The thing is, the rain didn't stop like you would think about my sadness in a friendship in which the only one who speaks is me. That is to say that it kept falling like the sky itself was crying for someone who forgot how to ask for mercy that cannot help, but shut up when everything becomes numb in the name of love for what we would like to do in the name of love, living a life that breaks us inside. Basil sat against the alley wall the way a mother gives a child a hug, knees drawn up, black hair plastered to his forehead in wet ropes to pretend that he is sure of himself for the love that he never received, school uniform clinging like a second skin that didn't quite fit anymore that we cannot see in the secret of the soul. In this way, the cardboard beneath him had gone soft, turning to pulp under his weight, but he didn't move. Didn't care. Finally, sorrow has its own gravity; once you're sitting in it, standing up feels like treason or perhaps it was something that I came up with.
Hours blurred like maids in a haunted house where they feel peace instead of dear. Neon from the main street bled into the alley in red and blue smears that we can see in the coolness of a tear or even in glass of the soul, painting his mismatched eyes like they were already crying blood for what we should color. In retrospective of that, the black star-sun symbol under his shirt pulsed slow once every few minutes like a heart too tired to race but too stubborn to quit the most savage breathing of suffering.
Then she appeared.
Not with drama like my pain in the scream of my soul. Not with thunder or sacred-gear glow that burn and is pained. Just… there to heal someone. One moment the alley mouth was empty except for trash bags and puddles reflecting broken signs that we can have for the honest feeling that we have in the most spectacular way. I mean, at least, it would give me a breath. The next, a woman stood framed by the streetlight like she'd always belonged to the night and the night had finally come to collect her from what you may think.
Yasaka. A tall, naturally poised woman of about 170 cm with strong 49 cm shoulders, a 100 cm ribcage, a very full 161 cm bust carried high with balanced posture, a softly defined 84 cm waist, and wide stabilizing 133 cm hips supported by sturdy, elegant limbs, creating a harmonious, powerful, and believable hourglass silhouette despite the extreme proportions.
In real life she wouldn't be some cartoon fox-princess with oversized tails and shrine-maiden clothes that barely covered anything that we can wish to honor in the most enchanting way to honor the way that we can have to see what cannot be done. No. She'd be the kind of woman who makes your throat close just looking at hertall, maybe 6'0" without heels, but she wore low black boots that clicked soft on wet concrete like they were measuring how many steps until you begged to make you see that even a woman can make a human being flinch in the eyes of love and compassion. In truth, hair the color of aged bourbon falling straight to the small of her back to see what it must be done in what happens to the soul and the body, heavy and glossy even in the rain in which you may usually think that it is correct to do, strands sticking to the curve of her neck like they were painted there by someone who knew exactly where desire lives in the heart of who desires to live. Skin pale gold not tan, not whitemore like honey left too long in sunlight, warm enough to make you think of summer skin under fingers but cool enough to remind you foxes bite when cornered or perhaps it is maybe a tragedy to be in love with the way your life crumbles when someone loved betrays you in the cruellest way possible.
I mean, I could see her eyes were amber, almost yellow in the neon bleed like seeing the eyes in the morning to wake up on my bed, slit pupils so thin they looked like knife-cuts in gold to touch what's hidden between the shadow and the soul. Not cute anime exaggeration. Real. Predatory. The kind of eyes that see through clothes, through lies, through the bullshit armor you built after your mother got sliced in half and the portal swallowed you whole. That is to say that she was looking for something important. At least, that seemed to be something special for what it could be done to re-establish order in the wat we would live with pain. She wore a long black coat tailored, expensive, the kind that costs more than most people's rentopen at the front over a deep red dress that hugged every dangerous curve without apology to show up to beauty in the most mysterious way that we can see taking over the other life and death that we have in the country of sorrow and regret. Breasts full and high, waist narrow enough to make your hands itch the way my friends simp for girls, hips wide in that fertile-promise way that makes men stupid and women jealous to honor what it means to be alive. Thighs thick and strong under the fabric like goddesses, calves carved like they were made for running through forests or wrapping around whatever or whoevershe decided to claim in a breath.
