The room was dark and cold just as the chain around her neck. Its weight was heavy on her thin bones. It had been too long since she had not been allowed to change back to her original form, this one was too defenceless for her. No claws to attack, no fur to keep her warm, the only thing that had stayed was her nocturnal vision. Not that there was anything to see in this cell. 

            The girl didn’t know why she was kept here. She didn’t even really know what her own nature was. All she had were vague certainties, things that popped into her mind instinctively as if they were truths she had known all along. She wasn’t really human. She had been brought back to life by the Moon. She needed to find a family to survive. 

            She had found people who were happy to find her. But they were not a family. They were linked to the Moon too, but not in a good way. They had been cursed. They found her when she was roaming in her original form and brought her to their lair where they chained her and forced her to take human form. Something about it being easier to drink her blood. 

            Vampires. The word appeared in her mind. Her blood was special to them, it carried more magic, more strength. They thought they needed it. 

            Screams broke out outside her cell, quickly hushed by powerful punches that sent people flying against the walls. She heard their grunts and their bodies falling on the ground with a thump. She could hear the voices of the attackers muffled by the thick walls around her.

“You, take those traitors back to the Lodge. You, stay with me to search the place, this can’t be everything.”

            Careful steps stomped in the hall of the empty warehouse. Things were being opened and broken, pieces of metal grated against each other in an unpleasantly loud noise. The girl was scared. Who were those people? What would they do if they found her? What would she do if they didn’t? 

            The door of her cell was being forced. It fell out of its hinges with a clang that resonated in the whole building and made the floor tremble. If the chain wasn’t there, the girl would have turned into her animal form and attacked immediately. But all she could do was stare with the fierce intensity of a beast in a cage. 

            An auburn woman stepped in cautiously. In the silence that succeeded the chaos she had heard the grating of a chain on the concrete ground. Her red eyes scanned the room and landed on a mortifyingly skinny girl. 

“By the Moon and Sun, what do we have here?”

***

“Sua? Why is there a fox in your apartment?”

            Yoohyeon’s voice resonated from the living room where a young fox was hidden under the couch. The young woman had walked in to many a strange thing in this place, but none as strange as this. 

“It’s complicated! Please just wait and don’t scare her off. I’m almost done.”

            Sua’s voice had come from her room where she was busying herself, searching through her stuff, making everything rustling and clinging. Yoohyeon nodded pensively, her eyes still on the fox. She crouched to get a closer look at the wild animal snarling at her with its ears flattened on its head. It was a rare sight for her, usually children of the Sun  got along well with creatures from the wild.

“Hello there!” The slit pupils of the fox stared at her. “Hmm… you’re not quite what you seem, are you?”

            She heard a door opening and hurried footsteps coming in. Before Sua could try to explain anything, her friend interrupted her.

“Sua, why is there a kitsune in your living room?”

            The newcomer let out a deep sigh and passed a hand in her hair with an embarrassed look on her face. She hadn’t really thought that through when she brought back the girl she found. In her defence she wasn’t expecting her to turn into a fox right away, never to take her human form again. 

“I’ll explain, but first let me try to get her out of there.”

            Yoohyeon stood up and retreated to let Bora deal with whatever was going on. Her friend sat with her legs crossed in front of the sofa and called with a soft voice.

“Gahyeon, it’s ok. She’s a friend. You can come out.”

            She extended her two hands in the direction of the fox who seemed less distressed now that it was seeing a familiar face. It walked slowly out of its hiding place, one careful step after the other, stopped for a good minute to watch in Yoohyeon’s direction and when it confirmed there was no sudden movement coming from her, rushed and curled on Bora’s lap.

“Explanation, please?” Yoohyeon asked with a note of impatience. 

            Sua knew she was taking the matter way more seriously than what she led her to think. Vampires were always under scrutiny and just because she was friends with Yoohyeon didn’t mean she could escape that. The apparition of a kitsune was one thing, the fact that it was being kept by a blood er was another. There would be questions and suppositions if things weren’t scrupulously taken care of. 

