by Alexandra Haverská

The piece never grew old to Kaitō.

He anxiously fingered the rightmost lever of his brand-new invention, the “Motion Picture Extra Effects Control Panel,” watching the last visitors settle in. He glimpsed the familiar faces of professor Yui from Kwansei Gakuin College and Mr. Hunter, a well-known local arts patron from Shioya, in the prominent seats with lovely geisha escorts. Everyone who was anybody in this town was here. He held his breath for a heartbeat or two and pulled the lever. A clockwork piano in the movie room down below began a slow, twinkling melody, matching in skill a living musician. The red velvet curtains split open, filling the scene with the parted lips of diva Ichikiku, eternally caught by the silver screen in her enigmatic longing. Kaitō sighed admiringly. In the intimacy of his projecting cabin he marveled at “100-Year-Love” the same as he did the first time, even now at the jubilee 100^th screening.

Tonight was his to make Ichikiku’s beauty shine more than ever.

Under Kaitō’s nimble fingers, the buttons and levers were adding magic to the art. He made lights flash and dance across the room when Ichikiku, as a young courtesan, watched fireflies on a secret outing with her beau. People wondered. And they were awed when Kaitō’s Effect Board made light perfume sprayed into the air in an all-senses experience for the pleasures of the connoisseur audience ever-hungry for novelty.

It was all Kaitō’s idea. He wanted to make the jubilee 100^th screening of “100-Year-Love” a sensation of Hiōgo’s Minatogawa-Shinkaichi theater district. He was lucky that the patron gave him a free hand and Kaitō worked til dawn every day for two months to bring this first vision to life, neglecting everything else but lightning incense to Makiko’s tablet.

A lonely tune heralded the parting of the star couple: Ichikiku’s beau, who has now become an engineer, was to be transferred to Nagasaki, halfway across the country. Kaitō’s memory flashed back to the ominous day he himself told his wife Makiko he was to leave her with his mother and newborn daughter in Yato and move for work to Ōtsu. It was only on the other side of the Ōmi province, but back then it felt like the whole world apart.

The Extra Effects were the beginning of endless possibilities; more ideas were already taking shape on Kaitō’s atelier table. If this succeeds, maybe, one day, he could shake the new floating world of cinema itself with his inventions.

With more levers pulled, a rolling thunder filled the theater and echoed from all directions at once. On the screen, feverish Ichikiku wrote in trembling hand to her beau, pleading him to come see her. Kaitō’s stomach shrunk. When he came back to Yato, Makiko was no more.

The piano’s cheerful voice, in sharp contrast to Kaitō’s own memories, brought over the finale. Ichikiku, hand in hand with her beau who had finally paid off her debt to the okiya and made her free to marry, strolled in perfect harmony along the shores of lake Yogo, its picturesque mirror-like waters reflected the heavens. Lake Yogo, a place of fulfilled desires. Lake Yogo, where Kaitō’s home village of Yato laid, crouched in between the sweet waters and a steep mountain circle. Lake Yogo that held the memory of Kaitō’s past happiness and present void.
“Oh, look, honey, a foxes’ wedding!”Ichikiku mouthed silently from the screen and pointed her hand delicately at the rainbow blooming across the gray sky.

Kaitō’s heart skipped a beat, as always, during that scene. Ichikiku looked so much like his late wife in that moment, he did not remember pulling the last lever. Seconds later, a light spree descended from the ceiling. Just little enough not to ruin the exquisite make-up of the present geishas. Kaitō saw Mr. Hunter to gallantly shelter his escort’s hair with his own haori sleeve.

The audience clapped enthusiastically. The journalists in the front row typed and typed into their portable pads. The curtain fell to a long-lasting applause.

Kaitō gleamed in his solitude.

On his way from the movie theater, Kaitō offered his daily prayer to Inari at a miniature jinja perched on the side-wall of Yoshi-no-Mado – the most famous brothel in Shinkaichi – that took pride in bringing the pleasures of Edo itself down to the twin ports of Hiōgo and Kōbe.

Kaitō’s ceremonial claps drowned in the overwhelming clack-clack sounds of wooden geta sandals and the occasional hum of a diesel engine – the district was coming to life with workers and customers alike. The first airings on Minatogawa Street may have been over, but the brothels and tearooms of Shinkaichi were just about to begin the night.

As always, Kaitō prayed for his daughter. Little Aiko was the first and only child Makiko had given him. She stayed back with Kaitō’s mother and older brother Itsuki in Yato. He prayed for them too. And he prayed for success so he could afford to spare for a New Year train ticket home.

