Befuddled, I stared at Kaoru, trying to make sense of his words. “What do you mean?”

Kaoru returned to his fox shape as if to disguise his feelings, though this time kept his male voice. “That wound on your head, it’s my fault. I was running from some… Let’s call them people. They were after something in my possession, and while I was running, I dropped it. You can probably guess what happened then, right?”

Well. No. Not really.

He paused for a moment, his head tilted to the side, ears pointed at me as he watched me searchingly, but I had nothing to say.

“It hit you on the head,” he continued. “And because its aura connected with yours, I had to take you with me, or my pursuers would have torn you to shreds, or worse.”

Flashes of ninja with shuriken ready for assassination flashed through my mind, quickly followed by gangsters with guns.

 The thought was no more ridiculous than the reality before me, even though Kaoru didn’t give me the vibe of a yakuza. Then again, I didn’t exactly have a lot of experience with crime syndicates. Or with mythological creatures, for that matter. Besides, I still wasn’t entirely confident that all of this was any more than a concussion-induced lucid dream.

“Right…” I said tentatively but trailed off. Instead of getting answers, the questions were beginning to pile up sky-high.

The twin tails flopped once with an audible thump as Kaoru sighed discontentedly. “Ordinarily, that aura should have faded after a day or two and you could have gone back to your old life without a hitch.” He paused, looking down guiltily. “Honestly, I was hoping you’d stay unconscious until I could return you to the human realm.” His ears drooped to the sides of his lowered head, flattening apologetically. “Everything could have been okay. But I was careless. I let you see my shift. If you’d only ever seen one of my human shapes, or my fox shape, or even all of them separately, there would never have been a problem. But you saw the shift itself.”

His tongue licked across his muzzle, as if he were remembering what his transgression meant. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Claiming that I was struggling to follow his explanation would have been a stretch. I could barely even formulate the questions in my mind.

“See, here’s the thing,” he finally continued. “You’re cursed now. Sort of. Because your aura connected with my… item and then you saw me shift, making you aware of yokai, something changed in you. About you. Around you. It’s a little difficult to explain, so let’s just call it your aura. No,” he shook his head, his nostrils flaring, “your scent. Your scent is different than it was before. And the problem is that yokai are attracted to it. But in a bad way. It’s like you smell delicious to them, and worse, weak yokai might lose control around you and try to devour you. That’s what happened with the kappa earlier. That means that if you were to go back to the human realm now, you would be dead within twenty-four hours because any yokai nearby would come after you.”

He stopped, looking at me, gauging my reaction, but I was simultaneously too shocked and too confused to truly grasp the severity of my situation. My mind was too muddled to understand all parts of it. What I did understand was that he was telling me I was in danger. Because all those mythical creatures my father had taught me about when I’d been a child were real and now wanted to eat me.

After seeing the kappa and Kaoru’s shift, I really couldn’t second guess the reality of the mythology anymore.

Wonderful. Best day ever.

If Kaoru was telling the truth, I was as good as dead.

“So… what now?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

Kaoru changed into her female form and reached across the table to squeeze my hands. Our eyes locked. “If you stay here, I will protect you. And I will try to help you to break that curse.”

A glimmer of hope rose in my chest. “It can be broken? I can go back to my normal life, like this never happened?”

Kaoru hesitated, her gaze falling down to the tatami mats. “Not… quite.”

I tilted my head to the side, enticing her to go on. Once again, Kaoru wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“It’s a little complicated,” she admitted. “And I can’t guarantee that you’ll succeed. But there is one way to change your aura, your scent, again so yokai will no longer feel the overwhelming urge to devour you. Well, two ways, I suppose.”

She paused, as if to gauge how I was receiving her words. Mostly, they just confused me.

“Could you elaborate?” I asked.

“Have you heard of the omnyoji?”

I nodded. My father had told me plenty of stories about the folklore from his homeland. I’d never imagined they might have a real impact on my life, however.

“In essence, you have the chance to become one. This connection you’ve drawn means that you now have a direct connection to your own spiritual power. It’s like you’ve broken the lock that kept it safely tucked away. But because you can’t control it yet, it’s like it’s leaking. Yokai can detect that, and they’re drawn to that energy.”

“So,” I tried to wrap my head around her words, “I need someone to teach me how to control it and then I’ll be safe?”

Kaoru’s lips were drawn into a thin line, her eyebrows knit together in frustration. “Not quite. Well, sort of. It’ll take time for you to actually be able to access it. In the meantime, it’ll just grow and leak out more and stronger, meaning that more yokai will come after you the more time passes.”