“We raided the place of a small group of anarchists two weeks ago. They were no big deal really. Just a bunch of young vampires who thought they could lift the curse of the Moon with some meagre power and an army.” Sua shook her head with an exasperated smile. Never, in the five hundred years of her existence, had it ceased to be funny. As if the Moon would care about those clowns? But she was being carried away. “Anyway, we got them under custody. Everything was fine until we explored their headquarters and that’s when we found this little one.” She petted the fox between the ears.

“How the hell did they get their hands on her?”

“I know! That was exactly my reaction. It seems they were sequestering her and drank her blood to acquire more strength. I’ve interrogated them to try and see how they found her. Apparently she was wandering alone in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. A young kitsune, alone and lost, she was easy to kidnap.”

            Yoohyeon sat next to her friend and studied the fox more carefully. Now that she had the whole picture, her eyes had softened. Gahyeon only had one tail, which meant she was less than a hundred years old. For her kind, this was really young. 

“It’s a good thing you found her. Has she transformed yet?”

“I’ve seen her human form once, but she doesn’t like it much. I think that’s the form they forced her to take to drink her blood.”

“So I’m guessing she doesn’t talk either.”

“Not really. She’s mostly feral. I’m the one who gave her her name, she seems to like it.”

“You know how important she is, right?”

            Bora knew. Kitsunes were supposed to be almost extinct. Most of them had been hunted down and the others had retreated to the Spirits World. Those who stayed were believed to be no younger than four hundred years and no new one had appeared since. The reason for that was that kitsunes could only be brought to life by the Moon itself. 

            It was believed that once, the sphere of the night took pity on a fox who had been killed by humans. Instead of guiding its soul to the Spirits World, the moonlight led it back to the shore of the living under a new form. Each new kitsune was the spirit of a fox who had been guided back to this plan of existence. However, it seemed that the Moon had heard the pleas of her children and had stopped giving new birth to those souls out of concern for their safety. They were in the age of Men after all. 

“I suppose this means I can’t keep her here forever.”

“I mean, not that I don’t trust you, but I think it would be better for her to be with one of her kind.”

“How do we find one? There are no kitsunes in Paris, let alone in France. I can try to get in contact with other vampires across Europe to see if they know something…”

“Don’t worry, I got this”, Yoohyeon interrupted with a big grin on her face that Sua always found suspicious. She took a few minutes to exchange text messages, and then looked back at her friend with a satisfied look. “By the way, do you speak Japanese?”

***

            Why was it always her that Yoohyeon sent on errands like this? At some point Sua had to wonder. Even if, in this particular case, she preferred to be the one in charge. She wasn’t going to let just anyone take Gahyeon away. Not to mention that the young kitsune seemed to trust her enough to travel with her in a cat carrier. 

            Yoohyeon had come up with everything. She had placed a glamour on the carrier to give to anyone inside the appearance of a cat. Sua was able to check at the airport without any worry and had embarked for Tokyo to meet with one of the last known kitsunes left. 

            Just thinking about Gahyeon being left alone in the plane’s hold prevented the vampire from getting any sleep during the twelve-hour flight. Needless to say that when she finally got out of the airport and walked outside, her only brain cell left was focused exclusively on finding that Han Dong woman that Yoohyeon asked her to meet so that she could finally go to sleep. 

“Kim Sua?”

            She turned to meet with a pair of eyes staring at her like two black pearls glimmering under the street lamps. 

“And you would be Han Dong?”

The woman nodded. “You must be exhausted, let me help you with your luggage while we go to my car.”

            She immediately extended a hand to take the cat carrier where Gahyeon was, but before she could reach it, Sua retracted and gave her suitcase instead. It was an act that surprised both of them. The vampire hadn’t any strength left to really think about what she was doing. Her body reacted on instinct. The other woman paused for half a second but chose not to comment on that. She took the suitcase and made it roll behind her until they reached the car park. 

