One Life

Content/Trigger warnings: This story deals heavily with suicide, and is mostly msub. If either of these are issues for you, I recommend avoiding this story.

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“As far as I’m concerned, life is a highly overrated phenomenon,” Seiko said to – as far as the rest of the stupid world was concerned – the empty air around him as he walked down the forest path. His eyes were downcast, not even looking at the trees around him as he strode distractedly forward, but his fingers casually let the spool of ribbon out behind him as he walked, letting it settle down on the ground in his wake. It caught on the brush as it raced out of the spool with every step, and he neither noticed nor cared. “When you really think about it, how could it not be? Trillions of worlds out there… they have to be teeming with their own life. Billions of years for that life to come into being, grow, and die out.” He shook his head. “When you think about it that way, nothing that happens here could really matter at all, does it?”

Suzuhara Seiko kept walking as he spoke, and there was something… comforting… in the misery and depression and sorrow that filled him as he walked. It was a hollow comfort, sure, but it was something… and something was better than the nothing he felt the rest of the time. These days, sorrow and misery were his only constant companions. They were the only friends he had these days after the rest had gone away or… Gone Away. They were all leaving him, one by one… everyone but his…

Well, his imaginary friend.

She would never leave him. Once, he could vaguely remember that he had worried about that, had worried that he was going crazy. Now, he knew the truth… the world was the crazy one. What was wrong with him finding a little bit of comfort in Kaliopi when he could?

“Is it really that bad?” the woman’s soft voice pressed against his ear in a whisper that could have been the wind. If he wasn’t paying attention, he might not have heard it at all. If he was expecting it, he might have convinced himself it was his imagination. Neither was true. She was real. She was the only thing that was real.

“I’m not even sure that’s bad at all,” Seiko said with a small frown. “With so much else out there, losing one life or another is no great loss. No one will miss you… at least not for long. There’s nothing to be sad about, nothing to mourn. Nothing of value is ever lost.”

“I see…” the wind said, a small, soft huff of breath that might have been a chuckle. “I see, darling. I see. Then… then I’ll try not to miss you when you’re gone.”

Seiko looked around to the left and the right, making sure there wasn’t another soul in sight. There wasn’t, of course… that was why he had decided to walk so far into the sea of trees, why he had left behind anywhere he might be discovered. His hands shook for a moment, but only for a moment, as he dropped the empty spool of ribbon. Then he reached into his backpack and, solemnly, pulled out the length of rope.

Kaliopi’s hands, invisible and formless, nevertheless brushed against his as he began to tie the first of several knots he would need… comforting him, being there with him at the end. Seiko wasn’t especially good at tying knots – in fact, if the last few months had taught him anything it was that he wasn’t especially good at anything at all, really – so it took him a while to transform the length of rope into the noose he would need. That was ok, though. He had time.

It wasn’t like there was anywhere he needed to be.

As his hands worked, the effort was unengaging enough that Seiko’s mind wandered. These days he tried to keep it from doing that, but this time there was nothing to distract him, nothing else to bury his thoughts with. The memories he tried so hard to repress swam to the surface. Six months ago, his life had been… well, he had thought it had been excellent. He had made it into Tokyo University as he had always dreamed. He had a girlfriend who he loved, and had loved him. He’d had friends, parents, a promising career, and a happy life. Then it had just… all just fallen apart.

It had started with his girlfriend. Ema had, in the space of a few weeks, gone from being a beautiful, outgoing, and friendly girl to a moody nightmare. She had lashed out over almost everything, lost her job, alienated almost every friend she had, and seemed to do her level best to drive Seiko away. He had tried to stay for her… he had loved her, truly. He wanted to support her. To make it work. To help her. But none of that had mattered… the weeks of misery had dragged on for most of three months before one day he came home after class to find a note from her that she had been kicked out of school, and she didn’t know what she was going to do. She was already gone by the time he read it. It had been four more days of frantically searching for her before her body was found at the end of a ribbon in Aokigahara, not too far from where he was standing now – hanging from the tree she had tied herself to.

It had been awful… but it had also only been the start. Seiko’s life falling apart might have started with his girlfriend’s problems, but they had quickly spread to him. It was almost like he had been cursed – all of the sudden, nothing worked. First, his bike was stolen. Then his best friend was attacked when Seiko left him alone for a little bit, and he blamed Seiko for it… leading to an angry falling out between them a week later. Then his parents… Mother and Father suddenly died in an accident. A heating accident in their home, filling it with gas. Both of them had died in their sleep.

After that, he began to fall apart completely. He stopped going to class, or to work. He stopped talking with anyone. It wasn’t even a surprise when he was fired, or when the university delivered him a letter informing him not to come back next semester. Seiko couldn’t bring himself to care.

It would have been even worse if it weren’t for Kaliopi.

In his more lucid moments, Seiko knew that he must be insane. He understood that. Kaliope wasn’t really there… that she was someone whose voice he hallucinated to make himself feel better. Invisible women that no one else could hear weren’t real. But… when she was there, when he was speaking to her, he could imagine that he wasn’t alone for a few moments. That someone cared. When he was insane and delusional there was someone left in the world who gave a shit about him. It made the moments when he was lucid and she wasn’t there all the more empty and worthless.

Seiko finished tying off the last of the knots and clumsily threw the rope over the tree. He wasn’t overly athletic… it took him three attempts to get it right. He tied it off at the base of the tree, climbed on the nearby log, and checked the length. Then he climbed down, shortened it a bit, and checked again. Then, with what felt like all of the finality of a dying star going out somewhere in a vast and uncaring universe, he slipped the tied noose over his head, and as he did he could have sworn he heard string music distantly on the wind as it whispered through the trees. “Thank you for everything, Kaliopi,” he whispered… hoping against hope she would be there at the end. That he would hear her words of comfort one last time in his final moments.

“What the fuck?” Kaliopi snarled.

The sound of Kaliopi’s voice, suddenly harsh and hard and vicious and not at all the comforting, soothing whisper he was never quite sure if he was imagining, hit him like a splash of cold water while he slept. His attention snapped over to the side, the music suddenly taking on greater depth and realness the more his attention fixated on it, the more he looked for the source… until he found a woman up in one of the trees.

At first glance, the woman above made Seiko think that yūrei might be real. With her white hair and pale clothing she looked entirely like a ghost at first glance as she hung over the side of a particularly thick branch. She was no ghost, however… the koto in her lap sang out the song he heard on the wind one plucked string at a time as she focused on it… and draping down the tree like curtains were nine white tails. His eyes wide, Seiko stared at the woman in disbelieving shock.

A kitsune.

“He is mine…” a whisper that seemed to come from everywhere all at once said. “Not yours! Find your own!”

Slowly, the kitsune stopped playing the instrument, putting it down on the branch beside her. “You are not supposed to be here, yokai.” The kitsune’s voice was not the musical, illusionary, half-impossible voice he would have expected. She just sounded like a woman… a somewhat angry one. Slowly, her gaze fixed on him, and he flinched as her bright blue eyes raked over him before settling… somewhere over his shoulder. “This world is not yours any longer. You do not belong here.” Some of her tails twitched slightly at the tip, and Seiko realized that she had a ribbon – his ribbon – held casually in one tail as if it were a single finger. “Leave. Go back to the Shinkai where you belong.”

Seiko was speechless. He found it difficult to even think, much less talk… his thoughts felt like they were fighting through molasses to even reach the forefront of his mind. “Or what follows?” he growled out, barely processing that he had no idea why he had said that.

The fox slowly stood, balancing perfectly on the branch. “I send you back the hard way.”

A funny thing happened then. A wave of absolute rage burned away the wall of depression that Seiko had been crawling through for months… anger and hatred and fury. He bared his teeth and narrowed his eyes, looking up at the fox woman above him. “Leave me alone!” he spat, trying desperately to hold on to that sensation of anger… it was the first strong feeling he could remember experiencing in weeks.

At the same time, the whispers from around him spoke. “He’s mine! You can’t have him!”

