Foxfire || A Nine-tailed Fox Fantasy

🎐[1] Once upon a Time

The orange juice you had painfully squeezed out that morning flies out of your mouth, along with the rest of your breakfast. It sploshes all over the googly eyes, rubbery lips and furry white scales of the koi costume's headpiece. Your legs buckle and back slides against the wall behind you. Your arms wrap themselves around your tummy and curl inwards. The sting of the punch sends ripples through your being, that set your extremities on fire. The rubber-insulated costume resumes its work of slowly roasting you within it as your butt hits the ground.

The stench of vomit mixes with the spice laden smoke of the restaurant behind you. Golden stars dance in your periphery with the figure of a sneering goon. You catch the mascot's eyes staring at the side door of the kitchen, trying to call for help. The bitterness in your mouth is momentarily replaced with the saltiness of a tear.

You close your eyes and wish that you had never boarded a bullet train to Shikagami. The arguments you had won against your parents and grandparents, the dreams you had folded and kept hidden under the happy costume of a koi fish mascot. . . everything. . . hurt more than the punch. You can hear the loan shark telling his grunt to be gentler the next time and not downright murder people. You can almost hear the owner trying to explain why the mascot was apprehended so roughly in front of them to the elite customers.

The very thought of the disappointment on her face makes you want to throw yourself into the dumpsters. To give a kid fresh out of school a job in one of the top restaurants in Shikagami, she must've taken a huge risk. You swipe the bloody drool off your torn lips and wait. Your eyelids flutter open to greet the sunlight filtering through the gap between two moss-covered building walls. The boss is deeply engrossed in his Chirpfeed, with his eyes glued to the smartphone screen as he heard his secretary's report. You check yourself and wait.

"Hey daisy," starts the loan shark, dropping his phone into his shirt pocket. His gelled, black hair glinted like a polished shoe in the sun. The man alights from the bonnet of his sportscar and saunters forward. When his face came into focus, you can see that he resembles a weasel with his buckteeth. "Hey, daisy, look at me," he continued, snapping his fingers in front of you. You avoid looking into his eyes and stare at his shiny, grey coat buttons.

"When I tell you to look, you look," he says, pulling your face up by your cheeks. "Much better. Now, it's been a while since your lovely little manager has paid the loan and frankly, it's been scaring me lately. I'm the nicest moneylender in Shikagami, alright? I don't slice up my tardy customers and feed them to my starving Rottweilers. I don't drag them out of their houses on their kid's birthdays and bury them in wet cement."

You cover your lips as acid creeps up at the entrance of your mouth. Your teeth chew on air, summoning saliva back into your dry mouth. The trick works marvelously, and you feel the liquid slide back down your throat. Your ears decide to refocus on the loan shark's long ramble.

"-so, unless she wants to fish her mascot's corpse out of the Selene, she better pay up her fifth installment. We're done here. Rosario, get the car!"

The goon who had punched you opens the front door out for the loan shark. You wait as the car pulls out of the alley, and speeds down the street. You wait for your cramped up legs to wake up and watch a tortoiseshell dive into one of the three dumpsters. The cat belongs to one of the artists, or artistes as they style themselves in their fancy pamphlets in the studio across the road. You inhale with your nose and exhale a puff of white breath through your mouth. Despite the toasty insides of the costume, you can feel the low temperature nipping the tips of your ears and nose.