Natsu arrived home a few hours after Kaoru had taken me back, finally showing some signs of tipsiness and yelled at Kaoru for having left her behind. But after a chase or two around the house, the matter was settled over a cup of tea. We spent the next few days playing videogames together, whenever we weren’t all doing our own things—Natsu cleaning the house or lounging around in front of the TV or with a book, Kaoru cooking or reading manga, me drawing the faces of the yokai at the party from memory whenever I wasn’t playing with Luan. They were calm days, pleasant, relaxing ones. Kaoru even took some of my landscape drawings and hung them up around the house with my permission.

Then came a day that was a little different.

I thought I’d woken up early, having a bath in the hot spring before breakfast, but when I returned to the living room, feeling warm and comfortable, two notes were waiting for me on the table. One was from Natsu, telling me that she had to get back to work but that she’d be back in a few days’ time. The other was from Kaoru, saying that she had some urgent business to take care of, but would be back in the evening.

I’d seen Luan run into the forest to play with his kodama friends when I’d gone for my bath. It seemed that Kaoru had been right. As long as I remained on the mansion’s grounds, my curse didn’t seem to affect them, which I was more than grateful for. They seemed like such gentle creatures most the time, I didn’t want to think of them the same way as I did the kappa. I was certain I’d never look at a bill with untainted eyes again.

For the first time since arriving in this house, I was actually alone here. I’d gotten so used to there always being someone around, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself.

At least I knew I was safe here.

That ruled out exploring the wider area, though I had to admit I was more than a little curious, since so far, Kaoru had always transported us using foxfire. But after my past excursions, I didn’t feel like chancing fate.

Well, there was nothing for it. I started by making myself coffee, skipping the food part of breakfast. I didn’t really have any appetite. Eating alone was no fun, after all.

Then I grabbed paper and pencil and went back to sketching. This time, I tried to draw Kaoru and Natsu’s faces, something that I had surprisingly put off until now.  I did Natsu’s first—clear, piercing eyes, and her silky red hair done up like she’d worn it for the party. Then I went on to Kaoru. I hesitated, trying to decide which one of her faces to draw—should I sketch her as a woman or as a man? Admittedly, the main difference from the neck up was their length of hair and the jawline, but it still caused me a headache. In the end, I decided to do both—the left side the female Kaoru, and the right side the male.

Every few strokes of the pencil I closed my eyes, trying to envision her face again—long eyelashes, expressive brows, long nose, high cheekbones, and lips quirked into a cocky smirk.

I had just drawn the last line, when I heard a commotion in the house.

Expecting Luan had knocked something over while playing, I rushed toward the sound, lest he should have gotten himself injured. But when I reached the origin, one of the storage rooms, it was no feline I saw rummaging wildly through Kaoru’s stuff.

The large, black, feathered wings gave away instantly what I saw. Of all the days to be stuck home alone. What in the world was a tengu doing here? And seemingly wrecking the house on top of it?

I edged away, hoping to gain some distance so I could formulate a plan. There was no chance this was just a visitor. A guest would have announced their presence and headed toward the living space, but that wasn’t what had happened here. On top of it, it seemed suspicious that this tengu would show up just when no one else was home. I didn’t even want to imagine what might happen once he noticed me, cursed or not.

Shuffling backward, so as not to lose sight of the intruder, I stepped against a bottle he had knocked over, flinching at the clinking sound and froze.

Damn it!

The tengu whirled around. He looked like he might be about the same age as Kaoru and Natsu, only a few years older than me, and his fair complexion and hair would have been a perfect fit for a Japanese boy band.

Our eyes met, and he sniffed the air.

The curse. He noticed! I turned and ran, but I only made it as far as the living room before he had caught up to me and lifted me in the air, grasping me underneath my arms.

“You’re the one he’s sworn to protect,” he said, his voice deeper than his youthful looks would suggest.

I struggled, but his grip on me was too tight. “I’m what now?”

He hovered back down, gently allowing me to stand on my own two feet again. He picked up my drawing of Kaoru and pointed at it.

“He took something from me. A fan, ornamented with butterflies. I need it back.”

Letting go of me was a mistake. I bolted, rushing to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, holding it out in front of me as if I were planning to use it. Let’s face it—my few jiu jutsu classes in university had not prepared me for real life combat. And any capoeira I knew wasn’t going to help me now either.

He only sighed, clearly unimpressed by my weapon. “Look, I don’t have time for this right now. Do you know where it is?”

I shook my head. If he didn’t think it was here, maybe he’d leave?

He sighed again. “Then I have no choice.”

A flash of black feathers, and I was in the air again, outside, wrist hurting, and knife nowhere in sight.

I struggled against his grip as he rose higher in the sky. “Let go of me!”

I only succeeded in getting him to hold onto me tighter.

“Stop wriggling. If I let go of you now you’ll fall to your death. Is that what you want?”

He made a good argument.

I stopped resisting, but I tore my necklace from my neck and dropped it, hoping that would alert Kaoru that something bad had happened, and give him a first indicator as to which direction we’d flown in.

I had to say, while I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be kidnapped like this, I did get quite a view. The forested mountains stretched far—real far. And beyond them, I could make out the glittering ocean. If I’d had any doubts about whether or not we weren’t still in Japan after all, they were blown away by the sight. Of course, I couldn’t be certain, but I didn’t think Japan had any stretches of land like this left. At least not ones this large and uninterrupted. At most, I saw one settlement, and it certainly didn’t look like your typical Japanese hamlet or town from up here, not that I was an expert on such matters.

The higher we rose, the more I saw, and it took my breath away. Quite literally, because the air was getting thinner. I had to flatten my breathing to stop myself from getting dizzy, but it wasn’t too bad. I had to admit, I was also a little curious about tengu society, and whether it matched with the stories I’d learned in Japan. As an added bonus, this particular tengu was clearly familiar with my position and didn’t seem to have any immediate intentions of devouring me. I hoped that extended to the rest of his kin and would stay that way. Thusly reasoning with myself, I forced myself to stay calm and collected. There wasn’t much I could do in my current situation anyhow, at least if I didn’t want to plunge to my death.

“What do you want with me?” I asked eventually.

“You’re bait,” he answered simply. “The kitsune swore to protect you, so he will come for you.”