A pained expression flickered across the kitsune woman’s face, there and gone in a moment. Golden fire coursed across white tails almost like thin strands of lightning as the interloper nodded solemnly. Then she leaped down and at him, and her form shifted in the time it took to pass beneath a branch’s shadow, and then a white, nine-tailed fox the size of the Toyota rushed at him and…

And…

And Seiko quickly lost track of what was going on.

His mind rebelled against the impressions of magic and power as the fox attacked, her teeth flashing even as that golden fire flared out all around him… but despite the rush of speed and grace and strength he never felt those teeth on him. Likewise, it felt like he was in a dream… his control over his own body seemed tenuous. It was like he was so angry that he was seeing red and his body was acting on its own with only minimal guidance from his thinking mind. His attacker shifted form several times, moving between the beautiful, white-haired woman and the fox as she fought… nothing. Seiko, blinded with rage, struck at her but his attempts were like trying to punch a piece of silk fluttering in the wind. Her own strikes, however, came no closer to striking him. In fact, it didn’t look like she was even trying – instead, it seemed like she was boxing with shadows.

Seiko charged at her again, and the kitsune effortlessly stepped to the side, grabbing his wrist, and using it to spin him around. She let go and he stumbled forward, falling onto the ground, and she immediately turned her attention back to fighting empty air. He yelped, pushing himself back up, his face red and his eyes narrowed. How dare she stop him and then just… ignore him like this! He attacked again and she just moved to the side as he punched, without even seeming to look at him. “STOP IGNORING ME!” he shouted, furious. “You can’t ju-”

The kitsune gestured in a broad sweep towards him and fire poured off her hands in a wave. He flinched as it washed over him, but it didn’t burn… he felt a tingling tickle like static electricity as it passed over him and around him, into the trees and grass and brush around him, leaving Seiko unharmed. The Japanese boy shook off the tension, rising to approach her again… and something grabbed at his ankle. He tugged free of the snag, yanking himself clear, but an instant later something else caught him by the foot, and then around his elbow. Seiko turned and found several of the branches and vines of the surrounding brush had uncoiled, turning into living ropes and snares, all of them racing for him.

In seconds, he was caught. He ripped at them, trying to tear his way free of the plants, but with each one he ripped free of his body or the ground it seemed like two more took its place. The fox had completely stopped paying attention to him… instead, wave after wave of golden fire washed out from her like tides, and each time they did…

Seiko hesitated for a moment. With each wave, he caught a glimpse of a humanoid figure in the empty air, where the flames cast it into relief in negative space. Someone he had never seen before. The figure was definitely feminine, slim, and lovely, but not human below the waist… it looked like a mess of tentacles below the place where her hips should be, writhing and twisting in the golden light. Each time that silhouette came into view, that was what the kitsune attacked… striking the empty air over and over again, and each time she did the tentacled woman flinched away. Seiko was being dragged down to the ground, the vines around him as inexorable as gravity, but he kept trying to claw his way toward the fox, to protect that woman in the darkness between the golden light, to rip the interloper of a kitsune to pieces. His attempts were no more effective now than they had been when he was standing earlier… only now he could hear the screams.

Kaliopi’s pained screams.

“Leave her alone!” he bellowed, snarling, ripping at the vines with the only hand he had that was still free before a thick root rose up out of the ground and coiled around it, yanking him hard back down to the ground and leaving him finally immobile. “Leave my friend alone! Leave her alone!”

The fox struck again, light sparkling along her sharp nails, and Seiko thought he wasn’t imagining the flash of crimson he saw in the empty air. He was all but certain he wasn’t imagining the scream of pain made by the rushing wind through the forest. Then, without any warning of anything touching him, pain washed over Seiko… an odd sort of pain, beneath the surface, like his skin felt suddenly too tight. A sharp, acute sense of claustrophobia, like he was in too small a space pressing down on him. Then there was nothing but helpless rage and frustration as he tried to break free… even as the kitsune turned her attention back to him where he lay on the ground.

Akari breathed hard as he stood over the prone man – no, boy, really – and looked down at him, her eyes raking over him with calculating precision. The roots and vines held the slender youth as he continued to struggle, his arms and legs spread far apart to prevent him from gaining any leverage, and now for now he – and the monster – were both rendered harmless… but only for the time being. Now Akari needed to figure out what to do next.

The zenko huffed out a breath of annoyance. She had been looking for this algea for some time but she was hard to find. Aokigahara had a legacy of death. Akari didn’t know how much of it was truly common mania that attracted the spirit here for her to feed on it, and how much of it was something she inspired… what he did know was that the monster was here, that she used it as a hunting ground. The issue was that once the spirit had latched onto her prey she didn’t stick out from the background at all, not even to the kitsune’s enhanced senses for such things. The fact that she didn’t belong here didn’t stand out nearly so strongly when she had a victim with her to disguise herself meant it would take far, far longer to hunt her down, and Akari had had so many other problems to solve, so many other monsters to silence… she hadn’t been able to give these woods her full attention like she would have liked. Angry, hostile spirits among the yokai were dangerous each and every time one of those youma made it into this world, and usually only tragedy followed in their wake. She didn’t know how many people owed her their lives because she had been distracted away from this algea to hunt those more obvious monsters instead, but what she did know was this – by saving some, other people had died because she hadn’t stopped this spirit sooner. And… and if she had been quicker, this boy would have never fallen victim. It was her goddess-given task to protect people like him, and now he was in danger.

She had to help him.

The process of doing so, however, was not going to be easy, or simple. She had forced the algea to take refuge inside its host and to keep away from the zenko kitsune, but the spirit, this Kaliopi, wasn’t gone… she had burrowed into his soul like a worm through an apple, leaving painful tunnels behind as she grew inside of him. Defeating her was the easy part, no real contest for Akari’s powerful abilities. Drawing her out without killing the host was going to be much, much harder.

These days, Akari spent much of her time fighting monsters, policing the border of the spirit world and the human world. By her actual preference, however, the fox was a healer. In the time before she had been brought into Inari’s service directly, she had dedicated herself to the saving of lives. The principle was the same here as it was there – she couldn’t really use foxfire inside someone else’s body to heal them, not without being much more likely to kill them than to help them. Thankfully, she didn’t need to – animal, man, or spirit, they all were complex forms capable of healing themselves. All she needed to do, then, was nurture their own natural abilities, accelerate them, and strengthen them. Nearly any injury could be healed that way if their own healing was properly supported.

That didn’t mean that all injuries were made equal, however… and of all the injuries she had ever learned to heal, by far the worst were infections. That was especially true when one of the kitsune got one – by their nature, kitsune already healed quickly, and were very difficult to injure and even harder to infect, so whenever an infection managed to take hold it usually managed to become rather epic in scale… gathering and concentrating itself at the original point of infection. The only way to fight that infection, then, was to dilute it… spread it around the body thinly and let the host immune system fight the disease off.

The risk in doing that, however, was that if the host’s ability to heal was weakened enough then the infection could take root in a second location, and then a third, and then more if the healer couldn’t keep up a constant effort to control it… quickly becoming a lethal problem that even a powerful healer’s magic couldn’t hope to keep up with. Frequently, that happening was lethal for both victim and healer – to heal such an injury, the kitsune needed to mingle much of her own soul inside of the victim. More than one healer had felt their own life give out if they failed and didn’t pull back their efforts in time… drained of all energy and fire, they died along with the person they were trying to save. It was all too easy, unfortunately – Healing such injury took immense amounts of power not to exhaust yourself, and intense control… and Akari was far better at one of those things than the other. Infections were hard.

This injury was a lot like one of those.

The soul might be immortal, but the body that hosted it was not. The soul would endure. It would eventually heal from the injuries dealt to it on its own. The boy’s body, however, would be long dead by then. In order to pull the algea out of him, she needed to keep him alive while his injury healed… not an injury of the body, but one of the soul. And in order to do that she needed to make a conduit to him, a connection to his soul… the same as the predator had done.

