Chapter 44: Kitaro, Yukie: Faux Pas and Fox Paws

                                    

                                          
The problem with being a four-tailed kitsune was that people—which is to say, yokai—called you 'Dead Ass' or similar charming nicknames a lot, as the word for four and the word for death sounded the same in Japanese. And they always thought it was so funny, too.
                          
Kitaro really wanted a fifth tail.
                          
He looked down at the phone in his hand—the first he had ever owned. Neither he nor the mated pair who posed as his grandparents for Beast Boy's benefit had expected that the kid would come back and express his gratitude like that, so it came as a nice surprise. They split the money among them three ways, and that was how he used his share. The customer service representative had been amazed that a boy his age needed so much help choosing a phone, not to mention so much instruction on how to use it.
                          
The first person whose number he called was Rose, and they had been text-messaging each other—was that the right phrase?—at least once a day since then. Usually several times a day. He had learned how to take and send pictures and videos, too. But while she mentioned her father and Lady Snowblood fairly often, it was always casually. He hadn't realized how important they were to her until she told him they were now engaged to be married, and her happiness just bubbled over and spilled out.
                          
He really liked Rose. It wasn't that he had a thing about dating somebody of a different species, or that there weren't any nice kitsune girls out there, because there were, and other yokai girls as well. He just really liked her.
                          
Yes, he'd been told that loving humans was a terrible mistake. They were at about the same stage of their lives, both young adults, although she wasn't yet independent, but he was three hundred and fifty years old while she was only sixteen. He figured he'd be about ready to take a mate and start a litter of cubs when he was about four hundred, but in fifty years, she'd be old by human standards, probably a grandmother, maybe even dead. Yet there were poems comparing loving a human to watching the cherry blossoms bud, bloom, and fall—all the more treasured and wondrous because the time spent with them was so short.
                          
Those poems were stupid. There was nothing wonderful about how Rose was going to age and die before he knew it. And now he was supposed to earn his fifth tail by breaking her heart, because she had already lost one mother, and making sure Lady Snowblood got up the mountain to the cave where the old yuki-onna, Snowflower, dwelled—.
                          
Well, that meant either Lady Snowblood was going to die or she was going to become a yuki-onna, and either of those would break Rose's heart. There was a reason why yuki-onna who came down among humans to marry and have children concealed their nature from their families, and that was because they were creatures of immense power who could freeze a person solid with their breath alone. No man would knowingly and willingly take a wife who could freeze his manhood and snap it off like a twig any time she liked.
                          
Lady Snowblood wouldn't be able to conceal what she was—not right away, anyhow. Probably not for a few years, from what he had been told. What with her skin turning pure white, not just humanly pale like it was now, her lips turning blue, and floating along in a cloud of vapor instead of walking on the ground—she was going to be a pretty damn terrifying sight.
                          
He really wanted a fifth tail, but not at the cost of hurting Rose.
                          
Maybe the changeover could wait a while. Like, say, ten years, until Rose was well and truly independent and losing another mother would be sad but not devastating. He could put up with being called 'Dead-Ass' a while longer. However, he wasn't the one who could make that decision. Not without getting into serious trouble.
                          
One advantage of being a kitsune was that he could call on the kami of all foxes, the goddess Inari, for help and guidance. If you called too often or for trivial matters, you ran the risk of incurring her displeasure, but he hadn't yet asked for anything, and this was anything but trivial. So he put his phone away and went to get a nice big bowl of hot, steaming udon noodles with sweetened fried tofu chunks in it. They were her, and every kitsune's, favorite food, which was why they were called kitsune udon. Then he went to the nearest fox shrine, made sure the red kerchief that proclaimed his allegiance to her was nice and straight, set the bowl down in front of the altar, dropped to his knees, touched his forehead to the ground, and prayed.