The best day during any particular year is a day in which there is a party. I may be biased toward this as I love a good party, but no one can deny that a day of rest with friends and booze is fun. Well I suppose there are some who could deny it, but those people are unimportant.

- Kuya Tio on Enjoying Life, Kuya Tio’s Guide to a Healthy and Happy Homestead.

The lead-up to the summer festival hadn't been particularly interesting. It was the same old work with a little bit of new housework, and then the same old Militia service, tending the rice paddies, and the management of my own rice paddy water level. So really, the whole same old, same old. Time spent with Wei Lin felt more awkward than it had been before. It was like she was trying just too hard to make small talk, and she often seemed like she might be in pain, despite never admitting to such. I was starting to get a bit concerned about her.

When the day of the festival rolled around, I met the Xiao family at their gate and headed towards town with them. They certainly looked a lot better than I did. Wei Lin had her hair up and wore a red cheongsam dress that reminded me that she wasn't actually fourteen. Saito wore an outfit that made him resemble something of a very relaxed bureaucrat and marked the first time I'd ever seen the man in a hat. It was a short, squat, square thing, and I really didn't think it fit him. Yoko matched her sister's color with a red Ao Dai dress with what looked like a bamboo motif. While it didn't seem anywhere near as fancy as Wei Lin or Saito's clothing, it did seem to fit her quite well. Now that most of the bruising had healed, the woman herself looked quite radiant and she smiled pleasantly while holding the bundle that was one child in one arm and the hand of her little boy who was dressed in something of a more simplistic version of a kimono. Again, in red. By contrast, I wore my best off-white shirt and pants that only had no holes because Wei Lin had fixed them. I felt kind of like a homeless guy, but nobody mentioned my drab outfit. After the usual greetings and pleasantries, we started making our way to town.

Still, something seemed slightly off. Contrary to her normal actions, Wei Lin took a position between me and her father, and Saito seemed to be contemplating that. We made idle small talk as we made the hour-long journey to town. It would have gone a bit faster had it been just me or Saito, or even me and Wei Lin, but Yoko was slowed down by the children. The little boy, whose name I still hadn't even asked for or picked up, had considerably shorter legs than us adults.

Sharinzhen had been decorated for the occasion with streamers, banners, and paper lanterns practically everywhere. Food stalls had cropped up like garden weeds overnight, wafting their scents of delicious edibles across the paths crowded with far more people than I would have thought. Then again, we did have eight villages, and I assume most people had come. A large stage had been set up in the central courtyard, and while nothing was going on quite yet, the Yin Twins, as well as a small group of others, stood on top of the decking in some type of heated discussion, while a few others set up musical instruments and various props. I knew it was just the beginning of the festival, and none of the actual festivities had started yet, but apart from the stage, the food stalls, a couple of places where it looked like there might be music, and a couple of stalls that seemed to hold games for kids, it really didn't look like much, again, kind of a disappointment. Though the spring festival had ended up more as just a village cookout, this at least, could claim to be a festival.

Wei Lin and I walked around a bit, seeing what was available for food and things to do as Saito and Yoko found a shaded place to sit near the stage. Wei Lin seemed rather nervous, and I swear she winced when some girl called out to her, making our little party of two a party of three.

"This is Mei Wah. Mei, Yugi Han,” Wei Lin said, the tone of her voice suggesting she'd kind of rather be anywhere other than there. Mei Wah was an attractive girl, human with dark hair, dark eyes, and fair-colored skin. I got the feeling she was actually younger than Wei Lin despite being a full hand or so taller. We bowed politely to each other and exchanged the normal greetings, and the two girls chatted as the festival seemed to actually be getting started.

Through Wei Lin, I met four other girls: Yuki Kobayashi, Fumiko Tan, Xiu Yogi, and Ling Su. In some way, it seemed like Wei Lin didn't really want to be bothered, as she seemed to cling to my sleeve the entire time and honestly seemed rather dismissive of the girls. Of all of them, it was Ling Su that caught my attention the most. She wasn't the most attractive of the five; honestly, that probably went to Mei Wah, but she was the oldest, almost my age, and the only Oni-Sen out of the bunch. She had dark hair and violet eyes and felt taller than me with her long white horns. She wore a red Ao Dai, almost like Yoko's but with a Hibiscus flower design. She stuck around a bit longer, as she had also been a bit more traveled, and we chatted briefly about a couple of places that we had both been to.

