fic: Sweet As Foxes
Sweet As Foxes
Mirai gen
G
12342 words
Mirai goes to Japan, skates in a competition, and meets a fox.
I am indebted to nova33 for betaing this story - not just once, but twice, willowbell and alexthegreat for cheerleading, and anyone else who may have seen this story and expressed excitement or encouraged me. Those people are the greatest!
I am also a ridiculously lucky girl, who got art for the story before it was completed. Here it is! Everyone go tell alexthegreat how awesome it is. ♥
One of the thought experiments / fantasies / what-if scenarios that Mirai liked to run through every so often was what if Mom and Dad had stayed in Japan? She didn’t really understand why they had left in the first place, because she’d visited twice and Japan was awesome. When she had asked her dad, he’d shrugged and said, “For the adventure, Mirai-chan!” in a way that made her think that maybe he was hiding something, something very sad and tragic. This was when Mirai would get distracted, thinking about what could have possibly happened that was sad and tragic enough to make her parents want to move to America.
And then they had ended up in Arcadia, which - much as Mirai loved it - wasn’t exactly buzzing with adventure and activity. It was small enough that the fact that she lived there was listed on Wikipedia under ‘notable residents’, for one.
Still though, Mirai loved Arcadia a lot. She’d received some offers from the Japanese federation to come compete for them, and mostly she was honoured but she didn’t think much of it. The first time she was approached she had been fifteen, and her mother had said very diffidently, “So, what about it?”
Mirai hadn’t really taken it seriously, and she said, “But why would I want to do something like that?”
“Don’t be rude,” her mother said automatically.
“You’ve got Japanese citizenship too,” her father added.
“I know all that stuff,” Mirai said. “I’m just saying, there’s no point, because there are so many great skaters in Japan already, so why would they want me?”
Her mother and father looked at each other.
“Don’t go around repeating it,” her mother said, “but they think you could be great too.” She said it gently like she was afraid of scarring Mirai for life.
Mirai just shrugged. She couldn’t even speak Japanese properly, which was kind of tragic, but true nonetheless. She could understand it enough that it wasn’t a great secret code for her parents, but she was still learning the language in school.
“They’ve got Mao Asada and Shizuka Arakawa and Miki Ando and, and,” Mirai said. “I’d be buried there.” Whereas she might have a shot at making it to the top in the US, she added silently.
“Arakawa-sama has retired,” her father boomed.
Mirai rolled her eyes. Since they were talking about something serious her parents were too distracted to call her out on it. “That’s not the point.”
They never really talked much about it after that, and whenever Mirai got asked about it by reporters after that she never talked about it. “I would be honoured, but I compete for the US,” she’d say in Japanese, and shrug helplessly at them. After a while they seemed to get it, and her parents never tried to change her mind. They didn’t really talk about what would happen when she turned twenty-two and had to give up her dual citizenship. At first Mirai was relieved because she didn’t like talking about the heavy stuff. Much later she would realize that it was because the decision had already more or less been made.
Even though they totally could have hated her for that, if they’d known, Japan seemed to love her anyway. Mirai was super glad, because the fans there were amazing and crazy and, okay, it totally got to her head. On emerging from the airport a whole bunch of girls her age spotted her and actually started shrieking, like it was their life’s desire to see. Then came the deluge of autograph books she had to sign, and fan gifts.
Mirai signed as many things as she could and made small talk, like she’d seen the other older skaters do, all the while feeling quite sure that if some other skaters came along they’d totally abandon her for their autograph. Then she bowed politely and walked off with her mom and Mr Carroll.
“Crazy,” her mother muttered under her breath, in English. “These girls are so crazy.”
“If we lived in Japan, maybe I would be like them,” Mirai said, more to bait her mother than anything. She risked a backward glance. One of the girls was wearing a pink wig and some really wild makeup. She looked cool and crazy, like a cartoon or a caricature. Her mom had disapproved when Mirai started wearing eyeliner on a daily basis last year.
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “I would smack it out of you,” she said in that ironic tone, that was somehow completely serious.
“Are you tired?” her mother asked, as they got aboard the van waiting to deliver them to the hotel. Mirai didn’t answer, because it didn’t matter. It was only Wednesday. The competition started in two days time, and ladies singles’ were on the last day. It was plenty of time. Caroline and Ashley hadn’t even arrived yet.
“I’m fine, just my back hurts,” she said. “Are you tired?”
“A little,” her mother admitted. “Travelling really takes it out of you, and when you’re not so well - oof! - it gets even worse.”
Mirai bit her lip and tried not to worry too much. Remission meant they were fine for now, but the thing about remission was that the cancer could really come back any time. It gave Mirai a squirmy feeling in her gut, because she hated thinking about her mom dying.
“Fine pair we are,” her mother said, sighing.
“Soon we’ll be at the hotel and then we can rest,” Mirai said. “Sightseeing can wait.”
“Don’t you mean practice?” Mr Carroll asked from the front seat, and Mirai was pleased when he turned around because it meant she could wink at him. He frowned, but Mirai could totally tell he wasn’t really angry. After a year or so of training under Mr Carroll, Mirai could tell when he was kidding and when he wasn’t, and anyway they already had everything scheduled.
“Sure thing, Mr Carroll.”
Another thing Mirai didn’t like about Japan: how everything was super-expensive. Given how cheap her parents were, maybe they moved to the US to escape the high prices, although Mirai knew that wasn’t how things worked. Still, though. Noodles were expensive, and so were sweets, and after her mom woke up from her nap she and Mirai went walking around downtown and that was the main conclusion Mirai drew.
“Everything is so expensive,” she moaned.
The clothes were pretty, though. Mirai gazed in at the shop windows and sighed wistfully - maybe the dresses were all slightly frillier than she’d have chosen, but in any case they were really pretty and Mirai would have liked to try them on, only there was no point because she knew everything was going to be overpriced. Window-shopping was cool, though. Mirai and her mom had fun pointing out the clothes they liked and didn’t like, and Mirai slipped her hand into her mother’s and squeezed it. This was like Vancouver, kind of, only less cool, because it wasn’t the Olympics. Then again, it was Japan.
“What shall we do next?” Mirai asked.
“We could go see a temple,” her mother said, sounding diffident the way she always did when it was something that really mattered to her.
Mirai didn’t mind, but she twisted around to look up at her. “Temple?” Her mom wasn’t even particularly religious.
“For good luck,” her mom said.
The temple they went to was an old one. Mirai hadn’t been to many Japanese temples before, and mostly she just did what her mom told her to do; held the joss sticks her mom handed to her and stood in the direction she was told to stand in. It was hard to be act like you truly believed when you didn’t really know what it was all about.
“Now talk to Buddha - silently,” her mom directed, like she was afraid Mirai would start babbling about how she wanted to win all the gold medals ever in the middle of the courtyard. “Pray to him for help and good luck.”
Mirai closed her eyes and tried. She kind of did need the luck, even if she got the idea that all this smoke inhalation from the joss sticks wasn’t the best for her body.
Half a minute later she heard her mom sigh and opened her eyes. “That’s all,” her mom said fondly, before sticking both their joss sticks into the large urn at the entrance of the temple.
“Did it work?” Mirai said, hoping her mom wouldn’t pick up on the incredulity in her voice.
“We’ll have to wait and find out,” her mother said. For some reason Mirai started thinking again about what might have happened if her parents had stayed in Japan, what might have been if Mirai had grown up here. It was pretty much something that came up in her head every time she came to Japan for skating, which to be fair hadn’t been a lot of times. But still.
Mostly Mirai was glad, because if she was born in Japan her English wouldn’t be that great, and Mirai couldn’t comprehend thinking in any other language. Speaking Japanese required effort.
“Time to go now,” her mom said, severely as if Mirai was the one holding the both of them up. She dropped some coins into the donation box and held out her hand - like a little girl, Mirai took it and they strolled into the courtyard, turning back just once to admire the architecture of the building, framed by trees.
“What’s that?” Mirai asked, pointing at a little structure of wood sheltered amidst the shade of some willows. Forgetting that she was still holding her mom’s hand like a little girl, she dragged the both of them forwards before her mom realised what she was doing, and frowned at her.
“Don’t point, Mirai-chan. It’s rude.”
“Sorry,” Mirai said penitently, but her mom didn’t steer her away from what they could both now see was a tiny shrine with a roof, like a house with no walls, and she took that as an implicit agreement to stare some more.
The statue housed in the shrine stared back. It was a porcelain fox, its face long and narrow, eyes squeezed shut so tightly they had become slits. Yet Mirai got the idea that the fox was peering out at her from them. The sculptor who made the statue hadn’t been aiming for verisimilitude, but somehow, with the shadows from the wooden shade gleaming on it and some rays of light peeking in through the slanted boards, to Mirai it seemed very nearly alive.
Unfortunately it was also lying on its side. Someone very careless, or the wind or the rain, had knocked it down. It was hard to look dignified when lying on one’s side.
