Kyungsoo was an eleven-year-old boy trying to make it through the boring winter sometime in the 17th century during the early Edo period.

There was nothing to do at home and it was too cold to go outside either. Kyungsoo wasn’t allowed to help out the women with household chores. He also wasn’t allowed to go out of the house and do the supposedly “manly” duties, because his father and older brothers deemed him too young for it yet.

Thus, Kyungsoo was stuck within the four walls of his house, not even allowed to go out and play with his friends. The only things he could mostly look forward to were mealtimes and that would constitute as his typical average day.

It was closer to the start of winter than it was to the start of spring, so Kyungsoo knew there was still a bit way to go until all the snow melted and it was warm enough for his mother to allow him to go out and play.

All Kyungsoo had to entertain himself during the long winter days was a ball that his father had gifted him from one of his trips.

Kyungsoo would toss the ball to a wall and wait for it to bounce back, as an attempt to pass the time.

The wall did reflect the ball back but it was hardly responsive, unlike if he was playing with someone else, so Kyungsoo still got easily bored. It didn’t help that he had a rather short attention span too, which was common for someone his age.

Kyungsoo was beyond bored and even though he knew that his mother would scold him for bothering her while she was busy doing something else, Kyungsoo still tried to find her and try his luck to ask her if she wanted to play along with him.

Kyungsoo carried the ball in his hands and left his room, sliding the paper doors open and running out into the courtyard in the dead of winter. It was a shortcut to the other part of the house, where his mother and sisters usually spent most of the day at.

The air was still and freezing outside. The trees in the courtyard were dead and bare in the middle of the winter. The snow was fresh on the ground and the large pond in the middle of the courtyard was frozen over.

Kyungsoo’s father was a retainer of the lord of their domain, which gave Kyungsoo and his family the luxury of living in a large house.

While scampering down the courtyard, Kyungsoo couldn’t help but pause midway when he saw the figure of a white fox with a red bib around its neck among the dead bushes. If it weren’t for the fox’s glistening amber eyes and its bib, Kyungsoo would have missed it in the all-white landscape too.

The fox was looking back at Kyungsoo, frozen and unmoving. Kyungsoo had never seen a white fox. He had only seen red foxes before.

Red foxes were more common in the area and white foxes were thought to be rare. While red foxes were associated with the kitsune, a mischievous and potentially malicious demon, the white fox was seen as the benevolent messenger of the goddess Inari, 

Kyungsoo thought that the fox might have someone taking care of it because of the red bib around its neck, thinking that it was maybe lost from home and in search of food.

Although he didn’t think that the fox was a messenger of Inari herself, Kyungsoo still felt in him to offer it food especially in the cold.

The atmosphere was quiet, muffled by the snow. Kyungsoo tried calling out for the fox, his voice being the only thing that was heard in the vicinity.

“Come here,” Kyungsoo cooed, reaching his hand out and slowly approaching the fox, “You must be cold, there’s no food here but I can give you some.”

The fox remained in its position as if it was simply observing him.

While trying to reach the fox, Kyungsoo tripped on a rock hidden beneath the snow, sending him falling face flat on the soft snow which cushioned his fall.

Kyungsoo was unharmed and quickly regained his composure to get back on his feet. Kyungsoo did unwillingly let go of the ball while he was falling, only to see that his ball had rolled out onto the middle of the frozen pond.

Forgetting the fox for a while, Kyungsoo stepped onto the ice to reach his ball. Kyungsoo remembered his mother warning him not to do such a thing but her advice was far in the back of his head at the time.

“Got it,” Kyungsoo spoke to himself, picking the ball up and then realizing that the sounds he was hearing were that of the ice cracking beneath him.

Kyungsoo was stunned in panic, especially when he saw the ice breaking fast. Before he could shout for help, the ice supporting his feet gave way and sent him plummeting into the depths of the icy water which was two to three times deeper than he was taller.

Kyungsoo knew how to swim but it was almost impossible for him to try to even float to the surface, whatnot with his thick clothes and the water weighing down on him. The cold water was dense too and Kyungsoo had all the air in him knocked out by the sudden fall.

Kyungsoo could see his ball floating at the surface, from beneath the water as he desperately struggled to reach the light above.

Before Kyungsoo was sinking even deeper, numb from the cold and from the lack of air, the water around him moved at the sudden splash of a person diving into the water. The next thing he knew, he was being dragged up to the surface to meet the even chillier air above.

Kyungsoo didn’t manage to see who it was, except that this person dressed in white and a glimpse of red. Kyungsoo just assumed it was his mother or one of his sisters who had saved him.

Kyungsoo was quickly rushed back to his room, where it was warmer. This person quickly looked around his room for anything they could use to cover him up.

Kyungsoo crept up to his sleeping mat on the floor and he managed to see that this person was not anyone familiar to him. He appeared to be a young man with dark hair, wearing a white formal kimono and had a red scarf around his neck that was also dripping wet, although seemingly unbothered by it.

“Take off your clothes, here,” The man in the white kimono instructed Kyungsoo, handing him some blankets and dry clothes he found in Kyungsoo’s closet.

Kyungsoo did as he was told. He didn’t question much because he knew he would be in trouble for this, and it was wise to listen to the next adult around, which happened to be this man in the white kimono.

