“Maybe this will help,” Sakuko said. “You’re under the curse, too.”

“Oh?” Hinako asked, her tone defensive.

“A fox has gone and cursed us all. The Hinako that I know… would never let some man touch her like that. This can’t be what you want.”

Hinako folded her arms and glared at the other girl.

“You don’t know me or what I want.”

“You… You want this…? But, you said that…”

That they’d be together forever. That they wouldn’t so much as get boyfriends without consulting each other. That she hadn’t made up her mind yet. That the situation was hard for her, too.

“I said? It’s not like my word means anything to you anymore, since you seem to think that I’m nothing but a liar. Or have you decided that I’m yours to save now? Which is it, Sakuko?”

“…Are you his to save…?”

“That’s my decision alone. Who I love, or who I let love me.”

Sakuko couldn’t bear to look at the other girl anymore, and she looked at the soil. Sensations from the past slipped through her open hand: the other girl’s hand, the other girl’s hair, the crumpled bills she’d been handed who-knew-how-long ago. And, now, a writhing mass of maggots in a great open wound.

“You really are choosing him, then. You really are abandoning me. If it’s not a curse, then you really did betray me.”

“Think about how hearing that makes me feel!” Hinako snapped. “Do you ever think beyond yourself? Am I wrong for wanting a future?”

“You want a future without me! You promised — I thought we still had time, I thought —”

“You broke a promise, too! Being together forever isn’t a one-sided obligation. Forever isn’t worth much to you when I need time to think, is it? At least Shu is sticking with me as a friend — you only care about having someone to rescue you!”

“That’s not true! I want to stick with you, I want to rescue you, too…!”

“You’re only saying that now to make yourself feel better!”

The accusation hit like an angry slap, or like a desperate bite, or like the needle of a sewing machine. Hinako’s sharp words echoed through the trees, and the rapid crunch of shoes running on gravel soon approached them.

“Hinako? What’s the matter?” the man asked, looking sharply at the both of them.

Before Hinako could answer, Sakuko had already raised a hand at him, purifying salt in her palm.

“Begone, evil spirit!” she yelled. “Leave this place!”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve already taken her away! You’ve already taken the real Hinako away! The real Hinako would never say these things!”

“Sakuko, stop.”

“You’ve placed her under the fox’s curse to make her your bride!”

The man rushed up to Hinako, placing his body between Sakuko’s and hers.

“How dare you! Is this what you’ve made of Ebisugaoka’s dignified faith? A vehicle for petty schoolyard envy? You’ve no right to wear those garments while spouting such filth!”

“I sewed them myself!” Sakuko shot back, through tears that were already falling.

“You’ve no right to practice on these grounds, either,” the man indignantly continued. “Perhaps the Tsuneki house will file a complaint for your improper use of the lands which we’ve generously kept open to the public!”

“Kotoyuki, that’s not —”

“Don’t worry, Hinako. I won’t let this girl bother you on our property again.”

He placed a hand on Hinako’s shoulder. Hinako fell silent. Sakuko looked at them and managed to hiss one last traitor through a crack in her lips.

The girl lowered her hand and reached into her bag.

“At least take this. For protection.”

She handed Hinako an item. Kotoyuki picked it up for inspection; he brought it to his nose and, as his face contorted in disgust, he flung the stale toffee into the brush, where it rolled downhill and out of sight.

He and Hinako left together without saying another word.

Sakuko continued her work. A pilgrimage in miniature to cleanse evil from every fox in town that she could find.

Some of the passing townsfolk gave her looks; some of them greeted her. She knew that she’d start crying again if she spoke to another person, so she only nodded back. That man was right: it was undignified of her to put on a scene like that in a shrine maiden’s garb. But, with each prayer, the curse’s influence over her continued to lift.

At the end of her circuit, she returned to place her accumulated old things in front of the great thousand-year cedar. She only had ninety-nine: the hundredth had been discarded that man. She placed them all, and prayed for her god to break the fox’s curse with the offering of old tools.

Would anyone else who came to the old shrine need her old clips and pencils? Would anyone else come at all…?

She opened her mouth to say something as she left, but the image of Hinako’s face passed through her mind, and she found herself doubled over and vomiting just past the stairs. She apologized through the retches: to her god, to her garments, to the path. But the ignoble puddle, already seeping down the soil, felt like some final vestige of filth leaving her body. The last drops of pus drained from a once-engorged wound.

Maybe this wasn’t a curse that a girl like her, untrained in proper rites, could break on her own. She should have involved her grandfather, who knew about exorcisms and proper handling of an onusa, and countless other things which she aspired to but hadn’t yet learned. But something impure within her still felt as if it had been purged. Stained things could be washed. Her grandfather had taught her how to do that, at least. For the first time in months, she felt clean. It was important to clean wounds; even moreso for large ones. And if they began to fester again, they could be cleaned again.

Sakuko began the walk back to the family’s main shrine buildings to return the implements she’d used. Shu and Rinko passed her by the split path to the shrine.

“Sakuko…?” he asked. “Have you been out all day?”

“I finished what I was doing.”

“Are you okay?” she asked. “We were worrying about you…”

“You don’t need to worry.”

“That’s good. We’re glad that you’re safe.”

Actually, it wasn’t clear whether she was safe: the man had threatened to file a complaint against her. Things would become difficult if he did.

“Did you see Hinako around anywhere? Rinko and I don’t know where she was today, either.”

“I don’t want to talk about Hinako,” the girl said, and began walking up the hill to the shrine. If the other two said anything to her after that, she didn’t hear it.