“Poor thing,” Mirai said, and before her mother could ask her what she was doing, she darted forward and put it upright, cleaning the dust from the shrine with her sleeve as she did so.
“Mirai!” her mother said, dragging her back by the wrist. Mirai wasn’t surprised that she sounded angry.
“What?”
Her mother looked the way she used to, just before slapping Mirai, when she was very young. “Don’t do anything like that ever again. It’s disrespectful and I taught you better than that.”
Mirai’s confusion turned into a sense of injustice, then turned to anger. Disrespectful? She hadn’t been disrespectful, she’d been the opposite of disrespectful.
“I put the fox the right way round again,” Mirai said, crossing her arms. “I don’t see how that’s disrespectful.”
Her mom just shook her head again. “Don’t do it.”
“Why,” Mirai said flatly. She hated it when her mom acted like she knew more about tradition and Japanese culture and religion, even if it was kind of true. Mirai just didn’t see how she’d done anything wrong. All she had wanted to do was help.
“It just isn’t nice.”
Mirai wanted to tell her mother that that wasn’t a proper answer, but she bit her lip.
“Come on,” her mother said, sounding exhausted. “Let’s get back to the hotel.”
It was pretty late by the time they got back to the hotel, considering how early Mirai was going to be waking up the next morning. Tomorrow was ice time, breakfast, some sightseeing, more practice and then early night. Caroline was arriving some time tomorrow, too, probably in the late afternoon, and Mirai really couldn’t wait.
“She’ll be tired,” her mom predicted gloomily. “Don’t you bother her.”
Mirai rolled her eyes. When her mom was in the bathroom she whipped out her mobile phone, even though she knew texting overseas was strictly for communicating with her mother and Mr Carroll in case of emergencies, and sent a quick text to Caroline, hey you won’t be tired tomorrow right?
It was nine pm in Nagoya, which made that six am California. Caroline had been up for two hours at least, and sure enough she replied soon. y. Mirai stuck her tongue out at the phone, because it wasn’t like she knew what that meant. Yes, she’d be tired? Yes, she wouldn’t be tired? Or, wait - did that mean “why”?
so you can hang out with me I’m bored, she typed. Then feeling weirdly guilty about dissing her mom and Japan, she added, japan awaits you!!
go to bed.
“Fine, whatever,” Mirai said aloud, and jumped when her mother said, “What was that?” She was leaning against the frame of the bathroom door, a towel around her neck. Mirai hadn’t even noticed the door opening.
“Nothing,” she said glibly, and her mother frowned.
“Time for you to shower, now go,” she said, jerking her head towards the bathroom, even though Mirai had totally already showered when they first checked in. She didn’t say no, though, just grabbed the pyjamas she was going to change into and marched into the bathroom. When the door was safely closed and the water running she yelled, “I can’t wait till Caroline arrives here!”
“I know, I know - you don’t want to spend any time with an old lady like me,” her mom said, muffled through the door, and Mirai couldn’t stop grinning. All things considered, her mom was pretty great.
For all the traveling she’d done through her skating career (which she totally didn’t get paid enough for, by the way), Mirai had never been able to sleep well during her first night in a foreign bed. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that she only ever travelled for competitions, like it was the fear of competition that kept her awake?
Who knew. Her mom was snoring softly already, the light from the bathroom (which they always kept on when staying in hotels, for some inexplicable reason) sneaking through the gap and falling on the end of her bed, and Mirai could see her sheets rising and falling evenly with every rattling snore.
Tired but not sleepy, Mirai curled moodily against the blanket and gazed blankly out the window, trying to fall asleep. Every minute she stayed awake now meant a minute less of sleep, and Mirai knew, knew, knew she was going to regret it tomorrow.
At some point Mirai stretched, and because Japanese beds weren’t quite as wide as American ones, her arm dangled off the side of the mattress. Just then Mirai was hovering enough on the edge of sleep to not want to pick it up again, even though she knew her shoulder might get all sore and gross tomorrow. Eyes closed, she let her arm dip further, a few inches from the floor. And then there was something cold and wet, much like a dog’s nose, snuffling and pushing against her fingertips.
Wait, what? Shocked into wakefulness again, Mirai sat up straight the way kids in bad movies always did after waking from nightmares. Only, this had to be the dream. Through the semi-darkness of the room, she stared hard at the patch of the floor at the side of the bed, and it stared back as innocuously as… as a patch of carpeted floor could be said to stare, anyway. The sheer white curtains at the window rustled as if brushing against a moving body, and normally Mirai wouldn’t have bothered with that, would have put that down to a breeze. Except that windows were firmly shut. Given the present circumstances, the curtains now took on a more menacing aspect.
Mirai had heard of many ghost stories featuring haunted hotel rooms, but this was the first time she’d come across something like this. Her heart thumping against her ribcage, Mirai got out of bed, squatted down and lowered her hand again. Her mother was still breathing gently. And there it was, the same sensation. Mirai had petted dogs before, of course, and this was what it felt like, except that she was generally able to see them. When Mirai moved her hand she could feel soft fur, short-bristled. Its ears were pointy, and it seemed to have a lithe body, around the size of a smallish dog.
“What are you?” she whispered, before realizing it was a dumb question. Animals couldn’t speak, and anyway, the important thing was not to wake her mother. She’d probably freak out and call the hotel concierge - and Mirai was pretty sure things like invisible creatures were beyond the management’s control.
The animal didn’t answer, just lashed its tail so hard that Mirai could feel it brushing up against her wrist. Okay, so whatever it was - a dog? A cat? - it had a long tail. When she tried picking it up it made a strange sound, kind of like a squeal - Mirai glanced uneasily over at her mother - and snapped at her hand, catching the skin on the back of it with its (very real, very sharp) teeth.
“Asshole,” Mirai hissed, snatching her hand away. Then the animal butted its head, which Mirai still couldn’t see, against her knee, as if it wanted the petting to continue. Rolling her eyes, Mirai obeyed.
Sneaking to the other side of the bed, Mirai clicked the switch on the bedside lamp, holding her breath all the while in case her mother woke up. When the light clicked on she turned to look, but though her mom turned over in her bed she was muttering lowly, the kind of muttering that just went to show that she was really asleep. Mirai thanked the universe, and turned back to look at the ground.
There was nothing there.
Mirai could have sworn she could see the dark outline of an animal back when the light was still off, but now there really wasn’t anything. Now it seemed ridiculous, except that a part of the carpet on the floor was bunched up weirdly like something was lying on it. When Mirai advanced towards it again cautiously, her right hand outreached, there was the same warm animal feel beneath her hand, and it purred as she stroked it.
Mirai had no idea what to think. It was eleven pm, and she had to be up in too few hours’ time. It was kind of dumb considering there was an invisible animal in her hotel room, but she couldn’t help yawning and realized that the jet lag was finally catching up with her. Her mother had stopped snoring, though she didn’t seem to be getting up yet, and Mirai switched off the light hastily just in case.
“Bed first,” she mumbled to herself sleepily. She told herself that if the… invisible animal, that sounded so ridiculous, was still around in the morning she would tell her mom, and if it wasn’t… well, she’d probably end up telling her mom anyway. Mirai was really bad with secrets even though she tried hard to keep them.
Mirai pulled the sheets over her mom, who had kicked her blanket off, before crawling back into bed again. The sheets weren’t as crisp as they were before, but they were still warm from her body and that was nice.
From the floor, there was a low whine, then a soft whump on the bed as the animal leaped up and landed next to Mirai. Mirai stared at the seeming-nothingness warily, wondering how safe it was to allow whatever this animal was - wild dog? raccoon? - to sleep on her bed, next to her. She’d heard horror stories about how this one boy smuggled a fox under his shirt and it gnawed him to death. What if this one killed her in her sleep? Please, god, not now. Mirai really wanted to skate and enjoy Japan first.
“You better not eat me in my sleep,” she mumbled sleepily, as it burrowed against her side comfortably. “If you do, I will kill you.”
Then she fell asleep before she could point out to herself what a paradox that was.
While Mirai slept she had a long involved dream. She dreamt she was at the ice rink in Nagoya - even though it looked like the one where she trained at home, she knew, she just knew she was in Japan. She had her skates on, but she was flying really, drifting half an inch across the rink and swimming through air as she pulled off her jumps effortlessly, one by one by one. The ice was utterly white, and though there was an audience - was it a competition or a show? - she paid them absolutely no heed, even though she knew she should be connecting with them. She smiled dreamily as she put on an extra burst of speed and went faster, every part of her body in precisely the correct position.
It was a good dream.
When the alarm went off she opened her eyes and tried to remember it before it slipped through the recesses of her memory, like water through her fingers.
There was a warm lump next to her still, snuffling and making the blanket above it rise and fall evenly. Mirai huffed out a sigh; she guessed that hadn’t been a dream, then. This was going to be so hard to deal with. She peeled back the comforter -
and blinked at the animal curled up next to her, now fully visible for reasons Mirai didn’t understand. It wasn’t like she understood anything about this situation, though.