Akari put a hand on the young man’s forehead and closed her eyes, effortlessly riding him with even pressure as he writhed and squirmed away from him, still cursing with the algea’s words in his mouth. Foxfire coursed through him with the lightest touch the zenko could manage, letting Akari take a look at him from the inside… taking in the state of his injuries. There were so, so, so many. Every pain, every trauma, every wound of the soul and spirit had created another hollow spot in the immaterial essence that made him up, each wound another place that the algea could burrow into and expand and make her own. Injury by injury, she traced them back… following each hurt in sequence from the newest, all the way back to the first real modern scar… the death of Ema. He had been infected through her, she saw… their intimacy turned into a weapon to expose him. That was where the pain had begun, and where it would need to begin to be unraveled from. And she would need to make her link the same way.

Akari sighed. Of course it was that.

The zenko sighed. She really didn’t want to do this. It felt unfair… both to him, and to her. But he needed it, and she owed him to save him.

Akari pulled her hand back, leaving the beautiful, angry boy to thrash in the root bondage holding him down. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and calmed herself. Then she smiled and looked back down at him. “That creature is lying to you,” she whispered. “She says she cares about you. That she is the only one that cares about you. She lies on both counts.” He struggled against the organic bonds, but his efforts were futile… he couldn’t escape her. He wasn’t paying her much attention either, however. His eyes were on her but angry and wild, and she wasn’t sure he heard a thing that she said.

With a sigh, Akari reached up, took her kimono’s shoulders in each of her hands, and slowly shrugged her way out of the top of it before letting it drop, held up only by the sash around her waist… leaving her entire upper body exposed. The effect was like a hammer blow to the boy beneath her as her breasts came into sight… all of a sudden, his gaze wanted to drop. A very natural response for a healthy, straight boy… a response that was his and not the algea’s, warring for control of what he did. His eyes fixated on her breasts as they slowly swayed with the motion of her body and her breathing, catching the dappled light in the forest clearing.

A small smirk crossed the kitsune’s face as she took in his response… she had his attention now. While Akari might not be as… prolific… in her lovers as either of her sisters had been, she was no prude, and she was well aware of the effect her body could have on those around her… she deliberately arched her back just the right amount, shrugging her shoulders back, putting herself on display like a work of art above the bound boy. He continued struggling against his bonds but the feel of it was different now… as if he wasn’t sure what he would do if he got free. If he wanted to hurt her, or if he just wanted to touch the work of art sitting unattainably on display above him.

“Do I have your attention now, boy?” she said softly. Slowly, she leaned down, very aware that it brought her breasts closer to her captive as well, and she enjoyed watching his eyes follow them down before she lowered herself enough that they left sight and he was forced to look instead into her bright blue eyes. “She doesn’t care about you,” Akari repeated. “But I do. And I’m going to protect you.”

She expected him to protest. She expected him to snarl, or laugh. She hadn’t expected the laughter that surrounded her, like the leaves of the trees were all laughing at her at once. “Protect him. Care about him,” the voice said. The algea’s voice, speaking from inside her victim, still surrounded her… Aokigahara was hers. The forest was more hers than Akari had allowed herself to recognize. “You care about nothing. He is nothing. I know it, he knows it, you know it, and he knows you know about it. You are not here for him. You are here for me.”

No throat made any of these sounds. Instead, a thousand swaying branches and fluttering leaves, a thousand buzzing insects and flapping wings and dripping drops of water, and most damningly of all a thousand abandoned ribbons fluttering in the wind formed the sounds… the spirit using her demesne to communicate. Kaliopi might not have been born here, and she might have been far from home, but she had made this place her domain… and here she dominated.

Or she had. Now, Akari was here… and she said differently.

Akari turned her mind completely away from the spirit and focused on the boy. His clothing had been torn in dozens of places and now only hung off him in strips, the scratch marks left from ripping at plants painting his skin. His skin was fair besides that, however, and his eyes were as soft a blue as a robin’s egg. No longer narrowed with fury, though he struggled still… they were large as coins with nerves and apprehension. He seemed so delicate, the slender boy. “That’s right. Look at me,” she announced, sucking in a breath and standing up a little straighter, setting her jaw and narrowing her eyes. She was a representative of Inari-okami. She was dignified… regardless of whether or not she was in the woods with her tits out. Akari appreciated the way his eyes followed her as she moved, looking down the length of his own bound body to admire her form… and slowly, a bulge in his pants grew. His lower lip was in his mouth, his teeth pinching it, and she could practically feel the way his stomach tightened beneath her, even before she slid one hand beneath his shirt and ran her fingers down the delicate hairs on his chest. His heart raced beneath her touch, growing harder and faster in time with… other things. The appeal of the boy she was sworn to protect being putty in her hands, sheltered from the world beneath her tails, felt momentarily more exciting than any drug to Akari, and in a lightning-fast burst of violence that contrasted her soft touches of a moment ago she ripped open his shirt, turning the torn rags into an open canvas that left his chest as exposed as hers was. She lowered herself, her teeth finding his shoulder softly before it turned to soft kisses across his sensitive skin, and then just brushes of her lips as she transitioned between rough and soft.

Akari was no amateur. She might strike people as aloof, and she definitely did not have her sisters’ penchant for seeking out additional lovers… but she had lived for more than 800 years – she knew what she was doing when she wanted to climb into bed. She knew what her lovers wanted… and she knew what she wanted from them, and how to get it. She knew how to play with his expectations, to keep him just off-balance enough to send his mind tumbling down into a canyon of need, to leave him desperately reaching out for her touch… and to use that to cut away the algea’s presence in his soul, one bit at a time. Even as her hand slid down his body, snaking its way effortlessly down his pants, and fastening on the swollen hardness she found there, her magic pressed at him the same way her hands did… pushing on his soul, finding small nooks and crannies she could wedge power into, and use it to slowly push the encroaching monster away. When she pushed Kaliopi out of somewhere, she would give strength to his soul there, encouraging it to heal, encouraging it to repair the damage that allowed her to infect him and to reclaim himself while she held the monster out and away from him, giving him the time to do it.

That was always the stressful part of healing someone. Ultimately, this boy was the only one who could save himself. Akari couldn’t heal someone who lacked the will to be whole once more. Even now, she was pushing Kaliopi back, but the boy’s soul wasn’t sealing itself back up in her wake. It meant that she needed to keep up the long, hard, constant pressure against the yokai’s will, holding her back while she worked to encourage her captive to choose life instead. She could help defend him… but she couldn’t save him. She could only give him the means to save himself.

She felt the tension in him. He might not understand what was going on in his soul but he felt how close Akari was to him, the way she pressed against him. Akari sucked in another breath and could easily imagine how she looked in the boy’s eyes. She proceeded to climb more onto him, resting her hips on his chest. Her other hand played across his chest while the first held possessively onto his length… not stroking, not squeezing, but just… remaining there, possessively. His stomach tightened beneath her hands and precum leaked from his slit down her fingers, just barely clinging to the tiny, fine hairs on her smooth hand. “Look at me,” she commanded him, holding his gaze with her eyes. “Look nowhere else. You are here with me… and that is where you will stay.”

He squirmed once more, tugging at the roots and vines and branches holding him. His lips worked, suddenly dry, and it took him several tries to get out the words he was trying for. “Are you going to hurt me?”

Akari pursed her lips and smiled down at him… not the world’s most reassuring smile, perhaps, but one that sucked him further into her eyes. An intimate one that invited him closer, no, demanded him to be closer. “Only if I get excited enough we get carried away,” she whispered, voice breathy. Without letting that smile go, she moved her nails through the hair of his chest, softly teasing along his stomach and tracing the lines of muscles beneath his stretched skin. The boy whimpered, flushing hotly as his cock pulsed and his back slowly arched.

“You are a beautiful creature,” Akari mused, shifting her position so that she could draw her nails lower, along his stomach. “What is your name?”

“…It doesn’t matter. Why do you care,” he gasped, balling his hands into fists and curling his toes tightly.

