The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 4: Oyster

As it turned out, the clerk's bosses hadn't deemed me worthy of becoming a frog. Reincarnate Piri the former fox spirit as something with four legs and a brain? Heaven forbid!

Literally.

Thus, I spent my first life in Green Tier as...an oyster. Not a pearl oyster. Just a regular oyster in an oyster reef off the eastern coast of Serica. I didn't even end up on any human's plate. No, I was spawned; I drifted with the ocean currents until I came to what my oyster senses told me was an acceptable permanent home (on top of another oyster's shell); I glued myself to it; and then I lived on it for the remainder of my twenty-odd years. Needless to say, my list of deeds was very short. However, according to the clerk, even if I didn't benefit any humans directly, I did earn a token amount of positive karma for being an "ingeniator oecosystematis."

"Oysters are natural engineers of the ecosystem," he lectured as I pulsed in dismay at my half-page curriculum vitae. "One subgroup in the Bureau of Academia studies these creatures, which have a significant impact on their habitat...."

Funny, in my thousand years as a fox, I'd had a pretty significant impact on the world I inhabited, but no one had ever praised me for being an "engineer of the ecosystem."

So then why did I get negative karma for bringing down the Lang Dynasty? Didn't that make a significant impact on Serica? I'd feel pretty insulted if Heaven claimed it hadn't – although, to be honest, not as insulted as Cassius.

The clerk cut off with a sigh. "It did – "

In fact, at my trial, didn't Lady Fate claim that I had personally converted Serica into a "wasteland dominated by thieves, demons, and petty warlords"?

"She did. But that's not the type of impact the scholars were referring to when they coined the term." The clerk bit out his words, annoyed that I was taking the definition so literally. "They meant creatures that act in ways that increase the number of other types of plants, animals, etc. that can live in that environment."

I took a moment to parse that sentence. Then I protested, Hey, I did do that. Look at all the new types of humans that sprang up after the fall of the Lang Dynasty! Thieves –

"Piri," pointed out the clerk with some asperity, "if you check the annals of history, you will find that thieves have existed throughout human existence. I wouldn't call them new. Just more numerous now."

True, but I wasn't done. Petty warlords. Don't try to tell me those existed under the Lang Dynasty. After the founder had proclaimed himself Son of Heaven, he and his successors had made sure to execute anyone with delusions of regality. Mimicking the clerk's speech style, I declared, My actions have created a habitat where entire new breeds of warlords and petty kings can flourish!

"Uh...." He looked as if he wanted to disagree but couldn't.

And don't forget the demons! The Imperial Mages used to engage in practices of – what did the scholars call it again? – severe overhunting. They completely depleted the demonic population of Serica.

In his driest tone, the clerk said, "Demonic diversity was very much not a consideration when the Bureau of Academia defined the ingeniator oecosystematis."

Then what kind of diversity are we talking about here? I demanded. (I knew the answer, of course, but I wanted to force him to admit it. Yes, my soul was just that sweet and kind and pure and gentle. There might have been a reason I'd spent two centuries in White Tier.)

Releasing the same kind of long, weary sigh that Cassius' accountants gave when they heard I was throwing another party – er, hosting another state banquet for the more dissolute elements of noble society in order to impress Imperial might upon them and reform them into honest and upstanding subjects of the throne – the clerk massaged his temples. "In the Bureau of Academia's definition of diversity, there is the implicit assumption that it benefits humans, because human prosperity generates a more stable and higher-quality supply of ritual offerings to Heaven, which in turn benefits the gods and goddesses. Happy now?"