Morning braided itself gently through the curtains, and the house remembered how to be kind.
I woke to the smell of warm flour and the soft percussion of wooden spoons. Yuna's breathing, even; Hana's humming, older than the hallway beams. Kaji stretched, paws forward, rump high, then flopped against the pallet with a grunt that meant the day could come if it wanted.
"Kitchen?" Yuna whispered.
"Kitchen," I agreed.
A cozy domestic morning
Hana had already declared the kitchen a sanctuary from hurry. Bowls waited like calm little moons. Yuna tied her hair up with a strip of cloth that had once been a ribbon on a festival banner and promptly got flour on her nose. I reached to brush it away, hesitated, then did—careful as if touching dawn.
"Flour is a healer's badge," she said, trying for stern and failing into a smile.
Hana set tasks without turning them into tests. "Akira, whisk in the milk until it listens. Yuna, slice the apples like you're telling them a soft story. Kaji, supervise."
Whisking made a sound like rain finding a roof. I learned when batter stops resisting and decides to believe you. Yuna's knife moved slow as kindness, her slices thin, crescent moons. When the skillet hissed, we leaned close; the first pancake carried the whole room's attention the way small miracles do.
We ate standing up, breath fogging the hot bites. Apple steam. Cinnamon. Butter wanting to run. Yuna burned her tongue and made the face of a brave soldier. I laughed, the new laugh, the one that still surprised me—fragile bell, bright.
"Keep that sound," Hana said, turning away to hide the shine in her eyes. "It makes the house happier."
After, we washed bowls with sleeves rolled and wrists wet. Yuna flicked a droplet at me; it landed on my cheek and ran down like a polite comet. I flicked one back. Kaji sighed the sigh of a wolf above such things and licked the floor where batter had dared fall.
The morning was small. It felt like power.
School spar—safety, not survival
The academy yard wore yesterday's laughter and today's wind. On the training field, Master Dayen drew a circle on packed earth. "Not fighting," he said, voice steady as dry bread. "Practice standing when standing matters."
Pairs formed. Taro wagged his tail at me with optimism and a bruise he pretended not to love. I rolled my grip on the practice staff, remembering wood as branch, not weapon.
Across the circle, two boys squared off—one older, one too eager. The older boy's movements were careful until they weren't; frustration tightened his mouth. A girl stepped too close to cheer and he swung wild to look like a victory. It would catch her in the ribs.
My body moved before my fear found it.
Two steps. Staff up, reed-soft, not strike but interruption. Wood met wood with a firm hello. The swing slid aside; the air exhaled, unbruised. The girl blinked, surprised to still own her breath.
"Easy," I said, the word landing like a hand on a horse's neck. "We are here to keep one another."
The older boy flushed, shame and relief arguing in his eyes. "I—sorry."
Master Dayen's mouth softened. "Good, Akira. Protection is a kind of listening."
My heart beat quick because once, standing in the path of something had always meant breaking. Now it meant staying.
After, the girl found me under the maple and pressed a clover into my palm as if paying a tithe to a small temple. "Thank you," she said, and I understood that sometimes gratitude is a little green thing with three leaves.
Yuna leaned against the tree beside me, shoulder a warm possibility near mine. "You moved like a river around a rock."
"I thought of branches," I said. "How they don't argue with wind and still keep the sky."
She smiled like I had offered her a word she'd been trying to remember.
Illusions—tiny fox-spirit
Master Iri met us by the fountain, where the water educated light. "More mirroring," she said. "Less making."
I cupped air above the pool. Not forcing. Attending. The fountain sang its small, faithful song. The sun leaned into ripples. I held their agreement in my bones.
A shimmer gathered—the size of a breath. It trembled, then condensed, then… blinked.
A tiny fox stood in my hands. Not fur and meat—idea and light. Its tails (two—no, one-and-a-promise) swayed like the thought of wind on grass. It looked at me, then at Yuna.
"Hello," it said, voice like a bell too small for fear. "You are doing very well for someone who does not know what she is yet."
I forgot how to breathe.
Yuna made a choked sound that might have been laughter and might have been a prayer. "It talks."
