Trial Of Yoshimune

Chapter 8. Kazuko

It started from the corrupted wolf. It had attacked them out of nowhere and killed everything from its path. A young kitsune trembled as she felt how her energy was slowly starting to drain out of her body. She'd ran nearly a week now. The horrors she'd seen.... They haunted her. Bodies of wolves, foxes and dogs, scattered about. Like they'd been nothing more than toys to the monstrous being that used to be a wolf.

As she was travelling, she heard a tiny yip of a kit, which took her attention and forced her to stray from her original path. She arrived to the scene of another massacre, it clearly had been a fox pride that had been wiped out. There was death everywhere. And.... Some light.

A tiny kit was attempting to awaken her dead mother and siblings by poking them with her own little nussle, by licking their lips, by wailing, but nothing helped. The kitsune grew to pity the young one and stepped into the clearing. "Give it up kit, they can't wake up, they're dead", she said to the kit that stopped on her tracks and turned at the female, clearly not believing her at first. But eventually the stubborn kit had to believe her as the bodies of her family grew cold, still unmoving.

The lady fox took the kit with her and went to search for a safe place for them both. Although she wasn't related to the kit, she couldn't just leave her behind. The two went on and on for days, the older fox teaching the younger how to hunt and making sure that she ate. As the days passed the she fox learned that the kit was was named Ayako. In exchange for knowing the name of her ward, she fox told the youngling to call her Kazuko.

The duo came near to a village and Kazuko prompted Ayako to morph into a human with her. The two then walked through the town, asking if people had any food scraps for spare. Ayako said that she felt a bit dirty for doing it revealing that her tribe was known as the word bringer from gods. Kazuko, on the other hand, was a wild kitsune, who couldn't quite understand why the younger would feel that way.

Upon hearing the older fox, Ayako proceeded to teach her about humans and how things were supposed to be going if Kozuko served a Lord.

The secenries went by, rice fields, mountains, forests, and all the time, Ayako insisted that the two should try to find a lord to serve. Until finally...

"Why are you so fixated on finding a lord? Think that they'd take us in? We're kitsunes for crying out loud, we're MADE to be pranksters", Kozuko snarled to Ayako, who flinched strongly. She wasn't the kind of person who was good with confrontations. She looked down for a second, then back to the woman who was now raising her, protecting her. How her kimono despite of everything appeared to be in its best shape, how her dark long hair was flowing freely behind her. How the flames reflected from her dark brown eyes.

She then thought back to herself. She was tiny runt, her blonde hair had seen better days and so had her kimono. Her eyes were big and blue, sure but she still looked like a mess. Now that she thought about it.... How was Kozuko able to keep herself so clean..?

"U-Umm... I'm sure that there's someone who would need a word carrier-"
Kozuko openly laughed at the thought in a bitter way, she knew better than anyone that Lords were only trouble. The elder kitsune was about to comment something, when a tiny yokai went past them whispering to another.

"Did you hear? There is a new lord in Edo-shin!"
"Ooo! Do they lack of anything?"
"Just servants, the youngling was suddenly left with the title"
"Even better!"

Kazuko looked at her ward, then at the tiny goblins, again her ward and once again the goblins. She smirked and offered her hand to the child, who took it looking confused.
"Looks like we're going to Edo-shin kiddo"

The young lord of the Edo-shin was.... An odd fella. First of all, he looked more like a girl than a man. Secondly, he somehow managed to look adorable all the time while his presence made the villagers freak out. He also had no aura that signaled of him being a leader of any sort.
......unless he was irritated or angry. His eyes appeared to have eternally innocent look in them and much to the horror of the kitsune, he had zero experience on how to approach the suitable mate. Yet the kid somehow managed to be adored by the yokais that served him. But.... That was mostly his childish actions and innocence. Only part of it came from the fact that he defeated a corrupted wolf god.

The young lord didn't know how to use his abilities either and this puzzled the kitsune a lot making her frustrated. Until she spoke with the head priestess of course. That was when she understood what she was seeing. So she became a teacher and a friend of the Yoshimune, who in her eyes was nothing more but a sad little child. And as she observed him, she truly hoped that the male would find a happy ending.

Kozuko's brow twitched as she heard the request. "Haa? You want me to go to this "school" and tell you what I learned?" Yoshimune couldn't be serious. But Nooo the man was smiling at him nervously. Which usually meant that he knew that she'd hate it but he couldn't ask anyone else. "Please?" Kazuko rolled her eyes as she put in her camouflage. "This once. But if I'm found out, it's not my fault and I'll demand those weird treats as a payment", Yoshimune looked puzzled by this request and soon looked up at her, "Weird treats?"
Kazuko snorted and attempted to show him what she meant by using pantomime for making up the shape of this rare delicasy. "The foreign ones that are layered and have a lot of cream, sugar and berries", she said as she mimed. Which looked slightly odd but then again try yourself to explain cake to someone whose never heard of it and without only vaguely knowing what it's supposed to be. Finally the realisation dawned upon the face of the daiyokai.
"You mean cake?"
"Yeah, that"

After this incident, Yoshimune spent one week trying to find a good cakeshop with an owner who wouldn't freak out by seeing his eyes. In the end he took a baking course in order to learn how to bake himself to save the time and effort.

He soon learned that fox fire nor any form of fire created from spiritual pressure is a bad idea to test on a cake dough. The cake will only disintegrate. The yokai kin learned a valuable lesson on Ieyasu's 115th birthday.