The whole thing seemed to make Wei Lin more nervous, and eventually, we went to the stage to watch a play put on primarily by Kiyoko. Kenta seemed to be working more on the musical end of things, and the other people presented a line of characters whose sole purpose seemed to be to make Kiyoko's character's life difficult. Honestly, I wasn't exactly sure if this was supposed to be a comedy or a tragedy; it seemed to have bits of both.

As the sun started to get lower in the sky, casting long shadows across the town, and Saito and Yoko were clearly getting ready to head home, Wei Lin seemed rather torn between staying and going.

"You can go. You don't need to stick around for my sake," I told her.

She bit her lip in clear hesitation.

"I'm probably just gonna get something to eat and go hang out by the river for a little while. I kinda wanna see the lanterns once it gets dark, but that's about it."

She looked back to her family and then back up at me, as though she was honestly torn.

"Go, I'll be fine," I said.

She bit her lip again, but nodded and said her goodbyes, leaving me alone to wander the streets looking for something good to eat. She had been acting so strangely lately. I didn't know if Saito was pushing her harder at me or if it was something else. Maybe having her sister around more changed their family dynamic in some way.

I was standing near the Smithy, chewing on something pretending to be mochi balls. They had the completely wrong texture. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but it wasn't mochi, and to say otherwise was heresy. As I chewed, I felt a poke at my side and grinned, as there was only one person who ever introduced their presence to me by poking me in the side. As I turned my head, I found Kaori looking back up at me, her face contorted into half a smirk.

"Hey," I said, mouth still half full.

“Hey, “ she said in return. "Since you're all alone, wanna come meet the gang in the den of debauchery?"

"Den of debauchery?" I asked, a little lost.

"It's a bunch of kitsune getting drunk in my dad's place, at the restaurant.”

“I'm not really doing anything else," I replied.

Kaori pulled me along down the alleyway again, and we entered into the back of the Shao’s Place through the kitchen and into the actual room where I could hear the laughter of mostly women before we came around the corner and into what could only be called a Den of Debauchery. I assume the den idea was a play on the fact they were all kitsune. It looked like it normally did in the daytime, but several of the tables had been cleared away, there were only a couple lights on, and the whole group sat around one table. "Debauchery" because they were playing a drinking game, and by drinking game, I mean, they were just spinning a bottle and whoever the bottle pointed to took a drink. There didn't seem to be much of a game behind it.

"Where's Izumi?" Kaori asked as she pulled me all into the room.

"Getting more booze," someone shouted back.

Kaori pushed me forward before starting introductions. "This is Yuji, surname Han, and for those of you who are familiar with Lo Bao Han, yes, that Han."

There was a brief pause where there was a chorus of laughter and a few "Heys," and one of the girls spun the bottle. It's open end landing to face the sole Huan Fang in the group who laughed and reached for the drink being poured.

"Yuji, Izumi Hano is missing, Luli Noda, Chie Konda, Huan Fang, Chui Okita, and Yumiko Yaga," Kaori introduced, moving from right to left.

I gave a slight bow to the group, and Kaori got me a seat so I could sit next to her, pretty much straight across from the Huan. After he finished spinning his bottle so it pointed somewhere else, he stood up and reached over the table to shake my hand. "Good to meet you."

"Likewise," I returned.

Again, I was a bit struck by how they were mostly women. Huan Fang was the only person roughly my age other than Shinichi that I had actually met so far, and I had been here for months. To be fair, most of that time was spent working, but it very much pointed out the disparity between genders in my generation. Him and Chie were clearly a couple as he wrapped his arm around her, and she was leaning into him.

Kaori frowned at the empty bottles lying around. "How much did you guys drink already?"

Her response was a bunch of laughter as the open end of the bottle landed on her. Chie handed her a small cup. Kaori rolled her eyes, took the shot, and spun the bottle herself. It landed on Luli.

"Yuji," Luli said, holding up her shot. "Are you in and out, or are you sticking with us all night?" she asked almost in a slur before throwing back her shot. She was cute with fair skin and a pinched nose, and her grin was practically infectious.