It was a fox, dog-like except for its narrow, elongated nose and pointed ears. Its short-bristled fur was more red than gold, and the darkness of the room threw shadows over it. It was still asleep, but even as Mirai watched it thumped its tail grumpily and woke up, sniffing at her.
“Oh,” Mirai whispered to herself.
The fox sprang up, and looked at her intently. Mirai wondered if something was going to happen, that would explain this whole crazy situation, but then the fox opened its mouth wide, and yawned. Yawned? Mirai thought. Yawned!
“Oh!” the fox said. It spoke in Japanese. “You can see me now. Hello.”
“What,” Mirai said. “What.” She was kind of in shock, and scrambled off the bed, looking down at the fox with bug-wide eyes. It didn’t move.
The fox yawned again, but now it was clearly just for effect. “You were more interesting when you couldn’t see me,” it observed sardonically, and Mirai looked around and tried to figure out if there was a ventriloquist hidden in her room. That had to be the only explanation, but Mirai hoped not. She had enough to deal with without yet another creepy thing hiding in her room. When the fox spoke she could see its throat move.
“You can talk,” Mirai observed dumbly. “You’re - a. You’re a talking invisible fox.”
Mirai wasn’t sure if foxes could raise their eyebrows, especially since this one didn’t really have any eyebrows to raise, but that was the main gist she got. “And?”
“Why weren’t you talking last night?”
“It was a test. Duh.“
“A cuddle test?”
“It worked!” the fox said defensively.
“How did you get into my room?”
“My name’s Tokutaro, nice to meet you,” the fox said. It flicked its tail, bored. “It’s so nice to see that youngsters are keeping up with the proper etiquette these days.”
“I’m Nagasu Mirai, pleased to make your acquaintance,” Mirai said automatically, in her best Japanese, and the fox shook its head.
“Please don’t speak Japanese,” Tokutaro said (in Japanese). “I could understand you perfectly well in English, but when you speak Japanese - waaaa!” He broke off into a squeal at the end, before giggling nastily.
Mirai glared at the fox and put her hands on her hips. “If all you’re going to do is insult me, why are you here?”
“It really isn’t my choice,” Tokutaro whined. “You had to go and fix the inari shrine yesterday, and now I have to repay you. Is there anything I can do? This is getting boring.”
Mirai shrugged. “You could repay me by disappearing,” she suggested hopefully. Already she was thinking about how hard it was going to explain this to her mother, and looked around. Her mom was up, but she was nowhere to be seen. She’d probably left the room a little while ago.
“That isn’t the way things work,” Tokutaro said. “I have to help you do something, before the Higher Ups -” he made a little face just saying it, and Mirai wondered who they were, “ - consider my obligations fulfilled. Isn’t there anything I could help you do? Anything? Anything? Don’t you have anything big coming up like… a skating competition?”
Mirai bit her lip, and refrained from asking exactly how much Tokutaro knew about her life. She had a vague feeling that she didn’t actually want to know. “Well…” she said, “I guess you could just come to practice with me.”
Just then, Mirai heard the footsteps that meant her mom was coming down the hall, and squealed, “You have to hide!”, trying to bundle Tokutaro under the bed. He snapped at her hand instead.
“Stop being so crazy,” he said, and remained where he was defiantly, as Mirai sat, frozen with horror, on the bed while the door swung open and her mom entered.
“Oh, you’re up,” her mother said, smiling. She seemed not to notice the fox on the bed at all. “Hurry, go change, and we can get some breakfast before going down to the rink.”
“Where did you go?” Mirai asked cautiously. She was looking straight at Mirai, but totally failed to point out the fact that there was a fox sitting on Mirai’s hotel bed. Tokutaro made a huge snorting sound and looked up at her slyly.
“I went for a walk,” her mom said. She always woke up that early back home in Arcadia, and liked keeping the habit even when they traveled. “Did you know that this hotel has a swimming pool? We can go after training, if you’re not too tired.”
“Sounds good,” Mirai said in Japanese. She leaped up and headed towards the bathroom, still kind of freaked out. When she turned around just before entering, Tokutaro winked at her. Instinctively, she stuck her tongue out.
So that was how she found herself going down to the rink with her mother, her coach, and - a fox, that neither of the adults nor anyone else who passed by happened to be able to see. Mirai had plenty of reason to find her life surreal, what with all the skating she did and the places she traveled because of said skating, and the people she met, but after about twelve years of that she was quite used to it. The only reason she knew it wasn’t normal was because she had friends outside of skating. But this was seriously weird, the weirdest thing that had ever happened to her.
Even though Mirai knew she should be concentrating on skating, especially since her event was starting tomorrow (oh my god, she thought) it was pretty hard not to feel excited about it. Mirai was quite sure invisible foxes qualified as magic.
Tokutaro was gamboling around in front of the three of them, winking up at Mirai as he tried weaving between her mom and Mr Carroll. Mirai giggled to herself.
“What are you laughing at?” Mr Carroll asked gruffly.
“Nothing,” Mirai chirped. Because she was feeling cheeky, she said, “You!”
Her mom rolled her eyes. “Behave yourself,” she said, and Mirai subsided. When she looked at the ground, Tokutaro was snapping his jaws at her and sniggering to himself.
Mirai thought they’d gotten up early, but when they reached the rink there were a couple of other skaters there already, just like they always were. This always happened; she’d reach the rink at what she thought was an absurdly early hour and then they’d get beaten to the punch. She didn’t mind sharing ice so much, though. She headed straight to the changing room and got a few nods from some skaters whose names she always forgot, and beamed back at them. Ever since her growth spurt a year and a half ago, she’d been around the median height of most skaters - which wasn’t very tall to begin with - but she still felt really young, even though obviously she wasn’t intimidated, except when she was.
She gritted her teeth. This year she was older and better and had more experience. Telling herself to concentrate, she entered the rink and launched herself into the skating fray. It always helped to narrate her practices dramatically inside of her head, even if other people would totally laugh if they knew.
Mirai didn’t quite know how it had happened. One moment she was skating across the rink, trying to get enough speed to go into her first jump of the program, and - this was so stupid, she would think later, stupid stupid stupid, but clearly she hadn’t looked where she was going or Kiira hadn’t looked where she was going because by the time she snapped back into attention it was too late to avoid the incoming collision, which happened the next second.
Their foreheads knocked together, hard. Kiira was slightly taller than Mirai, but somehow they managed to do it anyway. Kiira’s leg flew up and the skate blade grazed against Mirai’s leg, cutting through the practice tights. Mirai was aware of a searing pain in her thigh, before she lost her balance altogether.
“Oh!” she yelled, and fell onto the ice, flat on her back like she was some newbie skater who hadn’t even learnt how to fall safely yet. They had simply been going too fast.
Pain, blind pain, flared up her shoulder and her back, not to mention in her thigh. It had been so long since anything hurt quite as much as this did - not her foot injury from last last season or the time she broke her arm when she was five, even. It was too much, and Mirai couldn’t help her tears, which welled up and spilled out of the corner of her eyes. She struggled to get up, and found that she mostly couldn’t.
“Mirai,” Mr Carroll yelled, and the next thing she knew, he was in front of her, tugging her up and draping her arm around his shoulder. A hush had fallen over the ice rink. Kiira struggled to her feet and was dusting herself off, before realizing that Mirai hadn’t escaped as unscathed as she had.
Kiira skated a couple of feet over to Mirai’s side, hovering helplessly in front of her. She said, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Mirai wanted to tell her that it was okay, and that it wasn’t her fault, but she realized that she’d bitten her tongue at some point during the collision and her mouth was filled with blood. She opened her mouth, and some of it came trickling out. Kiira winced, and Mirai wanted to apologise for the sight of it.
“Miss Korpi, I am assured that this was completely accidental -” Mr Carroll didn’t say it wasn’t her fault, Mirai noticed fuzzily, “ - but I do think it would help if you got out of the way.”
Kiira must have stepped back, because she left Mirai’s periphery afterwards. Or maybe Mirai didn’t notice her; the pain was too much to focus on. She couldn’t help whimpering. When they stepped off the ice Tokutaro came darting towards her, barking like he couldn’t actually talk, and Mirai wanted to warn him to stay away from her skate blades but couldn’t find it in herself to speak.
They sat. Her mom was there, suddenly, and Mirai said, “Ka-san,” surprising even herself by how frail and weak she sounded. She hated it. “It hurts.”
With gentle fingers, Mirai’s mother rolled her practice sweater up and gasped at the bruises there.
“Back to the hotel room, I think,” she said firmly, which was good. It wasn’t that Mirai wanted to slack off, but the pain was so large she simply wouldn’t be able to focus today. Although it was already ebbing and becoming less sharp at the edges, it still made Mirai want to curl up into a little ball in a dark room and disappear for a little while.