The little fox tilted its head. "Only where listening happens." It hopped to the rim of the fountain, shook imaginary rain from its not-fur, and regarded me with mirth. "Grow in kindness. The tails follow."
"I've heard that," I whispered.
"Yes," said the fox. "You say it to yourself when you think you aren't listening." It winked, then dissolved into a ribbon of silver that sank into the water and became reflection again.
Master Iri's eyes went bright. "Well," she said softly. "That is not usual. But then, neither is becoming."
Jealousy—small, harmless, real
At lunch, we stretched on the grass. The day wore blue like it meant it. Elyren came over, her hair-bells chiming a song that could make bees civilized. She knelt by Yuna, concern honest. "Are you well? I heard you fainted nearly during the festival."
"I didn't faint," Yuna said, instantly indignant, which meant she almost had.
Elyren's hand hovered near Yuna's shoulder, then rested there lightly—healer to healer, a language made of touch. "Stay within your edges," she murmured, smile a soft braid.
Something moved in me—sharp, unexpected.
Not danger. Not lab. Jealousy—thin as a paper cut and just as surprising.
I blinked at it, unsure if it belonged. It didn't hurt Yuna. It didn't hate Elyren. It wanted something I did not yet have a name for and was embarrassed to want it.
I curled my fingers into the grass until earth reminded me it held us all. The feeling didn't go. It softened, like a flame cupped by logic.
Yuna glanced at me then—just a quick flick of her eyes that asked and waited. My tail betrayed me: a small, tight flick. She hid a smile (badly).
After Elyren moved on, Yuna leaned closer, voice private as a handkerchief. "Thank you for letting that feeling exist without letting it rule."
"What feeling?" I asked, too quick.
She bumped my knee with hers. "The kind that says, 'I want to be the closest warm thing.' It's not wrong. It's just loud the first times."
"I do not… own you," I said carefully.
"No," she said, eyes kind. "That's why your wanting feels safe."
The want sloped down into something softer. It found a place to sit. It did not demand. It stayed.
Shadow escalates—message arrives
Afternoon slid into the village with bread smells and the particular clink of bowls that means stew. At Hana's door lay an object that did not belong to this world: a piece of clear material, edges too clean, surface without memory.
A note lay beneath it, written in lab-hand: tidy, cruel by habit.
SUBJECT-09. RETURN PROTOCOL ENGAGED. COMPLIANCE EARNS MERCY.
The air went thinner than honesty.
I did not reach for it. My fingers remembered how not to obey. Kaji's growl happened in his spine, not his throat. Yuna stepped close without stepping in front. Hana took the object in two fingers like you hold a thorn and slid it into the hearth. It warped. It did not burn easily. She fed it flame without anger, only certainty. The note she tore into small, unimportant pieces and let them learn to be ash.
"They will knock with different hands," Hana said. "We will keep answering with the door we choose."
I exhaled and didn't notice until then that I had been keeping breath like a hoard.
"I am not theirs," I said.
"No," Yuna said. "You are yours. And ours."
The word ours placed a small lantern near my ribs.
How to comfort, not just be comforted
Night found us early, as if it wanted to practice. Yuna helped an elder set a jar on a shelf and rubbed her wrist after; strain drew lines between her brows she tried to erase by smiling.
"Sit," I said.
She did, out of curiosity more than obedience. I fetched the salve she uses on others and set up clumsily in front of her on the floor. My tail coiled like a guard around my ankle; my hands shook a little—but less than yesterday.
"May I?" I asked, remembering too well the way touch becomes ownership if you don't ask it kindly.
"You may," she said, eyes warmer than hearths.
I worked salve into the tendons of her wrist the way she had shown me with Ren—small circles, then longer lines, attention like breath, not a blade. When she winced, I softened. When she sighed, I did not mistake it for invitation. It was relief.
"You're good at this," she murmured.
"I am… learning how to lend steadiness instead of taking it," I said.
"Exactly," she whispered, like I'd told her the real name of a star.
Later, when the house grew the particular quiet that means all the busy business in the world has gone to visit someone else for a while, Yuna curled on the pallet and sighed in a way that reached into my ribs and straightened what the lab had bent.
"You can sleep," I said.