"Not really sure, but I gotta walk all the way back to four, so I don't think I'm gonna drink too much.”

She frowned and spun her bottle, and when it landed on Chie, she swore, "Damn, I was aiming for you."

I had to laugh at that.

"You can come to my place," she suggested.

I looked at Kaori; she simply shrugged. "I said debauchery."

"I think we're gonna head out," said Huan.

"Take care," said one of the girls, though I'm not entirely certain which one.

Huan gave me a nod and said "Good luck with the Vixens." He then gave me a short salute, and he and Chie left out through the back as the open end of the bottle spun towards me. Yumiko poured my drink and handed it over, and I threw it back. Some harsh variant of rice wine, Sake or Mijiu, I could never tell the difference, but I put my cup down and spun it, only to hear another voice coming from behind me.

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"I Got More Boooooze," sung a woman's voice just before she stopped and said, "Who the hell is this?"

Kaori was busy taking her shot, so Luli spoke up. "This is Yuji Han, as in that Han."

Izumi, or at least I was guessing that was who the new woman was, set the bottles down on the table and pretty much fell into my lap. She wrapped her arm around me and put her breast up into my face. "Fresh meat," she purred in my ear. "You got a girlfriend, Yuji?"

"Um, no," I replied.

She grinned. "I call first," she said.

Luli popped up looking rather offended. "What? No, I saw him first! I want first!"

"I called first; you get second," Izumi shot back.

What the hell was going on? I looked at Kaori, who was filling up a shot of alcohol as the bottle landed back on me. At this point, I wasn't sure if it was me or Izumi, but Izumi took the shot and threw it back, setting it on the table to spin the bottle again.

"Anyone else?" Izumi asked.

Chui pointed at Kaori and said, "She brought him."

Izumi's gaze went to Kaori. "Kaori?”

Kaori looked at me as though she were considering something, her gaze then went to the empty alcohol bottles, then to Luli, then to Izumi. Her ears twitched once, and then she shook her head. "Nah."

"Yumiko?" Yumiko shook her head.

"Chui?"

I looked at Chui as she seemed to evaluate me, her head cocked slightly to the side and one ear slowly drifted down at an angle. Out of all the girls in the room, she was the one I would define as hot. Red hair, fair skin, slight freckles. She had the face of a succubus, and though I couldn't see anything below her waist, I was fairly certain she had the body of one too.

"Yeah, I'll take third," she said.

"Great!” Izumi shouted while squeezing herself to meet tighter, “the order's set then."

"The order for what?" I asked because this whole thing was rather perplexing.

Izumi let go of me long enough to push herself back and enough to grab my face, look deep into my eyes, and say in a sultry tone, "The order in which we're going to fuck you."

The baser male part of my brain screamed, “hell yes!” But I hadn't had much to drink yet, and my gut seemed to be picking up on something I had been missing. "Why?" While I meant the question, it did kind of sound accusatory to me.

Izumi must not have actually noticed, as she simply smiled and said, "Because you're cute, and you're the only guy in town that isn't a decade older than me."

There was no way that was true. "That's not true."

She shrugged and amended, "Okay, so the only unclaimed guy that isn't a decade older than me, and also, you're human, so you're safe."

I stared at the woman on my lap. That gut feeling that something was very wrong and I had missed something had turned into a solid, heavy weight sitting just over my bowels. Even the baser male part of me that had been solely focused on the fact that I might get laid by three girls stopped and said, "Wait, what?" My gaze turned to Kaori, who was actively staring at the bottle and looked slightly conflicted. "I think I gotta go."

"Wait, what? No!" Yelled Luli. "Can I come with?"

I started pushing Izumi off me. "Just, just wait. Just not tonight. Okay."

"Oh, come on. Don't be, uh, don't be like that," said Izumi, the sultry sound gone.

I picked myself up from the table and started heading to the back door to the complaints of mostly Izumi and Luli.