“Because I care about you,” Akari whispered, pressing her nails down just a little bit harder. Now they left just the lightest pink trials across his skin as it raised in response to the touch… not painful, exactly, but a dramatic and different sensation to contrast with the softer touches.

“No you don’t…” he moaned, tugging at the roots. His voice filled the empty stone space like a cry. “No one does.”

His words were ugly things, but the moan was pretty. She wanted him to not say them again and to make those other sounds more instead so Akari left more of the pink soft trails along his hip. Again he moaned beautifully. “I do,” she said firmly. “I want to save you. I want to protect you. I want to stop anyone who would hurt you.” She chuckled at the way his cock throbbed a little bit in her hand. “Well… anyone but me, anyway.”

She was so entwined in his soul that the surge of arousal that shot through him at those words was white hot, almost painful. Akari had no idea if he had always been this eager to be controlled or if the algea had primed him to this point. It didn’t really matter – if the goal was to push her influence out of him, she needed to supplant the handle Kaliopi used to control him. “You like that, do you? You want to do things that would please me?”

“…no…” he whispered, but there was nothing convincing in it. Akari was too deep in the boy’s soul to be fooled. That was a retreat, his shame and self-loathing making him back away from anything that he thought could fool him into having a purpose or a positive experience. Words alone were a paltry lie, compared to the burning need she could feel in the rest of him.

She chuckled “Lying little boy,” she purred as her free hand moved up to grab him by his short hair, yanking on him even as she slid forward, letting him feel the molten heat between her legs as her thighs gripped onto his chest with each movement. “You think you can fool me so easily?” She pulled on his hair again, sliding forward again, and then the hem of the split in her kimono passed over his chin, and her panties brushed against his face and forced her scent on him. “I’m not taken in by lies, little one…”

Akari felt it as the boy’s nose brushed her pussy on the other side of that thin, thin fabric, just his eyes sticking out of the fabric of her clothing and staring up at her with wide eyes. His whole face was flushed almost scarlet now, and she tightened her grip on his hair further, using it to tilt his face a little more. “Lick,” she said. It was the softest command. To the boy, it was probably barely even audible over the thunder of his own heartbeat. It did nothing at all to command obedience… and yet his mouth opened and lapped at the fabric between her legs as it gradually grew soaked from both sides. He made whimpering noises against her as she smiled at each one of them, giving his cock a slight stroke with each sound she liked to further encourage him. “Lightly,” she commanded. “Your mistress enjoys being teased. I want to last… and for you to do the same.”

Dominants throughout time had had to get good at reading their submissive. Rarely did one of them have the advantages Akari did. To understand what the boy beneath her was feeling, what he needed, what he feared and craved, her eyes and ears were pathetic tools compared to the life energy of his body that she was entwined with. She could feel the hot pleasure that burned through him with her words, with every stroke of her fingers and every new pulse of precum that bubbled up. “That’s a good, clever boy,” she whispered. “You can use that tongue…” The little burst of praise filled him with another small shockwave of pleasure that she didn’t need to see or hear because she could feel it. She knew when he liked something and when he didn’t, what got her closer to driving the algea out of him, and what got him further away. Her hands were gentle in his hair, but she never let go of it as she guided his face into a back-and-forth motion, allowing his tongue to tease and lap around her clit through the thin fabric.

Akari was drenched behind her panties now as her captive boy traced the outline of her pussy lips over and over again. He was breathing hard, and she could feel the pleasure building him, building with each stroke of his cock in her hand as she slowly grew faster. Her hands grew more insistent, both in his hair and on his cock as she tried to drive him towards his peak at the same time she rose towards once herself, riding his face eagerly, taking her pleasure from him even as she gave it back in return. “Cum for me, you sweet boy,” she commanded, her legs starting to shake…

And she felt pain.

It wasn’t physical. It was emotional… mental. It was like someone had pushed live electrodes into her thoughts, and she recoiled back, hard… shaking on top of him, crying out in a strange mix of the pleasure she had been so close to and agony. Below her, the boy felt the same way, but he didn’t cry out, didn’t scream, didn’t even seem to react beyond some unsent tears glistening in his eyes as, slowly, Akari pulled back, drawing away from his tongue and gasping out of her breath as she sat on the young man’s chest and tried to make the pain recede.

The pain hadn’t been hers, she knew that. She had felt it through his soul, like a knife twisting in her gut felt in sympathy… stabbing forward the moment he had been about to cum, arresting that pleasure, denying it. Akari had only felt it because she was so tied to his soul that she practically was him in this second… and he hadn’t come. He’d been stopped… or stopped himself. And it was an old pain. A familiar one.

Akari closed her eyes, visualizing what the algea had done to him, feeling her way through the problem. This wasn’t playing to her strengths. This required strength and focus, things she had in plenty, but it also required… imagination. A gift for understanding how the monster was binding the boy’s soul up. That was never her gift. Seijun hadn’t taken her as an apprentice, after all.

Yuki had never been as strong with foxfire as Akari had been. She had never had the raw power. Which of them had more focus and skill had always been arguable. What her baby sister had always had a gift for, however, was magical imagination. The ability to visualize a problem and the solution to it. It made her an excellent illusionist in the same way it had always made her an excellent artist, for the same reasons, and meant that she was always finding creative ways to solve magic problems using less energy through a greater understanding of what was needed to fix it… for Yuki, a rod was never the right tool when a needle in the right place could do the job. That was what Seijun had seen her in, what she had taken and nurtured.

Akari could use that talent right now – She had little practice at the same task. It wasn’t an especially uncommon problem for any kitsune to have once they began working with true foxfire… the process was taxing enough that every kitsune learned to play to their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. Akari didn’t have the same ability to visualize the composition of a spell in metaphysical layers that her sister did, so she didn’t – instead, she used her plentiful strength and focus to find direct solutions to the problem. It was sometimes a less elegant solution, but it always worked just as well.

Except… now, they wouldn’t. If Akari used the amount of power and focus she needed to brute-force her way through Kaliopi’s mental and emotional bondage, she could break them easily enough… but since she was using the boy’s mind as part of the Gordian knot making up that bondage it would be a Pyrrhic victory – he would never survive. She needed to identify exactly the right places where this spell of control was tied and unravel that knot, using the bare minimum of power, or she needn’t bother at all. The issue was that the more she looked she couldn’t find any part of that binding that wasn’t made of the boy.

The algea’s voice laughed, the forest resonating with the sounds. “No one cares for him. His life is meaningless, zenko… will you show him that by killing him to get to me?” The laughter went on and on. “Prove it. Proooove it…”

She softly stroked his hair while she thought, slowly piecing it together in her mind, forming a picture. That was it. The yokai gave away too much. She had been right, she could see it now… the spell didn’t use the algea’s energy at all. She had entirely woven it from her victim’s life force… that was why she had only infected him after his girlfriend had died, and she had a major wound to begin peeling him apart with. It was a cage of loss and pain and sorrow and loneliness, and she had shown her victim how to seal his own doom, brick by metaphorical brick.

She didn’t need to tear it down at all. She needed him to do it for her… and she didn’t have a lot of time.

Everywhere that Akari pressed on Kaliopi, she stopped. No longer did she try to force the spirit out. Instead, she just focused on preventing her from retaking new spaces as she moved down the boy’s body. She had to keep fighting… but the boy’s body had its limits. He wasn’t meant to contain his own soul, and Kaliopi’s, and Akari’s… but Akari couldn’t retreat without allowing Kaliopi to kill the boy, and the algea wouldn’t leave of her own free will. She had been drawn into a battle for the boy’s life, and it was a duel that she couldn’t retreat from without killing him… and if she lost, her soul was far too entwined with him to avoid consequence. The zenko wasn’t sure if she could be killed by that kind of destruction inflicted on her own fire or not… she knew that it would mangle her, and probably leave her wishing it had killed her for at least a time. She was committed to this fight. “What is your name, boy?” she whispered, keeping her voice as husky as she could.