This would likely be the end for them. The Sakuko in the other girl’s heart was surely dead. The Hinako who she knew was dead, too. Or… If not dead, at the very least, she shouldn’t agitate the wound any further as it healed.

The other girl had, for a time, seemed open to them being something. And she regretted that they hadn’t discussed it properly before things changed, but things had changed, before either of them was ready. She, was like Sakuko, a girl from troubled circumstances who wanted to know love. Curse or no.

“I hope you find love, too, Hinako,” Sakuko declared on the steps of Sennensugi shrine.

Girls couldn’t marry each other, but when they loved each other the way men and women do, one of them could adopt the other and they’d become family that way. She’d read about it. Hinako wouldn’t be the girl to adopt her. It was as simple as that. She thought that it’d be nice to meet the kind of girl who would, if such a person existed for her.

She sat there, thinking about Rinko and Shu, and the food they’d brought her; and her family, and whether her mother would approve of what she’d been doing all day. For all of the emotions her mother felt regarding her, she wondered if envy was among them. Many emotions, after sufficient festering and rot, could produce a bloom of resentment. Envy was surely among them.

Before long, night had fallen. Crickets chirped. As she sat alone outside the main shrine, the pure white of her chihaya reflected light from the moon and stars.

Epilogue: Documents

I Wish I Could Dance With You

Counselor’s Note

A note found in a dresser in Sakuko Igarashi’s old room.

A note addressed to Sakuko Igarashi from the ■■ High School counselor’s office, dated ■■th September, 196■, hand-written on yellow stationery. The note’s contents are as follows:

Sakuko,

As we discussed: it isn’t entirely abnormal for girls to experience feelings such as yours. While Miss Shimizu has her own life to live, it is commendable that you care so deeply for her. I will be monitoring your progress; I hope not to see any more failed exams.

We will focus on finding constructive outlets for you, so that you can begin to build an independent life. You will find in this envelope a letter of recommendation from myself, as well as a letter from Mr. ■■ ■■ of our district’s local administrative staff. You may present them to any local business for the purpose of securing part-time employment until graduation. I encourage you to continue participating in your family’s religious matters, but remember to prioritize your own life, as well.

Civil Complaint

A discarded legal form found in the Tsuneki estate.

The complaint alleges the misuse of privately-owned land for religious purposes. It cites members of the Igarashi family for failing to obtain permission for a religious ceremony, which furthermore disturbed the private affairs of the Tsuneki family.

The complaint was unfinished when it was discarded, and it does not specify the date on which the alleged event occurred or any further details.

Letter from Hinako

A letter written by Hinako Shimizu.

Included with the letter is a bundle of candy wrapped in a kudzu leaf. The bundle appears to contain several pieces of toffee, themselves individually wrapped in wax paper. The leaf has been secured with twine expertly-tied in a traditional medicine knot.

The letter’s text is as follows:

To Kotoyuki:

I had an interesting meeting yesterday. Since you’re trying to learn more about ordinary people’s lives, I thought I would tell you about how it went. I met my old school friend, Sakuko Igarashi, for tea. She is still the Sakuko who you once met: she lightly scolded me for seating us at a table facing an unlucky direction. But she appears to be doing well.

I told you a bit about her when we were sending out wedding invitations. In our school days, Sakuko was an endearing girl, if an unusual one; she was known for being friendly with animals and her enthusiasm for spirituality. These days, she lives on her own, and splits her time between work at the general store and tending her family’s shrines. The difficult circumstances of your prior meeting remain a great regret for her.

We had a long conversation. She confessed to certain feelings she’d once held; to be honest, I must confess to you that, regardless of gender, there was a time when we might have ended up as something other than just school friends. Perhaps I have already mentioned that you would not have had my first kiss at the altar. I don’t mean to induce jealousy with this admission: it’s just the sort of thing that people can be honest about as time passes. The events of that day might make more sense to you with this knowledge.

Sakuko, for her part, slowly eased into a friendly but respectful distance after graduation. Once bitten, twice shy, as the saying goes; but I was happy when I saw that she wasn’t intending to keep a grudge. Were my feelings settled sooner, things might’ve gone differently back then — however, the same could be said had she trusted me sooner to settle those feelings for myself. Who knows what would have happened if we had tried to be something else to each other. Relationships built on one person attempting to save another tend to be quite volatile, as you and I both know. You two would be in good company if you ever met again.

I told Sakuko that you were looking for life advice. She said that, when she received our wedding invitation, her first impulse was to bite the hand that was reaching into her space. But she then decided that, if the first rabbit she’d ever met had bitten her, she probably wouldn’t have made friends with any other rabbits, and so she felt it was best to encourage you and I to make more rabbit friends in the future. She also recommends keeping a comfortable living space where one can hug as many pillows and plush dolls as they want, though now I’m laughing to myself imagining you doing something like that.

I also asked her about the wedding. She said that she was already dressed up and ready to leave when the news reached her; when it did, she laughed and said to herself, all that trouble for nothing? And then she spent the day exploring the next town over since she had already taken the day off. Suffice to say, I don’t think either of us needs to feel bad for having inconvenienced her.

Lastly, Sakuko wanted me to pass along a direct apology for making a scene when you first met. She offered a recommendation for a medium to perform an exorcism of your land — I suspect that she doesn’t want to create the appearance of a conflict of interest by offering to do it herself. To be honest, she would probably enjoy getting to hear about Heaven’s Benediction and Tsuneki history, though she might also denounce you all as usurpers and heretics.

She also insisted that I give you this offering which she prepared. She said that it was a fox-offering prepared in your family’s traditional style. As far as I can tell, it contains her favorite candy.

Your friend,

Hinako Shimizu