But it was the tails that gave her away.
Nine of them. Not fluffy cartoon fluff. Real fur, thick and russet-red fading to white tips, dripping rain like they didn't care about getting wet in what we can see in the eternal rain of suffering or perhaps she was that suffering incarnate. They moved slow behind her independent, alive curling and uncurling like separate lovers deciding whether to caress what should be done or strangle. One brushed the alley wall and left a faint scorch mark, like foxfire remembered how to burn even when polite in the show that we can have in the darkness of a shadow.
She stopped three steps away to show up for fame and nothing. Looked down at him. Rain slid off her coat like it was afraid to touch her too long.
Yasaka: You sit like a wounded pup in my city. That is to say that your scent reached me three blocks away sorrow so thick it chokes the air, power so folded it hurts to breathe near you. Child of flux. Widower of endings. You smell like my forests after a firecharred but still growing. It is not like you can come back and tell them that you are right. Who hurt you enough to make even the rain pity you? I wanna know
Basil lifted his head slow. Rain ran into his eyes. He didn't blink.
Basil: That is to say that hurt isn't a who anymore that we cannot see for it is cries in my silence. At least, it should be something in what I desire to be true. It's a where. It's everywhere my mother isn't. It's in the portal that ate her blood in which you would love to see or perhaps not at all. It's in the hand I held when Death's daughter kissed me with rot. It's in the alley now because grandma decided high-school was better than letting me stay married to silence, taking over the piece of life I may want with mother again. You smell like fox and old forests and the kind of lust that doesn't ask permission to take what she wants.
Her tails curled tighter like a woman in heat. One slipped forward, brushed his cheek soft fur like velvet soaked in wildfire. It burned cold. He didn't flinch a second.
Yasaka: I came because your sorrow woke things in my shrine that have slept since the last war. Things that remember when logos walked among kami and broke them just to see if they could heal. You are no ordinary transfer student, Basil Pi. You carry infinity like a bruise. And bruises like yours… they spread. Well, anyway, you know that I need you the way we would love to spread the greatness of god and how we can be together.
She crouched. Coat parted. Red dress rode up just enough to show thigh muscle flexing under golden skin. Close enough now he could smell her not like those simp, but with grace and love rain, cedar incense, something feral and female that made his succubus bloodline stir lazy under his skin.
Yasaka: Stand up and show me your face carefully. That is to say that abandoned children belong in gutters only until someone stronger decides otherwise to take millions of approaches. My home is not far away the initiative that I can have . Dry clothes. Hot tea. A bed that doesn't smell like yesterday's garbage that we cannot have. And maybe maybe someone who knows what it feels like when the world takes your mother and leaves you the bill to continue living a life that does not ask you to be present but rather a life that hates you
Basil looked at her. Really looked. Yin-Yang eyes spinning once slow, tired taking in the curve of her lips like he was able to analyse her, the way her tails swayed like they were already deciding to wrap around him for others to reshape the trauma of his early life, the amber eyes that saw too much and still wanted more.
Basil: Hahaha… you talk like you want to fix me. That is to say that nothing fixes what I am. Thus one finds much more happiness in the world than sad eyes see, if one only reckons rightly, and does not forget all those moments of comfort in which every day is rich, even in the most harried of human lives But fine. Lead the way, fox-queen. Just know if you try to mother me, I'll fuck the pity right out of you. I've done worse to kinder women. Anyway, I am not serious about it. I gotta be so tired to say this.
Her laugh was low like my voice talking to the love of my life or perhaps she was never real. Just an illusion. Throaty. Rain slid down her throat like it was jealous.
Yasaka: Promises, promises. That is to say that I have raised a daughter who thinks she rules the world. I can handle one broken logos-boy who cries in alleys. Come. Before the rain decides you're better off drowned. I mean it, come boy… let me take care of you even better than your mother.
She offered her hand.
Living. Warm. Golden.
He took it.
The rain kept falling.
But now it fell on two people walking out of the alley together—one carrying sorrow like a crown, the other carrying nine tails like a promise.
O my sorrow so big it finally found fur to bury its face in.
The night wasn't over.
It was just getting started.