"I know," she said, but didn't close her eyes.
So I did what soft people do when words wear out. I sat near and stayed. Eventually, her eyes remembered how to shut.
Letters to a future self
Hana placed paper and a stub of charcoal beside me as if she had no idea how it arrived there. "Sometimes words learn better alone first," she said.
I wrote, slowly.
To the Akira who has three tails,
I don't know how you did it. Today I helped Yuna and didn't break. Today jealousy visited and I did not invite it to dinner. Today the lab tried to name me again and I answered with fire.
Did you learn love's shape? Does it still wait, or did it begin?
If you forget: you chose to stay. You can choose it again.
From the Akira who is still learning how to be soft without apologizing for it.
I folded the letter and set it beneath a stone. The stone liked the work.
Brushing Yuna's hair—tenderness as power
After supper, Yuna fought her hair with her fingers and lost. She huffed like a wolf scolding a branch.
"May I?" I asked, holding up the wooden brush Hana kept in a jar like a secret.
Yuna's smile turned shy and brave. "Please."
She sat on the pallet. I sat behind, brush in hand, heart trying to study steadiness again. Her hair warmed my fingers; it smelled like smoke and mint and sun. The brush moved slow, patient, listening for the knots and persuading them. Not ripping. Asking. When the bristles caught, I paused; she breathed; we tried again. The room's air changed—heavier and easier, like deep water without cold.
Yuna's shoulders dropped an inch I hadn't noticed they carried. "I could live inside this."
"What is this?" I asked.
"Being cared for," she said, eyes glossy and gentle. "A kind of power that doesn't beat anything. It keeps."
The brush whispered through to the ends. I wrapped a ribbon—soft, the color of new leaves. When I tied the bow, my fingers trembled and did not apologize.
She turned, face nearer than breath. "Thank you," she said, and the words landed on me like a blanket I wanted to keep.
Something ached, not pain. Want, the quiet kind. I put it somewhere good. I did not rush it into a name.
Blessing ritual—safety, warmth, belonging
Hana called us to the hearth. The house leaned in. She set three small bowls: salt, water, smoke. Her hands moved like memory.
"This," she said, "is a blessing I learned from my grandmother who learned it from a fox who learned it from a moon." Her smile was not a joke; it was a map. "We bless not to control, but to recognize."
She dipped her fingers in salt and touched our foreheads. "For boundary—so your no is a fence that does not wound."
She touched water and pressed it to our throats. "For voice—so your truth does not go thirsty."
She lifted smoke from a sprig of cedar and let it curl around our hands. "For work—so your giving does not empty you."
"For Akira," she said, "that she believes her body belongs to her. For Yuna, that she lets the world hold her as often as she holds it back."
My eyes burned. Yuna's did, too. The wolf pretended he had dust in his.
Hana finished softly: "For this house, that it remembers how to be home."
We breathed together. The room agreed.
Night—soft, and also a horizon
When sleep came, the window wore a square of moon. I lay on the pallet; Yuna leaned back against the bed frame, our hands near, not quite touching, the space between them an invitation that did not demand.
"Today," I said into the not-dark, "I wanted to be the closest warm thing."
Yuna didn't laugh. "I wanted that too," she admitted, and the room held both wanting without panic.
We fell quiet. The quiet opened like a door.
The grove's bells rang far and near. A second ghost-tail uncurled behind me for a slow, bold breath—silver as beginning, patient as winter wheat. It didn't vanish quickly this time. It lingered, a thread sewn to skin, a promise not of power first, but of choosing.
"Akira?" Yuna murmured.
"Yes?"
"If your future self writes back, tell her I was here—waiting politely to learn the shape of the word we didn't throw like a stone."
"I will," I said, smiling in the way my mouth is learning—a small bow to happiness, not a shout.
Kaji sighed. The hearth breathed. The house tucked us in.
Outside, a shadow paused at the field's edge and reconsidered itself. Inside, I wrote one more line on the letter with my mind:
I am not Subject-09. I am Akira. I am staying.
The second ghost-tail shimmered, and somewhere in the thin place between river and moon, a tiny fox laughed like a bell too small for fear.
We slept, the kind of sleep that chooses us back.