Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 1: Great Spirit of Tokyo
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Part 1: Night of the Divine Possession
Chapter 6: Chance Encounter
The front door flew open. "I'm home, Yuka!" Yoichiro called out cheerfully to his younger sister.
"Hi!" Yukari called back. She came running to the door dressed in a kimono with a feathered arrow pattern. "Welcome home."
Yoichiro grinned and then tossed her a cloth bundle. She caught it deftly, and then she smelled it. "Ew! Smells like man musk." She made a face.
"Of course it does. I am a man, after all. Anyway, please wash it for me. I had to stay at the office for three days straight."
"What? That's crazy!" Yukari said, her eyes wide.
Yoichiro walked down the hallway to his own room and slid the door shut with a snap. After making sure he was alone, Yoichiro sighed, then threw himself onto the rice mat floor, lying spread-eagled.
A light shone on his writing desk. It was a Western-style lamp that ran on electricity. Yukari lit it every night. She kept his room clean and tidy so that her brother wouldn't have to worry about it when he came home.
He glanced at the closet. The sun-dried, plump futon was neatly folded and stored inside.
In front of others, he was a brother who deliberately imposed unreasonable demands on his sister in a teasing kind of way. He pretended to make things difficult for her to make her laugh.
Behind closed doors, Yoichiro was absolutely terrified of her. The reason why was obvious, but he never looked closely at that reason. His own mind defended itself against guilt and blame.
Yukari was an innocent young girl, but there was something strange about her innocence. She'd been temperamental since toddlerhood. People called her sensitive. She'd had so many fits that their father had worried and called a healer to the house to perform a prayer to seal away irritable spirits. Yoichiro still remembered that prayer--and his sister's fits.
"Sealing away irritable spirits," Yoichiro muttered. "That's a fine way to put it. It was actually an exorcism. He thought she was possessed by a fox spirit."
Yoichiro was breathing heavily. He shifted on the floor so that his back faced the doors of his room. His shoulders trembled as he hunched in on himself. Why was he so agitated when he was with his younger sister? He could point to a reason, but he didn't understand it. He held himself responsible for his sister's sensitivity, her fits in childhood, and their awkward relationship now.
He understood that memories from childhood could be unreliable, but some of his memories were trauma-etched and crystal clear: he didn't think he was remembering those wrong. Those memories instilled both obsession and terrible fear within him.
Yoichiro curled up and tried to sleep in the yellow glow of the lamp.
***
Yukari spread out the large cloth bundle she'd been given with a sigh.
Her mother passed by her and chuckled. She was carrying a tea tray.
"Why are you laughing?" Yukari asked, pouting. "I'm contemplating a strike. I don't want to do the laundry anymore."
Her mother covered her mouth with her hand, hiding her smile behind her sleeve.
“But Yukari, you’re the one who volunteered, aren’t you? You said, ‘I’ll wash Yoichiro’s dirty laundry.’”
The young girl puffed out her cheeks and shook her sleeves in protest. “But Mother, it’s always like this! I can’t keep up with it. It's like being in prison.”
Her mother quirked an eyebrow. "How so?"
"I can't go anywhere until my chores are done."
Her mother laughed.
Yukari was always sweet and cheerful. It was hard to believe that she suffered from a chronic illness that often caused her to fall into a delirious state. She'd always been a bright student and was a good child when she wasn't ill. Within the past year, bicycles had finally become affordable, so she'd begged her father to buy her one. Every morning, she would ride to the girls’ school with a yellow ribbon tied to her handlebars fluttering in the wind. She was a brave little lady.
Yukari carefully smoothed out each piece of laundry and stacked them on the rice mat floor. Near the bottom, she found a pair of white gloves rolled up. When she gently unfolded the wrinkled cloth, she noticed a pattern dyed in black ink.
“Oh my, what could this be?”
It was a star shape with five extended points—a pentagram.
“A charm? What has my brother been doing?” Yukari giggled and then placed the gloves on the pile along with the length of purple cloth that the clothes had been wrapped in. It was already ten o'clock in the evening. It was spring, but the air was chilly at this hour.
Yukari stood up and left the living room, sliding the door shut behind her. The moon shining over the courtyard outside was clear and bright.
Translator's Note
The kitsune 狐 in popular Japanese folklore, is a fox or fox spirit which possesses the supernatural ability to shapeshift or bewitch other life forms. Fox spirits are traditionally mischievous and occasionally malevolent.
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