Except that tomorrow was the short program, and that made the bottom of Mirai’s stomach drop out. No no no, she thought, and started sobbing even harder. It was disgusting how dramatic she was being.
“Are you okay, Mirai-chan?” her mother asked, and Mirai couldn’t even reply, because all her lungs were being taken up by the crying. It wasn’t from the pain. Even though she was sorry that Mr Carroll had to see it, she couldn’t help herself.
“Skating,” she managed to get out in between lung-racking sobs.
“You’ll be fine,” Mr Carroll said sharply. “The short’s tomorrow. You’ll have time to recuperate and practice again. Mirai, stop crying. Stop crying.”
“It hurts too much,” Mirai gasped, her face scrunched up. This was so unfair, this was supposed to be her season, but the entire line of her torso hurt, and her back and her shoulder too, and this was just the start, and things just weren’t fair. It was supposed to be her season, and she was going to prove herself.
She gazed blankly out at the rink and found herself hating everyone practicing hard there.
Mirai knew she probably deserved a tight slap from her mom for her bratty behaviour, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. There was a lump, tight in her throat, and she hated her life.
Instead, her mother sighed and put her hand on Mirai’s hair. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”
After the hospital, they went back to the hotel so Mirai could rest. She’d gotten three stitches, and competition-approved painkillers, which should be taken every three hours, the doctor said. Back in her room, Mirai showered, noticing that she could barely stretch without the pain flaring up some more. How was she going to spin or do her Biellmanns this way? With the showerhead above her, she allowed herself to cry some more, hot tears blending with the water beating down around her.
Eventually she stepped out of the bathtub, dragging her feet as she put on the bathrobe the hotel had provided. When she looked into the mirror the glass was all steamed up, but she could tell that her eyes were red.
Her mom was on the phone when she got out. Mirai wondered if she was telling anyone what had happened to her. Everything still hurt.
“You rest,” her mother said, hanging up soon after.
“Were you talking about me?” Mirai asked.
“Watch your tone,” her mother said. Long ago Mirai had learnt that it didn’t matter what she said so much as how she said it. If she said things loudly, her mom would say “Don’t be rude” most of the time no matter what it was, whereas she’d be way less likely to take notice if Mirai spoke softly. Mirai wasn’t in the mood to moderate her voice, though. She’d done enough screwing up for one day, and she didn’t feel like getting into a whole thing.
Instead, she trudged over to her bed and climbed in, pulling the sheets up and tucking them under her chin. She couldn’t lie on her side because of the stitches. She closed her eyes resolutely, and wondered where Tokutaro was. He had been conspicuously absent since just after the collision, and when they reached the hospital he hadn’t been around at all. It was so like a fox to be this flaky.
“Caroline’s arrived,” her mother said to her. “She wants to see you.”
I don’t want to see her, Mirai thought, but not meanly. She wasn’t in the mood to see anyone at the moment.
“But you sleep first,” her mom said. She bent down and kissed Mirai on her forehead, in between her tightly-closed eyes. Mirai wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard her mother murmur in Japanese, “Poor thing.”
Eventually she settled down, and fell asleep to the sound of the door closing behind her mother.
After what seemed like only a few moments, Mirai woke up to the disconcerting sensation of someone licking her face. Mirai had pets, of course - but she was in Japan, and her pets weren’t here, she wasn’t dumb - and so she opened her eyes. Of course it was Tokutaro.
“Oh!” Mirai said. “It’s you.”
“Your face tasted salty,” Tokutaro said, sitting back on his haunches and licking his paw. Mirai tried not to think about where his tongue had been. Did foxes sift through garbage the same way dogs did?
“Well, that makes sense,” Mirai snapped. “I was crying.”
“I didn’t think you’d be that much of a wimp,” Tokutaro said, casting a glance at her sideways, his body slanted toward the window, to see if she’d be really offended.
“You don’t understand,” Mirai said. All along - well, the past couple of years anyway - her main problem in skating had been herself, and in general though she wasn’t very good at battling her demons it was an enemy she knew. Good Mirai, and evil Mirai. What did that make her now? Injured Mirai? That was just stupid. “It’s not that it hurts, although it obviously hurts now, hello. I can’t even think about stretching, let alone skating.”
Maybe Tokutaro had noticed her lip wobbling. He prowled over to her softly, putting his head in her lap. Mirai couldn’t help but pet him softly, and he buried his nose in her thigh.
“Skating really matters to you, huh?” he said, voice muffled.
“Well, duh.”
“I was just asking. You know, I’ve been injured a lot of times before. And here I am! So if I can do it, you can probably do it too.”
“Probably?” Mirai asked. She couldn’t help being amused - Tokutaro was so arrogant. He reminded her of some people she’d known, and those people were generally hilarious once she learnt not to take seriously.
Then another thought occurred to her, and she stopped stroking the soft fur in between his eyes. Tokutaro whined when she ceased to do so, and she started patting him again. “Hey, how old are you, anyway?” She knew about dogs, but she wasn’t sure about the lifespan of foxes. Especially magical ones.
“One hundred.”
“What?”
“Stop casting my age up to me,” Tokutaro whined. His tail thumped weakly against the mattress. “I thought we were talking about you.”
Mirai had thought they were, too, but she was intrigued. “If you’re one hundred, then how come you act like you’re eight?” A really dumb eight year old, she added silently.
“Hey - hey!” Tokutaro protested. He jumped up, and bared his teeth at Mirai, but Mirai totally wasn’t impressed. Eventually he backed down. “I could still bite you,” he mumbled.
“Sorry,” Mirai said, grinning. “But how are you one hundred years old?”
“It’s how foxes get their magic,” Tokutaro said. “You’re born and you don’t know anything and you have to forage for food food food, and it’s so boring - ” he whined again, “but if you don’t get eaten out there or die or something, then bam! One day you gain the powers of invisibility and stuff. And more tails.”
There was a pause. “Cool,” Mirai said. Which it was, considering.
“All of which you’d have known if you’d bothered listening to the folktales,” Tokutaro said.
“Don’t look at me, I was born in America,” Mirai said. Her parents hadn’t really told her stories when she was a kid anyway, just read Peter and the Wolf to her over and over again at her request until they got sick of it.
“Yeah,” Tokutaro snarked. “You don’t have to tell me, I could tell, remember?”
“I don’t think my Japanese is all that bad,” Mirai protested. Sure, it was slow, and her accent was kind of off, but she’d grown up speaking it to her parents, after all.
“You don’t think.”
Mirai checked her watch, and got out of bed. It was time to take her painkillers again, not that she couldn’t tell from the pain making a resurgence in her back and her torso. She washed down her pills with a glass of water, and stared back at Tokutaro as he gazed at her reproachfully.
“I’m sorry this is kind of boring for you,” she said, rolling her eyes. She laid down again, waiting for the good drugs to kick in.
“That wasn’t what I was thinking,” Tokutaro said, sounding unexpectedly hurt. There was a pause, and then he was pushing something against her face with his nose. “Here. Do you want to play with this for a while? I’m not giving it to you, I just thought you might like to have it for a while. Here. Uh.”
Mirai opened her eyes. It was an onion-shaped ball of light, glowing yellow-white and casting a pallor over the dim hotel room, where the curtains were drawn to keep the sun out. It didn’t feel like anything, and Mirai thought that it ought to have burnt her face, but instead it felt pleasantly warm.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Oh? Uh,” Tokutaro said. He looked down. “Nothing, nothing! Just a toy I like to play with sometimes. Nothing of consequence at all.” Of course Mirai got the feeling that it was important, he just didn’t want to say.
“So it isn’t important to you?” she asked slyly.
Tokutaro jumped. “Oh! no,” he said. “No, no, no. You can’t have it,” here he put his paws near the ball like he was ready to grab it at any time, “Not because of anything in particular, but this has sentimental value, you know? Oh, no, no, no.”
“O… kay,” Mirai said, watching him carefully. She wondered what it actually was. “What do you call it?”
Tokutaro puffed his chest out. “My hoshi no tama,” he said.
“Star ball,” Mirai said to herself thoughtfully. “Is that right? I like that!”
“It’s rather neat,” Tokutaro said shyly. He looked down and put his head on his paws, and Mirai tried not to show how adorable she thought it was. She got the feeling that Tokutaro wouldn’t like that.
“Tell you what,” Mirai said. She spoke carefully, like she was talking to a little boy, instead of a century-old fox. “I don’t want to have it, but if you’ll hold it and lie down next to me, would that be okay?”
Tokutaro appeared to consider this; his head tilted to the side. “Okay then,” he said finally. “No funny business.”
“Absolutely not,” Mirai agreed, and watched through half-closed eyes - the painkillers were starting to take effect, and she was starting to feel drowsy again - as Tokutaro took the ball into his mouth gently, where it shrank to fit his jaws just right, and lay down, curling up next to her.
continued here
Mirai gen
G
12342 words
Mirai goes to Japan, skates in a competition, and meets a fox.