He bowed for the last time and departed.

The enigmatic red paper lanterns of Chinese ramen diners – the latest novelty from Shanghai – shone eerily through the wall of thin lazy drops of the summer rain when Kaitō plowed through the crowds, mono-cycles, automobiles and rickshaws. Shinkaichi came to life quickly and now buzzed with noise and color. He etched his way through a queue of casino customers waiting for admittance, left from the main street into a cozy side-alley, and lifted a sun-bleached blue curtain. He was greeted by the familiar smells of freshly cooked rice, hot broth and noodles with a tiny hint of chopped scallion. He counted out a handful of sen coins into an ordering machine, took out his order slip and tapped it on the counter: “A double kitsune udon, oba-chan, if you please,” said Kaitō, smiling.

“A, Kaitō-kun, long time no see,” greeted him the landlady.

He paused and rummaged in his purse again. “Oh, and I’ll get a nigiri to come with,” he added, heading back to the machine in the corner.

“Ah, no, no, it’s OK,” she stopped him. “On the house, Kaitō-kun. You look starved, you must eat, not just work, you know? Here, have two, we must get you back in shape!” She laughed heartily and slid two fresh sesame-sprinkled rice triangles in front of Kaitō.

“Like that, I’ll get as round as a butaman dumpling, oba-chan,” he laughed back. “You’re too kind. As ever,” he added.

“You shine today, Kaitō-kun. Don’t tell me, it’s the performance, it was a success, I know, people talk about it all over town,” she said.

“Already?” mused Kaitō.

“Yes, and they will, believe me. I think, Kaitō-sama, you should do more with that clever head of yours, if I can say so,” she said in a serious tone.

“Well, maybe, oba-chan, I already am,” he said shyly and dug back into his udon. He felt his excitement rising back again – he had a long night yet in front of him.

Desiring to give back on his good fortune, Kaitō first went back to the Inari’s shrine with one of the nigiri safely nested up in his sleeve. For the second time that night, he took out incense from the box under the altar and lit it from the warm cinders. He noticed one of the white ceramic foxes sitting on the sides of the altar had been knocked over and he gently put it back up.

“It looks like you’d use some sustenance too, Inari-sama. Here, go-yukkuri dōzo,” he said gingerly in guise of an offering as he placed the nigiri on the altar’s corner. Inari was not a kami of the offending type, on the contrary. To Kaitō, the white fox kami had always been like an invisible childhood friend.

Done with his prayer, he turned and beheld a beautiful lady queuing in front of the jinja.

“Ichikiku-sama!” he wanted to blurt but then he looked again. Even though she wore the elaborate yoko hyōgohairstyle of a high-ranking courtesan like Ichikiku in the movie, and had a similar dreamy attitude to her, she was a stranger to Kaitō. That itself was queer as he could swear he knew the Shinkaichi ladies of all standing better than any patron, because it was he who always fixed their newest clockwork trinkets. Mayhaps she was a new arrival to Yoshi-no-Mado.

“Oh, sumimasen,” he finally sprang sideways to make way for her.  

She turned towards him and winked. Now he was certain, she must have been a girl from Yoshi. He imagined that there was a huge scandal over her in the capital – a duel or a suicide – and she had to flee to a place like Shinkaichi… so otherworldly she was. He stood there, at the entrance, charmed.

“Thank you,” she mouthed silently and winked again. Kaitō shivered. The lady fluttered the tip of her exquisite long kimono sleeve on his hand in passing as she reached up to her hair to settle a wayward pin. Her nails were long and sharp, garnished in gold and crimson.

Kaitō blinked. And in that blink, she was gone.

The jinja was empty.

Kaitō focused. There was no sign of her in the rustle of the street, either. But the nigiri triangle had vanished from the altar. Kaitō shivered once more.

She was no courtesan, but a yōkai. It was summer, after all; the time when spirits roamed at large.

I might be really in luck, he thought.

The climb up to his apartment-atelier atop of Minatogawa’s First Automated Tea Roastery saw Kaitō restless and motivated despite the tiredness creeping along the edges. He filled up a well-loved iron teapot with leaves delivered onto his door the last morning – payment extra from the owner for servicing the firm’s machines – and soon enough he was rewarded with the homely smell of a fresh hōjicha brew. He relished the tea, tinkering with a standing clock here and a neighbor’s steam kettle there, until the pile of shame on the table somewhat cleared out.

Only then, Kaitō allowed himself to take out a filigree fox he had been neglecting for the past two months. It was minuscule, barely the size of a songbird, with delicate floral wires forming its seemingly brittle body. He added some final touches and began polishing it. He made the fox for Aiko.