“It doesn’t matter…” he muttered… but Akari didn’t stop. She let him see her face as she moved and didn’t try to hide her own arousal, her own frustration at her aborted orgasm, or the way her cheeks blushed with pleasure as she crawled over to carefully kneel between the boy’s parted legs. A single flick of her head collected the fall of her white hair, brushed against his thighs with a silk-like caress as it flung up to neatly drape over her right shoulder. She lowered herself back down, bracing her palms on his hips and clutching them possessively for a moment before she pulled his pants down, leaving him exposed to her.

His cock stood up straight before her, curving slightly up towards his stomach and already flushed a deep, almost bruised pink. It looked so sensitive, and so she leaned down, pursed her lips, and gently blew warm air across the underside of his glans. His hips curled upwards and he moaned pitifully, his whole body shivering as she teased him. More glistening precum dripped down to his belly, her lips blowing another gentle puff of air, and then another, growing closer and closer, warmer and wetter. “It matters to me,” she said, and she pushed through words through her foxfire. Just as she was connected to him, and could feel him and his reactions and his needs, she let him feel her. Let him feel the honesty in those words. Let him feel the determination she felt to save him. “I care who you are, sweet boy.” Beneath her palms she could feel his lean muscles slide beneath his skin. She could feel the strain of his needy body, the waves of desire radiating from him. It hit her mind like alcohol, lured her in, and made her tipsy on the sensation of their mingled lust as she slowly, deliberately moved her elbows to the side of her breasts and, with almost cruel slowness, pressed down… squeezing them around his shaft.

The boy gasped loudly, then actually cried out as she ever-so-slightly shifted position. If Akari was being honest about herself then her breasts were probably her beast sexual asset, large and perfectly formed, sensitive and soft without drooping, and if what she felt in his soul was any indication they felt like heaven wrapped around the young man’s cock. Like this, he could feel every single motion of her body, transmitted through the soft pillows on her chest. She smiled at him as he shuddered and once again tugged at his bonds, although if he was trying to escape her touch or dive further into it not even he knew. Akari’s smug, self-satisfied smirk stayed as she slowly squeezed harder, letting him feel every tiny increase in pressure like she was going to try to crush his dick between her tits, letting his precum slowly coat the tunnel between them. “Your name. What is it?”

“…Why… d-do… you… care?” he choked out.

“Because I need to save you,” Akari said softly as she began stroking her chest up and down his shaft. His wetness was enough to lubricate his passage, and the soft, silky smoothness of her breasts did the rest as she stroked him with her tits, never letting the pleasure build to the point they were threatening an orgasm but teasing him constantly, letting the pleasure build and stroking that fire as it grew hotter and hotter with no plans to let it burn out. “I need you to live.”

“Why…” he whispered. “You don’t know me. What could I possibly matter to you?”

Those weren’t the algea’s words, she knew. There was no touch of the spirit here. This was his own insecurities coming to the surface, his own fears. Part of the knot. Which made Akari’s inability to answer all the more frustrating.

She considered a dozen different answers. That she cared what happened to everyone. That she was sworn to protect them all. That she had promised she would to her goddess. That she wanted him to be happy again, and find purpose in life. All of those answers were true… but they all rang false. None of them were the full reason, and she knew it… even without knowing what she could say, she knew even in the depths of her own soul that none of those answers were satisfactory. That she cared for him exactly the way she did for every other human under her care? How would that make him feel, when her words would feel hollow to him all the way to his inside? That sounded like Kaliopi was right, that she was only here to hunt the yokai and didn’t actually care what happened to her victim.

Akari didn’t know what to say, so she robbed herself of the ability to answer. On the next downward stroke of her breasts, she continued down, down, down, until at last she pressed her lips to the tip of his cock. An upwelling of cum leaked out and ran along the curve of her upper lip and to the right, sliding slowly down the seam of her body and his. She felt his heartbreak spike, and the kitsune she slowly slid her tongue out to taste that pure, perfect drop. It was musky, salty, and ever so slightly sweet. It tasted of fleshy pursuits and lust and need, and she swallowed it down with a soft moan, quickly sliding her tongue back over his smooth head for another taste.

“Ohhhhhh!” the boy moaned pitifully, roiling slowly under her. “You… you…” he tried to speak but couldn’t. His breath was ragged with anticipation, his mind a ship battered on the storm of lust raging in his head. He hadn’t let go of the question, though, so Akari went further… opening her mouth and beginning to take his cock head in past her lips and over her tongue. The zenko’s cheeks hollowed as she suckled on him, drawing up more of that flavor that he offered her, and the way his body jerked with need beneath her satisfied a long-starved flame inside of her… it had been too long, and now her skin was prickling with excitement. These weren’t the conditions under which she would have chosen to do this if she had a choice… but she had been so busy dashing from crisis to crisis that it had been… too long, too long since she had been with anyone, too long since she and Sai had had any time at all. She couldn’t regret the opportunity. As the boy beneath her began to buck again, she moved her grip back onto his hips, tightening it until her fingernails pressed hard enough into his skin to leave a dimple without drawing blood.

It was enough to tame the excitable boy’s excesses for the moment, and to allow her to begin slowly bobbing on his cock, sucking him with her tight, full lips. The tips of her pointed fox ears blushed hotly and pulsed with her heartbeat, and each time she took him further into her mouth she felt his pleasure deep inside of herself. It was only encouraging the ache between her own thighs. Cautiously, she released his hip with her right hand and felt between her legs at her pussy lips, now soft and hot and oh so wet. They were sensitive and even the lightest touch of her finger made her shiver, her back dipping. Arousal leaked around her fingers as she played with herself, and it was enough for her to undo the sash holding up her kimono with the efficiency of long, long practice, allowing it to drop forgotten to the forest floor. That might have been a mistake… even the lightest caress of air over her slit made her moan into his cock, the slight points of her vulpine canines brushing his length without doing any harm.

She wanted him to cum. She wanted to taste him… wanted him to release himself in her mouth. She didn’t need words to express that desire, either. She merely needed to suck harder, to let her draping hair brush against his balls, to moan around his length, and to let the thought fill her mind and mean it with every fiber of her being. She knew he would feel that just as she could feel him. He would know what she wanted, what she was asking for him to do as she drove him up and up and up and up and…

Pain.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t. She wanted him to. He wanted to, as well… but he couldn’t. It hurt.

Tiny tears trickled down Akari’s face, tears of empathy and of frustration. She tolerated the pain a few seconds longer to see if he would give in before she pulled back, exhausted, breathing hard. Without truly thinking about it, she lifted her head from his cock and swallowed the cum-laced-saliva coating her tongue while looking the boy in the eyes, her own narrowed with excitement and hunger that was partially her own and partially his reflected onto her through their bond, barrier or not barrier. The boy was flushed hot as she shivered, and the pain of denial was an old, familiar pain to him… it did nothing to dampen how much he wanted that closeness and intimacy. He still bit his lip as she crawled up along his body and straddled his hips, her belly lowering to press against his.

The small puddle of precum that had leaked there onto his skin slid between them as she brought her right hand to his mouth. Her glistening digits were reflected in his beautiful eyes, and he lifted his head to obediently and gently suckle them clean. “Good boy…” she whispered, not even seeing the slightest reason to disguise her own desire and lust now. The feeling of his hot, soft tongue and lips on her fingers made Akari swallow and close her eyes. She moved her hand away from his mouth and pushed herself up to kneel over him, one hand braced on his slender chest while the other felt for his cock between her legs.

“Everyone you love is dead,” the wind said. “They are all gone. Your mother and father. Ema. Your friends abandoned you after you drove them away. You have no future. No home. No prospects. No money. No hope…”

She could feel the spike of despair in her sweet boy beneath her. His lips licked once more against her fingers as she pulled out, but his eyes were filled with tears despite his open lust… or perhaps because of it. “Why?” he asked. “Why me? Everyone who I loved is gone. What reason could I possibly have to go on?”