I am indebted to nova33 for betaing this story - not just once, but twice, willowbell and alexthegreat for cheerleading, and anyone else who may have seen this story and expressed excitement or encouraged me. Those people are the greatest!
I am also a ridiculously lucky girl, who got art for the story before it was completed. Here it is! Everyone go tell alexthegreat how awesome it is. ♥
One of the thought experiments / fantasies / what-if scenarios that Mirai liked to run through every so often was what if Mom and Dad had stayed in Japan? She didn’t really understand why they had left in the first place, because she’d visited twice and Japan was awesome. When she had asked her dad, he’d shrugged and said, “For the adventure, Mirai-chan!” in a way that made her think that maybe he was hiding something, something very sad and tragic. This was when Mirai would get distracted, thinking about what could have possibly happened that was sad and tragic enough to make her parents want to move to America.
And then they had ended up in Arcadia, which - much as Mirai loved it - wasn’t exactly buzzing with adventure and activity. It was small enough that the fact that she lived there was listed on Wikipedia under ‘notable residents’, for one.
Still though, Mirai loved Arcadia a lot. She’d received some offers from the Japanese federation to come compete for them, and mostly she was honoured but she didn’t think much of it. The first time she was approached she had been fifteen, and her mother had said very diffidently, “So, what about it?”
Mirai hadn’t really taken it seriously, and she said, “But why would I want to do something like that?”
“Don’t be rude,” her mother said automatically.
“You’ve got Japanese citizenship too,” her father added.
“I know all that stuff,” Mirai said. “I’m just saying, there’s no point, because there are so many great skaters in Japan already, so why would they want me?”
Her mother and father looked at each other.
“Don’t go around repeating it,” her mother said, “but they think you could be great too.” She said it gently like she was afraid of scarring Mirai for life.
Mirai just shrugged. She couldn’t even speak Japanese properly, which was kind of tragic, but true nonetheless. She could understand it enough that it wasn’t a great secret code for her parents, but she was still learning the language in school.
“They’ve got Mao Asada and Shizuka Arakawa and Miki Ando and, and,” Mirai said. “I’d be buried there.” Whereas she might have a shot at making it to the top in the US, she added silently.
“Arakawa-sama has retired,” her father boomed.
Mirai rolled her eyes. Since they were talking about something serious her parents were too distracted to call her out on it. “That’s not the point.”
They never really talked much about it after that, and whenever Mirai got asked about it by reporters after that she never talked about it. “I would be honoured, but I compete for the US,” she’d say in Japanese, and shrug helplessly at them. After a while they seemed to get it, and her parents never tried to change her mind. They didn’t really talk about what would happen when she turned twenty-two and had to give up her dual citizenship. At first Mirai was relieved because she didn’t like talking about the heavy stuff. Much later she would realize that it was because the decision had already more or less been made.
Even though they totally could have hated her for that, if they’d known, Japan seemed to love her anyway. Mirai was super glad, because the fans there were amazing and crazy and, okay, it totally got to her head. On emerging from the airport a whole bunch of girls her age spotted her and actually started shrieking, like it was their life’s desire to see. Then came the deluge of autograph books she had to sign, and fan gifts.
Mirai signed as many things as she could and made small talk, like she’d seen the other older skaters do, all the while feeling quite sure that if some other skaters came along they’d totally abandon her for their autograph. Then she bowed politely and walked off with her mom and Mr Carroll.
“Crazy,” her mother muttered under her breath, in English. “These girls are so crazy.”
“If we lived in Japan, maybe I would be like them,” Mirai said, more to bait her mother than anything. She risked a backward glance. One of the girls was wearing a pink wig and some really wild makeup. She looked cool and crazy, like a cartoon or a caricature. Her mom had disapproved when Mirai started wearing eyeliner on a daily basis last year.
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “I would smack it out of you,” she said in that ironic tone, that was somehow completely serious.
“Are you tired?” her mother asked, as they got aboard the van waiting to deliver them to the hotel. Mirai didn’t answer, because it didn’t matter. It was only Wednesday. The competition started in two days time, and ladies singles’ were on the last day. It was plenty of time. Caroline and Ashley hadn’t even arrived yet.
“I’m fine, just my back hurts,” she said. “Are you tired?”
“A little,” her mother admitted. “Travelling really takes it out of you, and when you’re not so well - oof! - it gets even worse.”
Mirai bit her lip and tried not to worry too much. Remission meant they were fine for now, but the thing about remission was that the cancer could really come back any time. It gave Mirai a squirmy feeling in her gut, because she hated thinking about her mom dying.
“Fine pair we are,” her mother said, sighing.
“Soon we’ll be at the hotel and then we can rest,” Mirai said. “Sightseeing can wait.”
“Don’t you mean practice?” Mr Carroll asked from the front seat, and Mirai was pleased when he turned around because it meant she could wink at him. He frowned, but Mirai could totally tell he wasn’t really angry. After a year or so of training under Mr Carroll, Mirai could tell when he was kidding and when he wasn’t, and anyway they already had everything scheduled.
“Sure thing, Mr Carroll.”
Another thing Mirai didn’t like about Japan: how everything was super-expensive. Given how cheap her parents were, maybe they moved to the US to escape the high prices, although Mirai knew that wasn’t how things worked. Still, though. Noodles were expensive, and so were sweets, and after her mom woke up from her nap she and Mirai went walking around downtown and that was the main conclusion Mirai drew.
“Everything is so expensive,” she moaned.
The clothes were pretty, though. Mirai gazed in at the shop windows and sighed wistfully - maybe the dresses were all slightly frillier than she’d have chosen, but in any case they were really pretty and Mirai would have liked to try them on, only there was no point because she knew everything was going to be overpriced. Window-shopping was cool, though. Mirai and her mom had fun pointing out the clothes they liked and didn’t like, and Mirai slipped her hand into her mother’s and squeezed it. This was like Vancouver, kind of, only less cool, because it wasn’t the Olympics. Then again, it was Japan.
“What shall we do next?” Mirai asked.
“We could go see a temple,” her mother said, sounding diffident the way she always did when it was something that really mattered to her.
Mirai didn’t mind, but she twisted around to look up at her. “Temple?” Her mom wasn’t even particularly religious.
“For good luck,” her mom said.
The temple they went to was an old one. Mirai hadn’t been to many Japanese temples before, and mostly she just did what her mom told her to do; held the joss sticks her mom handed to her and stood in the direction she was told to stand in. It was hard to be act like you truly believed when you didn’t really know what it was all about.
“Now talk to Buddha - silently,” her mom directed, like she was afraid Mirai would start babbling about how she wanted to win all the gold medals ever in the middle of the courtyard. “Pray to him for help and good luck.”
Mirai closed her eyes and tried. She kind of did need the luck, even if she got the idea that all this smoke inhalation from the joss sticks wasn’t the best for her body.
Half a minute later she heard her mom sigh and opened her eyes. “That’s all,” her mom said fondly, before sticking both their joss sticks into the large urn at the entrance of the temple.
“Did it work?” Mirai said, hoping her mom wouldn’t pick up on the incredulity in her voice.
“We’ll have to wait and find out,” her mother said. For some reason Mirai started thinking again about what might have happened if her parents had stayed in Japan, what might have been if Mirai had grown up here. It was pretty much something that came up in her head every time she came to Japan for skating, which to be fair hadn’t been a lot of times. But still.
Mostly Mirai was glad, because if she was born in Japan her English wouldn’t be that great, and Mirai couldn’t comprehend thinking in any other language. Speaking Japanese required effort.
“Time to go now,” her mom said, severely as if Mirai was the one holding the both of them up. She dropped some coins into the donation box and held out her hand - like a little girl, Mirai took it and they strolled into the courtyard, turning back just once to admire the architecture of the building, framed by trees.
“What’s that?” Mirai asked, pointing at a little structure of wood sheltered amidst the shade of some willows. Forgetting that she was still holding her mom’s hand like a little girl, she dragged the both of them forwards before her mom realised what she was doing, and frowned at her.
“Don’t point, Mirai-chan. It’s rude.”
“Sorry,” Mirai said penitently, but her mom didn’t steer her away from what they could both now see was a tiny shrine with a roof, like a house with no walls, and she took that as an implicit agreement to stare some more.
The statue housed in the shrine stared back. It was a porcelain fox, its face long and narrow, eyes squeezed shut so tightly they had become slits. Yet Mirai got the idea that the fox was peering out at her from them. The sculptor who made the statue hadn’t been aiming for verisimilitude, but somehow, with the shadows from the wooden shade gleaming on it and some rays of light peeking in through the slanted boards, to Mirai it seemed very nearly alive.
Unfortunately it was also lying on its side. Someone very careless, or the wind or the rain, had knocked it down. It was hard to look dignified when lying on one’s side.