“You’re saying my only chance of survival is to hide away somewhere until I can access that spiritual power?” This was terrifying. And it made no sense. I didn’t feel any different. How could something be leaking? And yet, I’d seen the kappa and how it had acted.

“No, that won’t work,” glowering, Kaoru put up a finger and continued counting with each point she made, “There is no place you could hide away forever and be safe for certain. With the exception of this compound, maybe. Plus, for your power to grow, you need to interact with yokai. And most importantly, you need to learn to not be afraid of them. Us. Fear makes it worse.”

This was insane. And Kaoru was acting like this was a huge nuisance. Somehow, she was making me feel guilty again—guilty for a position that she had put me into. Anger rose in my chest, making my hands tremble.

 None of this was my fault. I hadn’t asked to be here. I hadn’t chosen to be cursed. All I’d wanted to do was go for a drink with my coworkers, not be kidnapped into something I was finally understanding was a different realm.

“And how am I meant to do that when they all want to eat me?” I glared at Kaoru.

The kitsune shrugged. “How am I supposed to know? I’ve never been in this situation. I already said I’d try to help, and that I’d protect you until you figure it out! What more do you want?”

I might not have understood or even fully believed everything that Kaoru had been telling me, but I’d had enough. Rising from my seat at the table, I spoke quietly, controlled, but my eyes were throwing fierce daggers at Kaoru who was lounging on the floor, somehow managing to pretend that none of this concerned her.

“What I want is to go home.”

I turned and left the room, kept from running only by the stinging pain in my feet.

Anger and sadness swirled around inside of me, and I knew that if I stayed in the same room with Kaoru, I would start crying, something I wanted to avoid by any means. Yes, this situation really sucked, big time. But I would be damned if I wasn’t going to try to get out of it alive. And I was nothing if not tenacious.

Before long, I found myself sitting outside by the koi pond, staring at the white and orange fish swimming around in the water. Their slow, relaxed motions were hypnotic, and I let my angry thoughts run freely, until they eventually subsided.

As my head cleared up, I finally found it easier to think about my situation calmly. The facts were that I was in this situation, whether I liked it or not. I wasn’t doubting what Kaoru had said; she had no reason to lie to me, after all, and I had been attacked by that kappa.

I wasn’t sure how to go about this whole onmyoji idea. Kaoru had promised to keep me safe, which should give me the time I needed, right? Maybe there were things I could do in the meantime, speed up the process, or something.

Lowering myself to the ground, I wrapped my arms around my legs.

This was absurd.

All of this was plainly outrageous on the most ridiculous level. And yet, here I was, in a kitsune’s house, clutching a wound given to me by a kappa.

Finally, I couldn’t keep the tears down any longer.

I wanted to go home. I wanted to wrap myself in a blanket in my apartment and drink a cup of coffee, stuff myself with chocolates and watch a soppy romance movie. The kind that always had a happy ending filled with cheesy lines and improbable plots. Ideally the kind that was more ludicrous than my current reality.

Hot tears were now streaming across my face and my shoulders were trembling with barely suppressed sobs.

I was scared. Terrified, even.

I could still see the kappa’s red eyes haunting me, feel its sharp, strong beak sink into my flesh after it had launched at me. Clutching my injured arm against my body, I tried to regulate my breathing.

Get it together.

It would be okay.

I’d find a way out of this.

Sure, I didn’t know what my future would bring, and I knew that the possibility of death was a very real one, incessantly growing in my mind. But even if I didn’t perish at the hands of a yokai, I couldn’t just keep hiding out in a mansion in the middle of nowhere in fear. That would be no way to live either. And if I survived long enough, I could figure out learn how to use my spiritual power—whatever that meant—and I could return to my normal life. Right?

After a few minutes deep in thought, I heard someone walk across the gravel behind me, and Kaoru sat down beside me. I glanced over at her, but she was staring into the pond, a pained expression on her face.

 “Let’s start at the beginning, one last time,” she said after a moment. “Hi, I’m Kaoru, a kitsune. This is my home. Care to stay for a while? I can show you around and keep you safe. You might experience things you never thought possible and see things you only heard about in fairytales. Let’s make the best of a bad situation until we find a way to stop your problem permanently, one way or the other, kay?”

She looked up at me with a crooked smile. My eyes were still swimming with tears, but a smile had forced its way onto my lips, and I giggled. “Sounds better than any alternative I can think of.”