Her hips slowly ground her hot and eager flesh against the curve of his rigid cock. She felt the pleasure from it, but it only dulled the pain from him she felt like it was her own. “I’m not giving up on you,” she said softly. “I’m not leaving. If you die, you’re taking me with you… I’m not pulling back.” The look of surprise on his face was genuine, and she pressed on. “I need you to hear me. It’s not over. It’s never over,” Akari swore. “I’ve been without a purpose. I’ve lost mine more than once over the years. We find another. We do. We all get more than one. What we only get one of is a life. One time on his world, and when it’s gone there is not another. Please don’t waste yours.”

The honesty, and the pain that came with it, struck the boy like a slap across his face. “Why do you care about what happens to me?” he whispered. “Why me?”

Why did she want to save him?

Her body focused on how he felt against her. He felt so good… his slick, velvety, hot skin against the heat between her legs was some kind of dark sorcery she didn’t even want to try to understand, but it was overwhelming. They needed to be joined together, as deeply as they could, just as she needed for him to live. They both had to happen.

But… this wasn’t enough.

Once again, she was in a spot where either of her sisters would thrive in her place. Akari had taken lots of lovers over the years. She had done almost everything… but this wasn’t something she’d do for just anyone. As she thought she stroked him, enjoying the feel of his hard flesh, of his thickness, of his perfect cock. Her tails coiled around his legs, one wrapping his left leg at the knee in her excitement that paired with her dread. “Because… because I need you to survive,” she whispered. “Because… because it’s my fault you’re here. It’s my fault you lost everything. And I can’t let anything more happen to you.”

His eyes focused on her. She knew he could feel the honesty in her words. The pain her honesty caused… and also the denial. “No, it’s not your fault,” he choked, looking away. “It’s mine.”

“But it is,” Akari whispered. “I swore I’d defend the people of this world, but I didn’t stop this spirit sooner. I didn’t find her until after she’d caused this much pain. I couldn’t stop her before it was too late.” Tears fell down her cheeks, dripping onto his chest. Her mind raced over so many failures, so many times she had failed to protect someone. Akemi, dead. The nogitsune, lost. Yuki, gone for centuries, thought dead and instead a slave, unknown to her. Person after person after person she had cared about, that she wanted to protect. “I’ve lost so many people. I’ve failed to save so many people… but I haven’t failed to save you yet. I can’t let you die. I can’t fail again.”

She couldn’t balk. Akari was the middle child of her family, and if there was one thing she had always been able to count on either of her sisters for it was not knowing when to quit, to knowing how far was too far. Akemi had thrown herself into a battle, again and again and again and again to protect those she cared about. Yuki had gone even further. Both of them would go as far as they had to, and do what they needed to do. They would go as far as they had to. She couldn’t refuse to do the same. With that thought in her head, Akari squeezed her thighs around the boy beneath her, positioned his cock in her hand, and slowly, oh so slowly, eased herself down.

They both held their breath as she pressed, her brows knitting as his cock slid over her warm pussy… and past it, sliding further back, her hand holding it at her tighter back entrance, and pushed. Her body initially denied him entrance, frustrating him and her both as nothing happened. Her impatience drew a soft, irritated hiss from her throat, until at last her stubborn ass relented under the pressure and the slick head of his shaft and his cock entered her tight passage.

The feeling was both perfection and pain, and she gasped and bit her lip. The pleasure was partly hers, but more his… and she was sharing her pain with him, as well. Was this a foolish decision? Was he too big? He could fit into her everywhere else… she should be able to take him. Was she… built incorrectly? Impossible. Perhaps he was simply far too big, and men this large shouldn’t be put to such use. That possibility stung at her mind for a moment, burning her with doubt, frustrating her… but only for a few more moments. Then a shiver ran through her body and it finally allowed her to relax, and she slid most of the rest of the way down onto him, slowly, powerfully. She felt it… she felt him so much inside of her… every single swelling vein, every pulse of his pleasure, and through their connection he felt it too… the good, and the bad, and how she felt about it as, one shuddering sensation deep inside her at a time all of her doubts turned into ecstasy and her worries evaporated like sweat from heated skin.

He filled her to perfection as the curves of her gentle, soft backside lighted upon his thighs at long last. Her cheeks flushed so hotly that they stung, and her nipples ached as her breasts shook in his face. When she opened her eyes, the distinction of the forest around her was gone. She couldn’t hear the laughter on the breeze anymore, or see the ribbons, or the green. Anything further from her than a foot or two was hazy and unimportant, but right next to her, beneath her, the boy seemed to glow. He was radiant in his pleasure, every beat of his heart a sigh of pleasure against their mingled souls. The power coiled towards her like burning smoke, sinking into her skin and flesh as she slowly rose and fell upon him, feeling him slide in and out of her untouched asshole’s tight, sensitive grip.

Her hands rested on his chest, kneading at his muscles as she rode him… her fingernails dimpling his flushing skin, her fingertips brushing slowly over his small, pink nipples. Every caress made his cock thicken within her, a thing she verified with a sliding inspection from one of her tails as it brushed his length while he was inside of her… smoothly passing over the base of his cock and across his tightening sack, cupping it warmly before the tip drew along the tightened ring of her flesh around his wet, straining rod. He moaned with the pleasure of it, and the sensations that came from him into her had her struggling for control over her own cool as the pleasure grew… Akari bucking and moaning, her thighs and pussy tightening. She swallowed, then slowly brought one more tail towards her wet fold of flesh to tease at her clit, making the kitsune shiver as she felt an explosion of pleasure singing up across her nerves.

Her hips picked up speed, and she rode him faster, pleasuring herself with one tail as she teased him with another, braced on his chest. The heated wet sound of their breathing filled the forest clearing. Something was building, something she wanted. Something she needed. Something she hoped he had decided to truly want. “Please…” she whispered as his face flushed hotter, feeling his pleasure, his need. It made her hold her breath, gritting her teeth. “Please, gentle boy… Please. Stay with me.”

“He’s… mine…” the wind hissed, unheard by them both. Akari didn’t notice. Her face flushed hotter and beneath him the boy held his breath, gritting his teeth. Her hips moved erratically now, pressing down and rolling, lifting up, riding for a few moments then stilling, then beginning again, until at last she bucked and cried out, gripping at his chest so tightly that a trickle of blood came from where her nails dug into him. Her asshole clamped down onto his cock like a vice and she shivered, whimpering, overcome with the intensity of her orgasm. The tiny trickles of his blood mingled with his sweat and pooled at his collarbone and the hollow of his throat, as unnoticed by either of them as the algea’s words were.

“He… is… not…” she moaned out, eyes closing.

“I don’t… have a home… anymore…” the boy whimpered beneath her. “There’s nothing for me.”

Akari squeezed him. She squeezed him with her insides and her arms. She squeezed him with her tails and with the flaming magic boiling around them through the forest clearing. She held him like she refused to ever let go. “I will not let that harm you,” she swore, a hint of a moan in her own voice. It felt so… so… good…

“I… I…” he swallowed. “My name…” He gasped as his hips pushed up against hers as deeply as he could and Akari let him, gasping in the insane pleasure only their comingled souls could provide as he cried out the last. “…Seiko!” And as Akari gave one final push of her magic something… gave. Beneath her the boy arched up and cried out, and within her ass his cock emptied itself in thick pulses, filling her embrace with his seed cum for the first time in he couldn’t even remember how long. To their mingled senses, however, it was as if a flood of fire had erupted from him and flowed into her. It was hot and energizing and felt as comforting as any of the foxfire she had pushed on him. The wave of exhaustion that had come with the long effort of healing vanished, and the power flowed effortlessly now, and she exploded on him… her pussy clenching on nothing as her spasming ass squeezed in time with her orgasm and milked yet more out of him.