            The ride was awfully silent. Sua had refused once again to let go of the carrier and had it on her lap. She could feel that Gahyeon was panicking inside. So much had happened to her in so little time and she had spent so many hours alone in the dark. The experience probably brought back memories from when she was captive. The Moon knew what she could be thinking after that. Sua didn’t want her to believe she was being sold to be used again. 

“It’s ok Gahyeon. I’ll stay with you, don’t worry.”

            The fox inside turned to see through the bars. Her amber eyes shone in the obscurity with a spark of fear caught in them. Sua’s heart sank, regretting that there wasn’t anything to do until they reached their destination. 

“It’s normal to feel nervous.”

            The vampire cast her gaze to the driver’s seat, not sure if Han Dong was talking about her or about Gahyeon.  

“She seems fragile and defenceless right now and she has no experience with human contact other than vampires who drank her blood.”

“I didn’t…”

“I know. She has chosen you as her guardian.”

“What?”

            Han Dong’s eyes flickered from the road to the passenger seat and back to the road again. She was weighing whether it was worth explaining or not at the moment. She reached her answer quickly. 

“We’re almost there.”

            The woman with orange hair cut short and remained silent until the car was parked. Sua stared at her with wide dumbfounded eyes, baffled by the way she was being left on such an important piece of information. Just because she didn’t know everything about kitsunes didn’t mean she couldn’t understand the responsibility implied by the use of the word guardian. 

            Her host invited her into her house. She asked her to remove her shoes and gave her guest slippers before leading her to the main room where she finally asked her to open the cat carrier. 

            As soon as Sua did that, an orange tornado flashed through the opening and bolted through the room. Gahyeon looked at the two women who brought her there with her fur bristled on her arched back. Sua had only seen her growl at her once when she was in that cell. Looking at her like that again felt like all the progress they had made had just crumbled in that twelve-hour flight. 

“Gahyeon…”

“It’s ok.” Dong put a firm hand on her shoulder and took the situation in her hands. “Gahyeon, I am Han Dong. I’m a kitsune like you and this is my home and also yours from now on. We’re going to leave you alone for a while. You’re free to explore everything. If you want, you can find us upstairs.”

            The fox watched them leave the room cautiously without moving. Han Dong led Sua upstairs with her luggage and explained where the different rooms were. She had quite a lot of space for someone who was living near Tokyo’s centre. Sua heard her talk about her daughter’s former room, to which were added Dong’s own room and one guest room that was converted into another living room when it wasn’t used, with a TV, a couch and different figures and plushes that probably belonged to Dong’s daughter when she was younger. 

“You’ll be staying here for tonight,” the host explained.

            It might have been true that when they had landed Sua wanted nothing more than to sleep, but since then it had become the last thing she cared about. Forgetting even her manners, she answered in an irritated tone. 

“Really? That’s all? We’re just leaving Gahyeon on her own.”

            Han Dong pierced through her with her eyes, a little annoyed but still relatively calm. 

“She just needs to get a better idea of her surroundings. Once she has spotted all the places where she can safely hide, she’ll come to find you again.”

“Because I’m her guardian,” Sua concluded on her own without needing to ask.

“Exactly. You don’t let yourself be fazed, I see.”

“And I can tell you don’t let yourself give answers.”

            Han Dong smirked. It had been a while since she had had to deal with someone with such a hot and bright temper. It was annoying, but it was also a little bit fun to play with her nerves. She mused for a while, trying to plan the most entertaining way to tell her guest everything she needed to know. 

“Gahyeon …  it’s a beautiful name. Did you give it to her?”

            Sua chose to ignore the fact that she was, yet again, faced with a question and answered dryly. 

“I did.”