The fresh air of the outside filled with the scents of food and the sounds of partying sort of helped clear my head. My libido was still fighting with my logic, and my logic was too busy trying to put pieces together that I clearly had missed. The sun had sunk down behind the trees, and while the sky was still slightly light, the long shadows were bringing darkness upon the town, and all the lit up lanterns were starting to show their ethereal glory. I walked through town in somewhat of a daze, shifting my gaze at each individual person as I went past them. There were children everywhere, boys and girls from toddlers up to their teens, as well as all the old people, but it was only just now that I noticed that between the ages of 16 and 25, there were no men. None. Completely none. The first guy I met was roughly my age, and that was Shinichi. I knew he was dead, and I was pretty sure I knew where he was buried, but the fact that my first encounter with a person from this town had been a guy my age likely had blocked my senses from the fact that he was literally the only one, except for Huan Fang, whom I had only just met. Sharinzhen-4 was mostly older people with only a few kids and a couple of middle-aged couples, so I hadn't quite noticed. The only one roughly my age had, of course, gone off to war, but he was also the only one from Sharinzhen-4. Now, I was in the middle of the town proper with practically everybody in attendance who hadn't packed it in early, and apart from a few groups of girls, some of whom would smile and wave coyly, my age group was missing. There's no way this was possible.

I found my way to the tree where all the villagers had hung up their missing loved ones. It was absolutely cluttered with tags and though I understood a lot of those were duplicates, it was still far too many. Sharinzhen was not that big, even including the eight villages surrounding it. What in the hells?

"Are you okay?" came a voice from vaguely behind me. I turned to find Lia standing there. Apparently, her idea of dress clothes was extraordinarily similar to Saito’s, having a relaxed bureaucrat look, though her long silk shirt was green instead of red and she lacked the funny hat.

"Where is everybody?" I asked.

Lia looked a bit confused and just kind of motioned to the village behind her. "Over there, drinking mostly."

I gestured to the tree. "No, I mean, like everybody my age. Well, every male my age. There's like two people in this town."

"I think it's more like five, and there was a civil war," she said, as if that explained everything. It didn’t.

The response did not help the horrible knot I had in my gut. "And what? Everybody just got up and decided to go fight the king?"

"Oh? Yeah, no," she replied. "A couple of people left to go fight the king. Then the military came in and conscripted all men between the age of 15 and 25 as punishment."

Somehow, the logical explanation was far worse than my mind had possibly conceived. Someone, possibly Wei Lin, had mentioned that not everyone got to choose what side they fought for. Nobody said the army just came in and took everybody, but that still didn't fully explain it.

"Well, where are they?" I questioned. "The war was over like a year ago. They can't all be dead."

Lia shrugged. "Well, I assume most prisoners were sold as slaves to foreign nations, and those conscripted will probably show back up once their terms are over."

I turned back to the tree full of tags. "It's not like this in the city. I mean, it's noticeable, but not like this. A whole generation of men just gone."

Lia walked up to the tree, her eyes focused on a specific area or maybe even a specific tag. "Well, it's not just all guys." She reached out to a specific tag and ran her finger across the words. "Mika Saburo. She was brilliant, beautiful, and headstrong. Hells, she was headstrong. I love that girl."

I idly wondered if the person Lia was referring to was family or a friend. Though, with some type of answer to my sudden horrible realization that everybody was missing, the knot in my stomach seemed to be feeling a little bit better. Maybe it was because Lia was here to answer things.

“But she didn't return my affection because I didn't have a penis.” She continued.

My brain stopped functioning. Once again, I felt like I was not in the same conversation that other people were. Earlier, it was the group of kitsune girls. This time it was Lia. At some point, I put the pieces together to what she said and asked the follow-up question, probably very stupidly asked. "You're gay?" Come to think of it, she spent a lot of time showering Wei Lin with compliments.

She let go of the tag with a sigh and turned to consider me. She shrugged and gave her usual smirk. "Got a problem with that?"

"Ah, no?" I said intelligently.

"My dad's coming around. I always wanted to be his favorite, and my older brother freaking the hell out and leaving really kind of worked in my favor. Though, I do kind of miss him."

"Okay," I replied. That was probably a weird thing to say, but I honestly had nothing. I had gone from, "Holy hells, I'm the only person in this town of my generation," to "Wait, you're gay?" Honestly, I don't know where I was, just completely lost.

"So how did you suddenly come to the conclusion that you were the only male of your age?" Lia asked, her arms crossed as she stared up at the tree, her spaded tail swaying slightly.