“Stay… stay with me…” Akari groaned as the boy beneath her – Seiko – came and came, and his orgasm prolonged hers. Slowly, slowly, she pushed away from his chest and knelt upright, her head tipping back. Her skin was sweaty and tingled everywhere. There was so much, too much. It made her dizzy, and she fell forward upon her hands once more, gripping at the dirt to either side of his chest. Her chest heaved and she shivered, the fire around her flowing through her and out in a firestorm of magic. Akari gasped and buried her face in the boy’s chest, her hair spilling over his skin and down to the dirt beneath. Wave after wave of flame licked out, racing through him, encouraging the mending as it shoved the algea the rest of the way out and cast her into the swirling storm of foxfire around them, sending Kaliopi screaming back across the veil between worlds.

“I… I…” Seiko moaned, his eyes rolling back in his head, and then he said no more… his soul stilling in relaxation. He had come too hard… his mind reeling, consciousness rapidly fled.

Akari breathed deeply, the final shudders of her orgasm finishing. His cock twisted slowly, happily, inside of her ass, and she couldn’t bring herself to move just yet and get off of him as the maelstrom of foxfire around them finally snuffed out and cooled. Steam lifted from her back and her tails, and both of them were coated in a light dusting of dry ash as she just breathed against his chest for the moment. “I saved you…” she whispered. “No one else. I won’t fail again. I saved you…”

Seiko came to consciousness only slowly with soft fur beneath him, annoyed by the moving and swaying of what he laid on. He groaned, feeling like he was waking from a deep, deep hangover… his headache was splitting, and he wanted nothing more than to stay curled up in his bed and pull the blanket around him. Only… only he wasn’t in bed. And he was on his stomach, his fingers deep in what felt like a thick, rich carpet. And he was infuriatingly rocking back and forth. And…

And he had been in Aokigahara.

Seiko’s eyes flew open as the memories came back and he found the forest racing by him… quickly as if he was riding a train. Only what was beneath him was no train… it was the white fur of the fox… of Akari… that he was clinging to as she raced through the forest, her powerful legs driving her onward as three of her tails wrapped around him like a blanket, providing warmth and stability and keeping him from sliding off as she pounded outrageously quickly through the thick, wild sea of trees.

“You’re awake.”

The words weren’t spoken… he could simply hear them in the rumble of the body beneath his chest, in the way her fur brushed his skin, and the now intimately familiar feeling of her soul and fire touching somewhere deep inside of him. She was still with him… while her presence had retreated from the insane, completely naked intimacy that they had shared earlier, her presence was not gone. “Where am I…” he groaned, and while the wind seemed to him like it stole his words away the ears on the back of her head still swiveled a bit towards him, listening.

“We’re approaching Mount Petegari from the West,” the kitsune told him, never breaking stride.

“I… I have no idea where that is,” Seiko admitted reluctantly. His hands gripped tightly in her fur as the trees seemed to race by far, far quicker than was safe… but despite his flash of purely physical fear he felt an odd lack of anxiety about speeding through the forest and weaving between trees at speeds that would turn him into a splatter if he hit one. Akari was the one doing it… and if the kitsune thought he was in danger, she wouldn’t be.

“In Hokkaido,” she answered. “About 150 kilometers to the east of Sapporo.”

“Hokkaido?” Seiko groaned. “How did we get to Hokkaido? That’s like… a thousand kilometers away!”

Beneath him, the fox chuckled as she raced along a cliffside overlooking a large, clear, beautiful lake. “I wasn’t in a hurry so I took the scenic route. Had to wait for you to wake up, after all”

Seiko had a billion questions, but suddenly all of them just seemed… unimportant. He settled his cheek down on Akari’s powerful shoulders as she ran, and the distance melted away beneath her feet. The forest around them, as far as he could see, was all but untouched… he could see the occasional string of power lines, and some radio towers dotting the nearby mountainsides, but he didn’t see any people at all, and right now that suited him. “Is she… gone?” he whispered.

He wasn’t sure she would be able to hear him, but she did… of course, she did. She probably didn’t need ears to hear him any more than he needed his to hear her, not anymore. “The yokai is gone. She won’t trouble you any further. I’ll make sure that she stays locked up in the shinkai from now on.”

Seiko nuzzled closer, smelling the fox beneath him. The fur was so clean… “What was she?”

“Kaliopi was one of the algea,” Akari answered. “A spirit that feeds on pain to keep itself sane and coherent… for some definition of sane, at least. In this case, she fed grief and sorrow. In driving people into madness, despair, and eventually to death.” She sighed. “Really though, algea is just one of many names, for an all-too-common type of madness.”

“There are… more things like her?” Seiko asked uncomfortably.

“Too many,” Akari agreed with a rumble deep in her chest, hinting at the growl. “Souls don’t die, Seiko. They never go away. When someone’s body dies, their soul is free of it to wander the world… the world of souls and spirits and impressions, the world we call shinkai. With any luck, they won’t be there for long. Hopefully, there is someone looking out for them on the other side. Someone who was watching for them, there and ready to shepherd their soul to the safe place where they can always remember who they are, where they can find fulfillment. Or, failing that, they fall into a… pit. A bad, terrible place.”

Akari was silent for a long dismal moment. Seiko swallowed. “Is that… hell?”

“I’m not sure,” Akari said, her voice sounding subdued. “I’ve never been there, but… probably. It’s an awful, unnatural thing, that shouldn’t exist, but at least when a soul doesn’t get shepherded by one of the gods to a kind of eternity and they fall into that pit instead they are contained. Others, when they die, just… linger. No one took them, but they didn’t fall into the pit, either. They just stay there in the shinkai forever, unable to go anywhere. Unable to move on.”

The kitsune sighed, weaving through the trees. “People in isolation tend to go mad. They begin to lose themselves in that world… begin to lose track of who they are. What they were. People will do anything to avoid losing themselves completely. Most of them find something and latch on it… a tree’s echo in the spirit world, or a rock, or a river. A deer, or a squirrel, or a bird. They hold onto that one thing, refusing to let go, and in time it becomes their only identity, everything else stripped away until they remember who they are only in relation to that one thing.”

Seiko jerked, gasping. “The kami!” he exclaimed. “You’re describing the kami!”

“That is what the Shinto called them, yes,” Akari agreed. “From time to time, one of them finds their way out of the shinkai and back into the physical world of bodies once again, and they can interact with things. Most find the experience very uncomfortable and try to get back into the spirit world that is familiar to them now as quickly as possible. Other people called them the lesser loa, or genius loci, or just nature spirits, or the fae… most of the lesser fae, anyway.” The zenko bounded between two trees, just barely fitting between them so closely that Seiko had to duck. “For the most part, they are the same thing. They started life as people who died and forgot what they once were and found something else to cling to. Those are maybe a little tragic, but mostly harmless. The danger is what happens when one finds another way.”

Akari sighed. “Some don’t attach themselves to something else to stay whole and redefine themselves. Instead, some of them hold onto what little they can remember of themselves through resentment. They remember that they are dead, and others live, and that burns at them. With time, it… twists some of them. They feel nothing but that hollow emptiness, and long to live again, and they will do anything to feel again… including stealing that feeling – and life – from others.” Akari’s tails seemed to snap back and forth behind her in frustration for a moment as they began to follow a winding ridge that seemed to climb up the side of the mountain.  “Once a soul like that starts twisting itself, it doesn’t stop. It almost can’t – each time it gives into that resentment and hatred, it is more defined by it and holds onto it more. Become less willing and less able to change their ways… and after they’ve been doing it long enough they no longer even resemble the people they once used to be. And sometimes, one of them manages to find a way back to the world of the living.”

“At that point, we call them Youma… monsters,” Akari said as she slowed, pausing for a moment, scanning the cliffs for something that Seiko didn’t see. “Once they are that far gone, there’s nothing we can do about them except to make sure they stay away from the people they can hurt, make sure they stay away from the mortal world.”

“You can’t destroy them?” Seiko asked.