The man in the white kimono rolled up his wet sleeves so they wouldn’t bother Kyungsoo, while he helped Kyungsoo out of the wet clothes and was trying to wrap Kyungsoo in the blankets.

“A-aren’t you cold?” Kyungsoo trembled, pulling the blankets closer to his person.

“I’m alright, worry about yourself,” The man in the white kimono then lit a candle in its holder, placing it close to Kyungsoo.

“Thank you for helping me,” Kyungsoo’s teeth chattered.

“Be careful next time, alright?” The man advised him, “When you feel all warmed up, go to your mother and tell her what happened. Don’t hide things like this from her.”

Kyungsoo nodded, still shivering.

The man then produced Kyungsoo’s ball from inside his kimono, handing it back to Kyungsoo, “Here you go. Now don’t do that again.”

“I will,” Kyungsoo obeyed, a bit happy that he got his ball back even though it seemed all trivial now.

Before Kyungsoo could look back up again to ask this man who he was, he vanished.

Kyungsoo later told his mother about what happened and she scolded him for trying to walk on a frozen pond despite her warnings. Kyungsoo told her about the man in the white kimono too but nobody in the house seemed to know what he was talking about.

Everyone assumed that Kyungsoo had just been hallucinating because he was drowning at the time.

While it had indeed started out as a boring winter day, it certainly turned out to not be the case whatnot with almost drowning in an icy pond and how this event would relate to Kyungsoo again in the future.

For the rest of the winter, Kyungsoo was not allowed to even step out in the courtyard as punishment. He did spend some of his days looking out at the courtyard through the windows, hoping to see the man in the white kimono so Kyungsoo could thank him.

Towards the end of winter, Kyungsoo did see the same white fox again in the courtyard. This time, he saw the fox looking back at him as if it was just there to observe Kyungsoo.

Seeing that, Kyungsoo went to the kitchen to get some food to leave for the fox. But when he returned with the dish of food, the fox was gone.

Kyungsoo never saw the man in the white kimono with the red scarf or the same white fox in his courtyard or anywhere else ever again. Although he eventually forgot how the man looked like, he never forgot what happened and the details of that day.

And most certainly, Kyungsoo never forgot how he owed this man his life for saving him.

Twelve years later, Kyungsoo was now a grown twenty-three-years old man. He was now a priest in training, who was about to become a fully-fledged priest soon.

As the youngest son with several older brothers who would inherit his father’s position and duties, Kyungsoo had to leave his home to find his own way in the world as was usual for a man of his time.

With his parent’s help, he was able to join the temple of Amaterasu, the sun goddess and primary deity of Japan. Kyungsoo was not a very religious person but he respected tradition and the spiritual belief of his people.

Because Kyungsoo was still a young priest, he was sent to live in and maintain a shrine dedicated to Amaterasu in the middle of a mountainous forest, as part of his initiation rites to become a fully-fledged priest.

Living in the middle of the forest, Kyungsoo had to go out to hunt for his own food with a bow and arrow. He mostly hunted boars, rabbits, deers, birds and sometimes even foxes for food.

When Kyungsoo was out hunting, he had to skip wearing the black ritualistic kimonos that the priests wore, and the headgear that came with it. He opted for more comfortable and duller clothes that helped him blend in with the surroundings.

It was to camouflage himself from the animals, and Kyungsoo would be as quiet as possible while he was out hunting so they wouldn’t know he was coming.

That day, Kyungsoo spotted a large bird perched on the tree branches. It was big enough to keep him fed for a few days and Kyungsoo was already innately planning on how to cook it, imagining the taste of it.

Hiding behind a bush from behind the bird’s view, Kyungsoo aimed his bow with an arrow ready to fire. Kyungsoo mouthed a silent prayer for the bird, just like he did before every kill. The bird, however, took off just a split second before Kyungsoo released his arrow.

The arrow failed to hit the target and curved back to the ground in its trajectory.

Disgruntled, Kyungsoo sighed and looked around the forest for any other choices he might have.

As luck would have it, Kyungsoo saw some bushes rustling and he made his way there, hoping that it was probably some small animal he could kill too.

When Kyungsoo came close, he parted through the bush with a knife ready in his hand.

There, between the bushes, he instead found a man in a white formal kimono with a red scarf on his neck, with a dead forest rat in his mouth and an arrow in his leg.

Kyungsoo was surprised at a few things. Some of the things include how he did not notice another person there, why there was another person there in the first place, and why this person had a dead rat in its mouth.

The man was groaning, whimpering on the ground with a bleeding leg because of an arrow that Kyungsoo knew to be his.

“I’m so sorry,” Kyungsoo quickly knelt on the ground, inspecting the man’s calf, “I didn’t know you were there. I was trying to hunt and I missed so the arrow must have hit you.”

The man dropped the rat from its mouth and looked back into Kyungsoo’s eyes, with eyes filled with pain and his voice croaking, “Please don’t kill me.”

“I won’t kill you,” Kyungsoo quickly replied, frantically deciding on what to do next, “I just want to help you. I have a place; I’ll take you back there and treat your wounds. It’s not safe out here.”

The man could only nod back in return, straining from the pain of the arrow wound.

This man appeared to be taller and bigger t