“Poor thing,” Mirai said, and before her mother could ask her what she was doing, she darted forward and put it upright, cleaning the dust from the shrine with her sleeve as she did so.
“Mirai!” her mother said, dragging her back by the wrist. Mirai wasn’t surprised that she sounded angry.
“What?”
Her mother looked the way she used to, just before slapping Mirai, when she was very young. “Don’t do anything like that ever again. It’s disrespectful and I taught you better than that.”
Mirai’s confusion turned into a sense of injustice, then turned to anger. Disrespectful? She hadn’t been disrespectful, she’d been the opposite of disrespectful.
“I put the fox the right way round again,” Mirai said, crossing her arms. “I don’t see how that’s disrespectful.”
Her mom just shook her head again. “Don’t do it.”
“Why,” Mirai said flatly. She hated it when her mom acted like she knew more about tradition and Japanese culture and religion, even if it was kind of true. Mirai just didn’t see how she’d done anything wrong. All she had wanted to do was help.
“It just isn’t nice.”
Mirai wanted to tell her mother that that wasn’t a proper answer, but she bit her lip.
“Come on,” her mother said, sounding exhausted. “Let’s get back to the hotel.”
It was pretty late by the time they got back to the hotel, considering how early Mirai was going to be waking up the next morning. Tomorrow was ice time, breakfast, some sightseeing, more practice and then early night. Caroline was arriving some time tomorrow, too, probably in the late afternoon, and Mirai really couldn’t wait.
“She’ll be tired,” her mom predicted gloomily. “Don’t you bother her.”
Mirai rolled her eyes. When her mom was in the bathroom she whipped out her mobile phone, even though she knew texting overseas was strictly for communicating with her mother and Mr Carroll in case of emergencies, and sent a quick text to Caroline, hey you won’t be tired tomorrow right?
It was nine pm in Nagoya, which made that six am California. Caroline had been up for two hours at least, and sure enough she replied soon. y. Mirai stuck her tongue out at the phone, because it wasn’t like she knew what that meant. Yes, she’d be tired? Yes, she wouldn’t be tired? Or, wait - did that mean “why”?
so you can hang out with me I’m bored, she typed. Then feeling weirdly guilty about dissing her mom and Japan, she added, japan awaits you!!
go to bed.
“Fine, whatever,” Mirai said aloud, and jumped when her mother said, “What was that?” She was leaning against the frame of the bathroom door, a towel around her neck. Mirai hadn’t even noticed the door opening.
“Nothing,” she said glibly, and her mother frowned.
“Time for you to shower, now go,” she said, jerking her head towards the bathroom, even though Mirai had totally already showered when they first checked in. She didn’t say no, though, just grabbed the pyjamas she was going to change into and marched into the bathroom. When the door was safely closed and the water running she yelled, “I can’t wait till Caroline arrives here!”
“I know, I know - you don’t want to spend any time with an old lady like me,” her mom said, muffled through the door, and Mirai couldn’t stop grinning. All things considered, her mom was pretty great.
For all the traveling she’d done through her skating career (which she totally didn’t get paid enough for, by the way), Mirai had never been able to sleep well during her first night in a foreign bed. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that she only ever travelled for competitions, like it was the fear of competition that kept her awake?
Who knew. Her mom was snoring softly already, the light from the bathroom (which they always kept on when staying in hotels, for some inexplicable reason) sneaking through the gap and falling on the end of her bed, and Mirai could see her sheets rising and falling evenly with every rattling snore.
Tired but not sleepy, Mirai curled moodily against the blanket and gazed blankly out the window, trying to fall asleep. Every minute she stayed awake now meant a minute less of sleep, and Mirai knew, knew, knew she was going to regret it tomorrow.
At some point Mirai stretched, and because Japanese beds weren’t quite as wide as American ones, her arm dangled off the side of the mattress. Just then Mirai was hovering enough on the edge of sleep to not want to pick it up again, even though she knew her shoulder might get all sore and gross tomorrow. Eyes closed, she let her arm dip further, a few inches from the floor. And then there was something cold and wet, much like a dog’s nose, snuffling and pushing against her fingertips.
Wait, what? Shocked into wakefulness again, Mirai sat up straight the way kids in bad movies always did after waking from nightmares. Only, this had to be the dream. Through the semi-darkness of the room, she stared hard at the patch of the floor at the side of the bed, and it stared back as innocuously as… as a patch of carpeted floor could be said to stare, anyway. The sheer white curtains at the window rustled as if brushing against a moving body, and normally Mirai wouldn’t have bothered with that, would have put that down to a breeze. Except that windows were firmly shut. Given the present circumstances, the curtains now took on a more menacing aspect.
Mirai had heard of many ghost stories featuring haunted hotel rooms, but this was the first time she’d come across something like this. Her heart thumping against her ribcage, Mirai got out of bed, squatted down and lowered her hand again. Her mother was still breathing gently. And there it was, the same sensation. Mirai had petted dogs before, of course, and this was what it felt like, except that she was generally able to see them. When Mirai moved her hand she could feel soft fur, short-bristled. Its ears were pointy, and it seemed to have a lithe body, around the size of a smallish dog.
“What are you?” she whispered, before realizing it was a dumb question. Animals couldn’t speak, and anyway, the important thing was not to wake her mother. She’d probably freak out and call the hotel concierge - and Mirai was pretty sure things like invisible creatures were beyond the management’s control.
The animal didn’t answer, just lashed its tail so hard that Mirai could feel it brushing up against her wrist. Okay, so whatever it was - a dog? A cat? - it had a long tail. When she tried picking it up it made a strange sound, kind of like a squeal - Mirai glanced uneasily over at her mother - and snapped at her hand, catching the skin on the back of it with its (very real, very sharp) teeth.
“Asshole,” Mirai hissed, snatching her hand away. Then the animal butted its head, which Mirai still couldn’t see, against her knee, as if it wanted the petting to continue. Rolling her eyes, Mirai obeyed.
Sneaking to the other side of the bed, Mirai clicked the switch on the bedside lamp, holding her breath all the while in case her mother woke up. When the light clicked on she turned to look, but though her mom turned over in her bed she was muttering lowly, the kind of muttering that just went to show that she was really asleep. Mirai thanked the universe, and turned back to look at the ground.
There was nothing there.
Mirai could have sworn she could see the dark outline of an animal back when the light was still off, but now there really wasn’t anything. Now it seemed ridiculous, except that a part of the carpet on the floor was bunched up weirdly like something was lying on it. When Mirai advanced towards it again cautiously, her right hand outreached, there was the same warm animal feel beneath her hand, and it purred as she stroked it.
Mirai had no idea what to think. It was eleven pm, and she had to be up in too few hours’ time. It was kind of dumb considering there was an invisible animal in her hotel room, but she couldn’t help yawning and realized that the jet lag was finally catching up with her. Her mother had stopped snoring, though she didn’t seem to be getting up yet, and Mirai switched off the light hastily just in case.
“Bed first,” she mumbled to herself sleepily. She told herself that if the… invisible animal, that sounded so ridiculous, was still around in the morning she would tell her mom, and if it wasn’t… well, she’d probably end up telling her mom anyway. Mirai was really bad with secrets even though she tried hard to keep them.
Mirai pulled the sheets over her mom, who had kicked her blanket off, before crawling back into bed again. The sheets weren’t as crisp as they were before, but they were still warm from her body and that was nice.
From the floor, there was a low whine, then a soft whump on the bed as the animal leaped up and landed next to Mirai. Mirai stared at the seeming-nothingness warily, wondering how safe it was to allow whatever this animal was - wild dog? raccoon? - to sleep on her bed, next to her. She’d heard horror stories about how this one boy smuggled a fox under his shirt and it gnawed him to death. What if this one killed her in her sleep? Please, god, not now. Mirai really wanted to skate and enjoy Japan first.
“You better not eat me in my sleep,” she mumbled sleepily, as it burrowed against her side comfortably. “If you do, I will kill you.”
Then she fell asleep before she could point out to herself what a paradox that was.
While Mirai slept she had a long involved dream. She dreamt she was at the ice rink in Nagoya - even though it looked like the one where she trained at home, she knew, she just knew she was in Japan. She had her skates on, but she was flying really, drifting half an inch across the rink and swimming through air as she pulled off her jumps effortlessly, one by one by one. The ice was utterly white, and though there was an audience - was it a competition or a show? - she paid them absolutely no heed, even though she knew she should be connecting with them. She smiled dreamily as she put on an extra burst of speed and went faster, every part of her body in precisely the correct position.
It was a good dream.
When the alarm went off she opened her eyes and tried to remember it before it slipped through the recesses of her memory, like water through her fingers.
There was a warm lump next to her still, snuffling and making the blanket above it rise and fall evenly. Mirai huffed out a sigh; she guessed that hadn’t been a dream, then. This was going to be so hard to deal with. She peeled back the comforter -
and blinked at the animal curled up next to her, now fully visible for reasons Mirai didn’t understand. It wasn’t like she understood anything about this situation, though.