“Can’t destroy a soul,” Akari said simply. “Which means that every single monster like that that’s been formed in the shinkai since humanity was born is still out there, somewhere. Many of them have fallen into the pit since then. Others have lost themselves too far to madness to be able to recognize a chance to enter the human world again. But there are so many people, and so many people dying that… over time, the number of monsters like Kaliopi continue to grow. It… keeps people like me, with the abilities to travel between the shinkai and the mortal world, quite busy.” Beneath him, the fox shifted as she began jumping from a series of small cliffs, working her way up one of the ridges with barely more effort than she had shown running through the forest. “They find places they can avoid detection, as much as they can. This one had been hunting Aokigahara for a long time. I suspect much of the darkness in that place can be placed in her hands. Now that she’s gone… hopefully there will be beauty there once more. I can hope.”

Up ahead, at the top of the ridge, Seiko caught sight of something red and vibrant. Something that had been largely hidden from below. He could only catch glimpses of it even now but it didn’t seem natural. “Why are you telling me all of this?” he asked her. “Where are we going?”

“You told me you had nowhere to go,” Akari said softly. “That she had taken everything from you. Ripped every pleasure you had away. That you needed to home.” She continued running and jumping. “In a way, you are more right than you know. The world is not ready to hear your story, brave boy. They will call you mad. They will drug you, and keep you for your own protection… and for the sake of them not needing to acknowledge there is more danger in this world than they can face. Once you know, it is hard to live a normal life again… even if one had been left behind for you.”

Akari made a final jump and stopped, swaying softly as her paws scratched at the Earth between her padded feet. An enormous Torii gate stood before her, crimson red and all but covered in blessing papers that had been pinned to it, and then new papers pinned on top of them, until only the tops showed the original color. “I’m telling you because you deserve to know. You aren’t mad, no matter what they say. There are monsters out there… and the more people who can defend themselves against them, the better.”

Seiko looked up at the massive gates. “What is this place?” he whispered.

The kitsune chuckled. “This is… a home. This is a shrine to Inari-okami, and the buildings that preserve it… but even more than it is that, this is a place for people like you.” She looked back up at him over her shoulder. “People who know the truth. People who lost something to that world. People who were brave enough to face it and survive, and don’t want to turn their back on it… who want to help. They will help you… and they will show you how to help others, if you are willing.”

Slowly, her tails helped him rise off of her, coming unsteadily to her own feet. Moments later, he was standing before the beautiful, white-haired woman, and just the sight and smell of her was enough to send hundreds of pleasurable sense memories raging through his brain like rapids made entirely of hormones. He blinked and looked away, and she chuckled… her voice bright and happy and seemingly perfectly aware of what he was thinking. “There are many ways to live a life, Seiko. Many paths still open to you that you never knew existed before now. All you need to do is take a few steps forward and find them.”

He looked up and met her gaze. “Will… will you be here?”

She turned her gaze down the cliff, gazing into the sun as it reflected off the lake far below… the lake that had seemed so huge just a little while ago was now so distant. “When I can be,” Akari said at last. “There are more still like you, Seiko. More who need to be saved. More who are facing monsters they should never need to face. And there are never enough of us to stand against them. I have much to do.” She raised one hand and softly ran it through his hair. “But I like this place. This home. It reminds me of what I fight for. I will be here, when I can.” She smiled at him, and pointed. Up at the top of the dirt path leading up from the Torii gate, figures had appeared… several men and women in ceremonial garb. Seiko just realized for the first time that he wasn’t naked… that he was wearing his own white and red clothing. He had no idea where he got it. “Go see them,” Akari said. “Introduce yourself. Tell them your story. They will make you home, and they will listen to as much as you want to tell… today, tomorrow, next year.” She swatted him softly on his ass, and Seiko jumped a foot forward, looking back to see a small, undignified grin on the white-furred fox’s face that seemed so out of place with her otherwise solemn demeanor. “Go. I will join you soon enough.”

Seiko looked back at her only once, halfway up the dirt road, before he was close enough to the other people of the shrine that they gathered around him. After that, he was too distracted by them to look back at Akari again. She sighed, finally letting her exhaustion catch up with her as she leaned against one of the gateposts making up the entrance, looking down at the road before letting her eyes slip shut.

“The Akari I know wouldn’t be caught dead looking so undignified as to slouch,” a playful voice said from a few feet away. “Who are you, impostor, and what have you done with my Kari?”

Akari was too tired to jump, though she would have. Instead, just opening her eyes seemed like too much effort. She did it anyway. “I had a long night, Sai.”

“I can see that,” the zenko standing no more than a meter in front of her said with a half-hearted grin, and the way that he was standing so familiarly well inside her personal space didn’t quite hide the exasperation in his tone. “Honestly, Akari. What were you thinking? You could have died.”

Akari huffed out a sigh as she forced herself to stand upright, taking a few steps back to the edge of the cliff before sitting casually down on it, letting her legs and tail dangle over the edge. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“No one intends to die, Kari,” he said as he slipped in beside her. “Well, I guess some people do. Some poor, lost souls who take up a ribbon and walk into the woods. But they’re the exception that proves the rule, Kari. Usually, when people die, it’s because they intended to survive and couldn’t quite manage.” He paused. “Twisting your soul up with a human’s as hurt that boy was… reckless. More than reckless. It’s not worth it.”

Akari was too tired to be properly angry, but her tails flicked once. Sai had known her for seven centuries, and been… close… for three. He didn’t miss it. He sat beside her in silence for several long minutes. “Would a fall from here kill me?” she asked at last.

“Well, no,” Sai said, looking down. “You’d have plenty of time to shift into the shinkai before you reached the bottom, or use magic to push yourself upward, or something.”

“But if I didn’t?” Akari turned to look at him, bright blue eyes meeting green-and-gold. “If I hit the ground? Would that be able to kill even something like us?”

The male zenko looked down again. “Probably. It is a very long way down, and while we’re not subject to all the laws of the natural world we can’t escape them all, either. That would probably be enough to kill us.”

“Yet you’re sitting with me now, anta,” she said, kicking her feet slightly. “Hanging half off the edge of a lethal fall, and I don’t hear you giving me shit about putting myself at risk, or thinking twice about doing the same yourself… and we’re not even doing it for something. We’re just sitting here because it’s pretty, and comfortable… because we know our own abilities. Our own limits. We trust that we can handle it.”

“This is different,” Sai insisted. “And you know it. This is you putting your life in your own hands. Last night, that was you putting your life in his. Tell me you never worried he wouldn’t be strong enough to choose life. Tell me you wouldn’t have been stubborn enough to hold one for just a few more seconds, to try to convince him. Tell me you weren’t going to wait until the very, very last second to pull back.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Akari said firmly as she looked down the cliff. “I wasn’t going to pull back at all.”

“For Inari’s sake, why?” Sai hissed out, frustration and deep concern lacing his tone. Below, one of his white tails twisted around one of hers. “Why risk it?”

“If I drew back, it meant I was giving up on him,” Akari said with all the certainty of the stone that made up the cliffs. “I gave up on my sister, once. Then, years later, I gave up on her again. I was wrong… both times. I’m done making that mistake. As long as I can find a reason to believe in them, I will.”

Slowly, Sai put an arm around her, pulling her just a little bit closer to him until their bodies were touching almost everywhere. “Kari, not everyone is your sister…” he begged. “And there is only one of you. If you keep doing this, keep trying to save everyone no matter to danger to yourself, someday you’re going to lose one of those bets… and something bad is going to happen. Something really bad. And then no one will be getting saved by you anymore.” He looked up at her, and he tried to really let her see the honesty in his words as he infused them with all the love he felt for her, pouring that emotion into his voice as foxfire that made the words ring. “Inari commands us to keep to the shadow, to avoid drawing attention to ourselves in the mortal world… we are being hunted. Hana is gone. Kaoru is gone. You need to be careful, love… One life isn’t worth it.”

Slowly, Akari shook her head. One of her hands slipped down and grabbed one of his hands, squeezing it. “Of course a life is worth it, anta,” she said with no less certainty than he had shown. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, then again on the corner of his lips. “One life if all any of us get. If one life’s not worth it, then none of them are.” Slowly she rose, letting her hand trail through his long, soft hair as they kept their fingertips together until the last second.

Then she turned and strode up the path towards the shrine to say goodbye to the boy she had saved before she left to go save one more life.