After two more full tea kettles, the fox was shining. His daughter would surely love it.

Kaitō, excited and nervous, turned a silvery key beneath the creature’s back leg and the fox sprang to life. It paced here and there along the table, then paused and wiggled its tail. Kaitō applauded to it gingerly, already imagining Aiko’s joyful smile.

He lifted the fox up and put a finger to his mouth as if he was about the tell a secret, fully absorbed in his mock performance. He pressed a miniature lever on the fox’s chest.

“Hello, Aiko, nice to meet you,” he said to the fox up close. The creature shrugged and that was it. Kaitō’s happiness froze. He clicked the lever back and forth several times. Nothing.

“No, please, I need you to talk,” he begged the creature.

Anyone could make a clockwork toy walk. But Kaitō wanted it to be able to reproduce its owner’s voice. That was supposed to be his masterpiece. A contraption that registered sound. Not like a clockwork piano that played music from pre-fabricated bobbins, but a whole new technology, small enough to fit in a camera. To have the audience hear Ichikiku’s voice from the screen forever and ever.

Kaitō sighed, it was back to his set of tiny screws. He knew perseverance paid off in his craft. He must not give into the disappointment.

The night grew old and weary, but Kaitō toiled incessantly, tinkering with the complex mechanism hidden in the fox’s mouth. His fingers ached, his eyelids weighed heavy, but he could not give up now. He was close, he knew it.

At some moment, he dozed off and dreamed strange, feverish half-dreams. The waters of lake Yogo shimmering under his gaze, dark clouds descending from the mountain ring about and a woman’s laughter when she exclaimed: ‘Oh, look, honey, a foxes’ wedding!’ When he turned towards her, he saw that he was alone… with that, Kaitō woke up.

He boiled two bowls worth of rice, one for himself and one for Makiko. “I know, darling, I must eat,” he said to the impassible tablet. “I just can’t make it as good as you used to, I’m sorry.” He stuck a pair of chopsticks into Makiko’s rice and ate his in silence.

The workers at the roastery had begun their early-morning shift by the time he had finished his adjustments and re-assembled the fox again.

“Jya, little fox. It’s your turn now,” he said.

“Hello, Aiko, nice to meet you,”came a response in a slightly mechanical version of Kaitō’s voice.

A single tear sparkled in the corner of Kaitō’s eye.

“Don’t cry, Kaitō-sama, onegai,” said a velvety woman’s voice.

Kaitō blinked. And in that blink, the fox vanished.

In her place, there was a woman of rare beauty. Her naked skin was covered in filigree irezumi tattoos sprouting from a white fox centerpiece in between the shoulder blades. Exquisite metallic ink spirals coiled down her porcelain limbs.

“Ichikiku?” he mused, convinced he was dreaming again from exhaustion.

“Yes, I’m her. And more,” she answered mysteriously.

Kaitō pinched himself painfully. The woman was still there.

“What are you then?” He asked, not knowing what else to say.

“I’m yours,” she said.

“How?”

“I’m the fox, you silly!” She teased him.

“I – I don’t understand,” he said.

“You should, Kaitō-sama. You met one of my sisters at the jinja earlier,” she answered. Seeing his befuddled expression, she laughed and the sound was full of silvery jingle. “Jya, let me help you a bit. By accident, I was trapped in the silver of the screen. I lived a hundred years a hundred times with you always by my side until you’d freed me. So I’m yours,” she said.

“But, but, it was just a story!” he cried out.

“Look into my eyes,” she said.

And Kaitō looked. And he saw. He saw Makiko. He saw Ichikiku as well, her face blending together with the face of his late wife. And he saw the she-yōkai from earlier, all three women at once in the traits of the one in front of him. It was all strangely coming together. According to legends, a fox yōkai could take on a human form if she lived for a hundred years, and even become fully human if she found someone to love her indiscriminately.

“Look more, Kaitō-sama,” she urged.

And he beheld the clouds dancing in reflection of the mirror lake of Yogo, the lake of wishes and fulfilled desires. It was all there, in the eyes of the she-fox.

“You see now, honey? Bring me home. I yearn to get to know our Aiko.”

A Czech speculative fiction writer of German origin living in Prague, a city that breathes the fantastic. Her English fiction recently appeared in the Troopers, the long con magazine, Constraint 280 and From the Ashes: An Anthology of Elemental Urban Fantasy for Burn Survivors (Aurelia Leo). She has stories forthcoming in Space Squid and in Daily Flights of Fantasy (Iron Faerie Publishing).