“A name is something really important. It contains everything: our past, our present, our future.” Dong paused to emphasise that part. “The act of naming is like a bond. It ties you to that person and sometimes it’s hard to get rid of that connection. You brought her under your roof and you gave her a name, which means that to her you are family. It’s really important for kitsunes to have one, it’s one of our primary instincts.”

            It took a while for the information to sink in. Family. Sua wasn’t familiar with the concept. She had one, five hundred years ago, but it didn’t end well with them. One could argue she had a found family back in Paris, somewhere she could belong to, but lately she wasn’t sure if she wanted for things to stay like that. Deep down she was craving for change. And now, a new bond was forced upon her. Or was it really? She was the one who refused to let someone else take care of Gahyeon at the airport.

“I’m… her family?”

            She had meant it as a statement but it had sounded more like a question. Han Dong found that reaction cute. 

“Huh-uh. Which brings me to my second point: you will have to stay here for a while.”

            Sua had not really planned for that. But she suspected Yoohyeon had. That was why her friend insisted that she should buy her ticket back later instead of planning the whole trip in advance. “You haven’t been in Tokyo for a while, you can do a little tourism for a few days and come back when you feel like it.” That tricky fae had seen this coming. Or worse: she had planned it in advance with Han Dong.

            It didn’t sound that bad actually. Sua did like Tokyo. At least she really liked it two hundred years ago when neons and sky-scrapers weren’t a thing, but still, it was a good opportunity to catch up. What she didn’t like was being forced into something. 

“Can’t I just go back to Paris with her? It’s where she was born and I have more bearings there.”

            Han Dong expected that question. It was rational, to a degree. 

“Do you know how to help her control her shapeshifting ability?”

“I don’t.”

“Do you know what kind of magic kitsunes wield?”

Sua didn’t even know they could wield magic. 

“I don’t.”

“Do you…”

“Ok, fine, I get it.” The vampire waved away the question before she could make herself look even more embarrassing. “I’ll stay here.”

“You’re making the right call.”

            Suddenly, they heard a loud high-pitched bark coming from downstairs. Han Dong knew perfectly to whom it was addressed. 

“Let’s see what Gahyeon’s at.”

            When they went back downstairs they found most of the objects that were on the shelves lying on the floor. A discovery that was to be expected but some movements coming from the laundry room forced them to keep away from the mess for now and go to see what was going on. The small fox was trapped in the washing machine and was making the tub turn while trying to get out but couldn’t find steady footing to jump out. 

            She knew she shouldn’t, but Sua was laughing. Gahyeon answered with a loud, plaintive bark and so the vampire finally went to the machine to help her out.

“Now, now, I’m coming. It’s ok. You made a complete mess out of the house. I hope you realise you should clean after that.”

“I’ll handle it with her. You can go rest.”

            Han Dong came to Gahyeon’s rescue. The offer was very tempting. Sua’s last nerves were about to break and she felt chills of exhaustion running through her. Still, this wasn’t really polite to just leave her host like that. She stared, silently asking if this was ok.

“It’s fine, I haven’t introduced myself properly yet.” 

            But the vampire clearly remembered that she had presented herself earlier. She laid her tired eyes on Han Dong until her last two brain cells made the effort to connect. She meant her fox form. Sua kinda wanted to stay just to see what it looked like but she knew it was extremely rude to do so. For shapeshifters, their alternate forms were part of themselves, raw and sincere. Not everyone outside their kind was allowed to see them as it was considered an ultimate act of trust. For kitsunes perhaps more than for werewolves as their fox form was actually their original nature. 

            Sua thanked her for everything and went back to her new room to catch the sleep she was longing for. In the morning, everything in the living room would be put back in place and she could learn how to help Gahyeon grow into a fully-fledged kitsune. 

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Hi! Welcome to this Urban Fantasy au, if you want to know more about some characters I invite you to read Under the Neon Lights and City of Lights in the same series. But don't worry you don't need them to follow this story. 

I hope you'll like what I came up with. Don't hestitate to leave your thoughts in the comments if you do. 

Bye!