It was a fox, dog-like except for its narrow, elongated nose and pointed ears. Its short-bristled fur was more red than gold, and the darkness of the room threw shadows over it. It was still asleep, but even as Mirai watched it thumped its tail grumpily and woke up, sniffing at her.
“Oh,” Mirai whispered to herself.
The fox sprang up, and looked at her intently. Mirai wondered if something was going to happen, that would explain this whole crazy situation, but then the fox opened its mouth wide, and yawned. Yawned? Mirai thought. Yawned!
“Oh!” the fox said. It spoke in Japanese. “You can see me now. Hello.”
“What,” Mirai said. “What.” She was kind of in shock, and scrambled off the bed, looking down at the fox with bug-wide eyes. It didn’t move.
The fox yawned again, but now it was clearly just for effect. “You were more interesting when you couldn’t see me,” it observed sardonically, and Mirai looked around and tried to figure out if there was a ventriloquist hidden in her room. That had to be the only explanation, but Mirai hoped not. She had enough to deal with without yet another creepy thing hiding in her room. When the fox spoke she could see its throat move.
“You can talk,” Mirai observed dumbly. “You’re - a. You’re a talking invisible fox.”
Mirai wasn’t sure if foxes could raise their eyebrows, especially since this one didn’t really have any eyebrows to raise, but that was the main gist she got. “And?”
“Why weren’t you talking last night?”
“It was a test. Duh.“
“A cuddle test?”
“It worked!” the fox said defensively.
“How did you get into my room?”
“My name’s Tokutaro, nice to meet you,” the fox said. It flicked its tail, bored. “It’s so nice to see that youngsters are keeping up with the proper etiquette these days.”
“I’m Nagasu Mirai, pleased to make your acquaintance,” Mirai said automatically, in her best Japanese, and the fox shook its head.
“Please don’t speak Japanese,” Tokutaro said (in Japanese). “I could understand you perfectly well in English, but when you speak Japanese - waaaa!” He broke off into a squeal at the end, before giggling nastily.
Mirai glared at the fox and put her hands on her hips. “If all you’re going to do is insult me, why are you here?”
“It really isn’t my choice,” Tokutaro whined. “You had to go and fix the inari shrine yesterday, and now I have to repay you. Is there anything I can do? This is getting boring.”
Mirai shrugged. “You could repay me by disappearing,” she suggested hopefully. Already she was thinking about how hard it was going to explain this to her mother, and looked around. Her mom was up, but she was nowhere to be seen. She’d probably left the room a little while ago.
“That isn’t the way things work,” Tokutaro said. “I have to help you do something, before the Higher Ups -” he made a little face just saying it, and Mirai wondered who they were, “ - consider my obligations fulfilled. Isn’t there anything I could help you do? Anything? Anything? Don’t you have anything big coming up like… a skating competition?”
Mirai bit her lip, and refrained from asking exactly how much Tokutaro knew about her life. She had a vague feeling that she didn’t actually want to know. “Well…” she said, “I guess you could just come to practice with me.”
Just then, Mirai heard the footsteps that meant her mom was coming down the hall, and squealed, “You have to hide!”, trying to bundle Tokutaro under the bed. He snapped at her hand instead.
“Stop being so crazy,” he said, and remained where he was defiantly, as Mirai sat, frozen with horror, on the bed while the door swung open and her mom entered.
“Oh, you’re up,” her mother said, smiling. She seemed not to notice the fox on the bed at all. “Hurry, go change, and we can get some breakfast before going down to the rink.”
“Where did you go?” Mirai asked cautiously. She was looking straight at Mirai, but totally failed to point out the fact that there was a fox sitting on Mirai’s hotel bed. Tokutaro made a huge snorting sound and looked up at her slyly.
“I went for a walk,” her mom said. She always woke up that early back home in Arcadia, and liked keeping the habit even when they traveled. “Did you know that this hotel has a swimming pool? We can go after training, if you’re not too tired.”
“Sounds good,” Mirai said in Japanese. She leaped up and headed towards the bathroom, still kind of freaked out. When she turned around just before entering, Tokutaro winked at her. Instinctively, she stuck her tongue out.
So that was how she found herself going down to the rink with her mother, her coach, and - a fox, that neither of the adults nor anyone else who passed by happened to be able to see. Mirai had plenty of reason to find her life surreal, what with all the skating she did and the places she traveled because of said skating, and the people she met, but after about twelve years of that she was quite used to it. The only reason she knew it wasn’t normal was because she had friends outside of skating. But this was seriously weird, the weirdest thing that had ever happened to her.
Even though Mirai knew she should be concentrating on skating, especially since her event was starting tomorrow (oh my god, she thought) it was pretty hard not to feel excited about it. Mirai was quite sure invisible foxes qualified as magic.
Tokutaro was gamboling around in front of the three of them, winking up at Mirai as he tried weaving between her mom and Mr Carroll. Mirai giggled to herself.
“What are you laughing at?” Mr Carroll asked gruffly.
“Nothing,” Mirai chirped. Because she was feeling cheeky, she said, “You!”
Her mom rolled her eyes. “Behave yourself,” she said, and Mirai subsided. When she looked at the ground, Tokutaro was snapping his jaws at her and sniggering to himself.
Mirai thought they’d gotten up early, but when they reached the rink there were a couple of other skaters there already, just like they always were. This always happened; she’d reach the rink at what she thought was an absurdly early hour and then they’d get beaten to the punch. She didn’t mind sharing ice so much, though. She headed straight to the changing room and got a few nods from some skaters whose names she always forgot, and beamed back at them. Ever since her growth spurt a year and a half ago, she’d been around the median height of most skaters - which wasn’t very tall to begin with - but she still felt really young, even though obviously she wasn’t intimidated, except when she was.
She gritted her teeth. This year she was older and better and had more experience. Telling herself to concentrate, she entered the rink and launched herself into the skating fray. It always helped to narrate her practices dramatically inside of her head, even if other people would totally laugh if they knew.
Mirai didn’t quite know how it had happened. One moment she was skating across the rink, trying to get enough speed to go into her first jump of the program, and - this was so stupid, she would think later, stupid stupid stupid, but clearly she hadn’t looked where she was going or Kiira hadn’t looked where she was going because by the time she snapped back into attention it was too late to avoid the incoming collision, which happened the next second.
Their foreheads knocked together, hard. Kiira was slightly taller than Mirai, but somehow they managed to do it anyway. Kiira’s leg flew up and the skate blade grazed against Mirai’s leg, cutting through the practice tights. Mirai was aware of a searing pain in her thigh, before she lost her balance altogether.
“Oh!” she yelled, and fell onto the ice, flat on her back like she was some newbie skater who hadn’t even learnt how to fall safely yet. They had simply been going too fast.
Pain, blind pain, flared up her shoulder and her back, not to mention in her thigh. It had been so long since anything hurt quite as much as this did - not her foot injury from last last season or the time she broke her arm when she was five, even. It was too much, and Mirai couldn’t help her tears, which welled up and spilled out of the corner of her eyes. She struggled to get up, and found that she mostly couldn’t.
“Mirai,” Mr Carroll yelled, and the next thing she knew, he was in front of her, tugging her up and draping her arm around his shoulder. A hush had fallen over the ice rink. Kiira struggled to her feet and was dusting herself off, before realizing that Mirai hadn’t escaped as unscathed as she had.
Kiira skated a couple of feet over to Mirai’s side, hovering helplessly in front of her. She said, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Mirai wanted to tell her that it was okay, and that it wasn’t her fault, but she realized that she’d bitten her tongue at some point during the collision and her mouth was filled with blood. She opened her mouth, and some of it came trickling out. Kiira winced, and Mirai wanted to apologise for the sight of it.
“Miss Korpi, I am assured that this was completely accidental -” Mr Carroll didn’t say it wasn’t her fault, Mirai noticed fuzzily, “ - but I do think it would help if you got out of the way.”
Kiira must have stepped back, because she left Mirai’s periphery afterwards. Or maybe Mirai didn’t notice her; the pain was too much to focus on. She couldn’t help whimpering. When they stepped off the ice Tokutaro came darting towards her, barking like he couldn’t actually talk, and Mirai wanted to warn him to stay away from her skate blades but couldn’t find it in herself to speak.
They sat. Her mom was there, suddenly, and Mirai said, “Ka-san,” surprising even herself by how frail and weak she sounded. She hated it. “It hurts.”
With gentle fingers, Mirai’s mother rolled her practice sweater up and gasped at the bruises there.
“Back to the hotel room, I think,” she said firmly, which was good. It wasn’t that Mirai wanted to slack off, but the pain was so large she simply wouldn’t be able to focus today. Although it was already ebbing and becoming less sharp at the edges, it still made Mirai want to curl up into a little ball in a dark room and disappear for a little while.
Except that tomorrow was the short program, and that made the bottom of Mirai’s stomach drop out. No no no, she thought, and started sobbing even harder. It was disgusting how dramatic she was being.
“Are you okay, Mirai-chan?” her mother asked, and Mirai couldn’t even reply, because all her lungs were being taken up by the crying. It wasn’t from the pain. Even though she was sorry that Mr Carroll had to see it, she couldn’t help herself.
“Skating,” she managed to get out in between lung-racking sobs.
“You’ll be fine,” Mr Carroll said sharply. “The short’s tomorrow. You’ll have time to recuperate and practice again. Mirai, stop crying. Stop crying.”
“It hurts too much,” Mirai gasped, her face scrunched up. This was so unfair, this was supposed to be her season, but the entire line of her torso hurt, and her back and her shoulder too, and this was just the start, and things just weren’t fair. It was supposed to be her season, and she was going to prove herself.
She gazed blankly out at the rink and found herself hating everyone practicing hard there.
Mirai knew she probably deserved a tight slap from her mom for her bratty behaviour, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. There was a lump, tight in her throat, and she hated her life.
Instead, her mother sighed and put her hand on Mirai’s hair. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”
After the hospital, they went back to the hotel so Mirai could rest. She’d gotten three stitches, and competition-approved painkillers, which should be taken every three hours, the doctor said. Back in her room, Mirai showered, noticing that she could barely stretch without the pain flaring up some more. How was she going to spin or do her Biellmanns this way? With the showerhead above her, she allowed herself to cry some more, hot tears blending with the water beating down around her.
Eventually she stepped out of the bathtub, dragging her feet as she put on the bathrobe the hotel had provided. When she looked into the mirror the glass was all steamed up, but she could tell that her eyes were red.
Her mom was on the phone when she got out. Mirai wondered if she was telling anyone what had happened to her. Everything still hurt.
“You rest,” her mother said, hanging up soon after.
“Were you talking about me?” Mirai asked.
“Watch your tone,” her mother said. Long ago Mirai had learnt that it didn’t matter what she said so much as how she said it. If she said things loudly, her mom would say “Don’t be rude” most of the time no matter what it was, whereas she’d be way less likely to take notice if Mirai spoke softly. Mirai wasn’t in the mood to moderate her voice, though. She’d done enough screwing up for one day, and she didn’t feel like getting into a whole thing.
Instead, she trudged over to her bed and climbed in, pulling the sheets up and tucking them under her chin. She couldn’t lie on her side because of the stitches. She closed her eyes resolutely, and wondered where Tokutaro was. He had been conspicuously absent since just after the collision, and when they reached the hospital he hadn’t been around at all. It was so like a fox to be this flaky.
“Caroline’s arrived,” her mother said to her. “She wants to see you.”
I don’t want to see her, Mirai thought, but not meanly. She wasn’t in the mood to see anyone at the moment.
“But you sleep first,” her mom said. She bent down and kissed Mirai on her forehead, in between her tightly-closed eyes. Mirai wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard her mother murmur in Japanese, “Poor thing.”
Eventually she settled down, and fell asleep to the sound of the door closing behind her mother.
After what seemed like only a few moments, Mirai woke up to the disconcerting sensation of someone licking her face. Mirai had pets, of course - but she was in Japan, and her pets weren’t here, she wasn’t dumb - and so she opened her eyes. Of course it was Tokutaro.
“Oh!” Mirai said. “It’s you.”
“Your face tasted salty,” Tokutaro said, sitting back on his haunches and licking his paw. Mirai tried not to think about where his tongue had been. Did foxes sift through garbage the same way dogs did?
“Well, that makes sense,” Mirai snapped. “I was crying.”
“I didn’t think you’d be that much of a wimp,” Tokutaro said, casting a glance at her sideways, his body slanted toward the window, to see if she’d be really offended.
“You don’t understand,” Mirai said. All along - well, the past couple of years anyway - her main problem in skating had been herself, and in general though she wasn’t very good at battling her demons it was an enemy she knew. Good Mirai, and evil Mirai. What did that make her now? Injured Mirai? That was just stupid. “It’s not that it hurts, although it obviously hurts now, hello. I can’t even think about stretching, let alone skating.”
Maybe Tokutaro had noticed her lip wobbling. He prowled over to her softly, putting his head in her lap. Mirai couldn’t help but pet him softly, and he buried his nose in her thigh.
“Skating really matters to you, huh?” he said, voice muffled.
“Well, duh.”
“I was just asking. You know, I’ve been injured a lot of times before. And here I am! So if I can do it, you can probably do it too.”
“Probably?” Mirai asked. She couldn’t help being amused - Tokutaro was so arrogant. He reminded her of some people she’d known, and those people were generally hilarious once she learnt not to take seriously.
Then another thought occurred to her, and she stopped stroking the soft fur in between his eyes. Tokutaro whined when she ceased to do so, and she started patting him again. “Hey, how old are you, anyway?” She knew about dogs, but she wasn’t sure about the lifespan of foxes. Especially magical ones.
“One hundred.”
“What?”
“Stop casting my age up to me,” Tokutaro whined. His tail thumped weakly against the mattress. “I thought we were talking about you.”
Mirai had thought they were, too, but she was intrigued. “If you’re one hundred, then how come you act like you’re eight?” A really dumb eight year old, she added silently.
“Hey - hey!” Tokutaro protested. He jumped up, and bared his teeth at Mirai, but Mirai totally wasn’t impressed. Eventually he backed down. “I could still bite you,” he mumbled.
“Sorry,” Mirai said, grinning. “But how are you one hundred years old?”
“It’s how foxes get their magic,” Tokutaro said. “You’re born and you don’t know anything and you have to forage for food food food, and it’s so boring - ” he whined again, “but if you don’t get eaten out there or die or something, then bam! One day you gain the powers of invisibility and stuff. And more tails.”
There was a pause. “Cool,” Mirai said. Which it was, considering.
“All of which you’d have known if you’d bothered listening to the folktales,” Tokutaro said.
“Don’t look at me, I was born in America,” Mirai said. Her parents hadn’t really told her stories when she was a kid anyway, just read Peter and the Wolf to her over and over again at her request until they got sick of it.
“Yeah,” Tokutaro snarked. “You don’t have to tell me, I could tell, remember?”
“I don’t think my Japanese is all that bad,” Mirai protested. Sure, it was slow, and her accent was kind of off, but she’d grown up speaking it to her parents, after all.
“You don’t think.”
Mirai checked her watch, and got out of bed. It was time to take her painkillers again, not that she couldn’t tell from the pain making a resurgence in her back and her torso. She washed down her pills with a glass of water, and stared back at Tokutaro as he gazed at her reproachfully.
“I’m sorry this is kind of boring for you,” she said, rolling her eyes. She laid down again, waiting for the good drugs to kick in.
“That wasn’t what I was thinking,” Tokutaro said, sounding unexpectedly hurt. There was a pause, and then he was pushing something against her face with his nose. “Here. Do you want to play with this for a while? I’m not giving it to you, I just thought you might like to have it for a while. Here. Uh.”
Mirai opened her eyes. It was an onion-shaped ball of light, glowing yellow-white and casting a pallor over the dim hotel room, where the curtains were drawn to keep the sun out. It didn’t feel like anything, and Mirai thought that it ought to have burnt her face, but instead it felt pleasantly warm.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Oh? Uh,” Tokutaro said. He looked down. “Nothing, nothing! Just a toy I like to play with sometimes. Nothing of consequence at all.” Of course Mirai got the feeling that it was important, he just didn’t want to say.
“So it isn’t important to you?” she asked slyly.
Tokutaro jumped. “Oh! no,” he said. “No, no, no. You can’t have it,” here he put his paws near the ball like he was ready to grab it at any time, “Not because of anything in particular, but this has sentimental value, you know? Oh, no, no, no.”
“O… kay,” Mirai said, watching him carefully. She wondered what it actually was. “What do you call it?”
Tokutaro puffed his chest out. “My hoshi no tama,” he said.
“Star ball,” Mirai said to herself thoughtfully. “Is that right? I like that!”
“It’s rather neat,” Tokutaro said shyly. He looked down and put his head on his paws, and Mirai tried not to show how adorable she thought it was. She got the feeling that Tokutaro wouldn’t like that.
“Tell you what,” Mirai said. She spoke carefully, like she was talking to a little boy, instead of a century-old fox. “I don’t want to have it, but if you’ll hold it and lie down next to me, would that be okay?”
Tokutaro appeared to consider this; his head tilted to the side. “Okay then,” he said finally. “No funny business.”
“Absolutely not,” Mirai agreed, and watched through half-closed eyes - the painkillers were starting to take effect, and she was starting to feel drowsy again - as Tokutaro took the ball into his mouth gently, where it shrank to fit his jaws just right, and lay down, curling up next to her.
continued here