"I was hanging out with Kaori and her friends, and a bunch of the girls started queuing up to screw me. I asked why and apparently it was because I'm the only one of their generation who isn’t also kitsune."

Lia turned around with a face that kind of screamed, "What the fuck?" "You're telling me that you had multiple kitsune girls willing to have sex with you tonight, and you're out here moping?" She sounded offended.

"Uh, yeah," I replied.

"What the hells? Are you gay?" She asked.

"No," I replied.

"Well, I'd love to have multiple kitsune girls who wanted to sleep with me. Is there some problem with it?"

"Well, I mean, I guess just the reputation thing."

"Reputation thing?" she asked.

"Yeah, you know, like, yeah, Kuya Tio mentions in one of his books. You basically get a new start on reputation when you move to a new place, and I don't want to taint it by being known as a guy who goes and, you know, sleeps with everybody."

Lia was looking at me like I had a snake crawling out of my ear. "Kuya Tio? The guy who writes all the pornographic romance novels?"

Yeah okay, that did sound pretty messed up, didn't it? "Well, he writes guide books too," I tried to defend.

Lia took a few steps forward, leaned in, and flicked me on the forehead. "Yeah, I've read enough of his stuff to say he would smack you for being out here moping instead of getting laid."

"Well..." I attempted.

"Yuji, you're cute. As in, like childish cute, not attractive cute. Does that make sense?" she asked.

"Uh... yeah?"

"Either go home or go get laid. You're lucky. You have your choice of any girl you want here. You can either do that or you could just go back to working on your house and ignoring them all," she advised.

I just sort of stared at her because I really didn't know what to say. I'm absolutely positive that reputation mattered, but in some ways, she did kind of have a point. "Uh..."

Lia patted me on the shoulder as she walked off. "Good night, Yuji."

"Good night," I said, though it wasn't very loud, and I'm not sure she actually heard me.

I passed the main square where Kenta was sitting on the edge of the stage, kicking his feet and chatting with several of the other guys, all of which were older. I didn't see Kiyoko, and it honestly looked like things were starting to wind down. With it getting fully dark now, the lanterns were showing off their attractive glow and casting parts of the town in dappled light. I might have thought it was magical if my head didn't feel so detached. I stopped on the bridge, as I often did. I looked over the railing and into the water. It was dark, and I couldn't see through it, but I could tell it was moving, and for some reason, I just liked this damn spot. I'm not sure how long I stood like that, trying to order my thoughts and feelings on the whole situation. On one hand, the town had been missing my generation's worth of men for quite a while. It might have just hit me now, but it's been something they've been dealing with for a couple of years at least. So long they had a tradition of putting tags on the tree. On the other hand, Lia had been completely correct in a way. I was kind of lucky because I had my choice of women, though with any sort of certainty, I was really only familiar with three of them. Apparently, one was gay or a boy stuck in a girl's body or something like that. Wei Lin, I still unfortunately saw as a 14-year-old, and our relationship was far more familiar. The other person was Kaori, who was not interested due to the biological inability to produce children. Maybe I should track down Ling Su and get to know her better. I pondered the world around me and how different this was from the city. The sounds of laughter slowly dying out as people petered out and went home. Sure, it was a nice night, quiet and cool, and I swear the sound of the moving water helped calm my nerves.

There was a poke at my side.

"Hey," said Kaori.

"Hey," I replied.

"You okay?"

“Yeah, I think so. It's just something Izumi had said that made me realize I'm the only male of my generation in this town, and I honestly hadn't noticed.”

"Well, you're not the only one. You met Huan Fang just tonight."

I nodded at her point. "Yeah. Well, it just kind of hit me."

Kaori stepped onto the lower bar of the bridge's railing so she could lean over and look down at the water with me. "So, are you gonna go back and, um, sleep with my friends?"

"What? No. I figure they're drunk. They'll, uh, change their minds in the morning."

Kaori snorted. "Yeah, I wouldn’t bet on that. But, um, can I propose something?" she asked, somewhat hesitant sounding.

"Yeah."

"A date?"

"What do you mean?"

“Well, I actually kind of like living here. Unfortunately, my options here are to die childless and alone or die childless. Dying childless and alone sounds like it sucks more. So I thought maybe we could, uh, attempt, you know, just see if there could be something."

"Sure. I'm up for that."

"Two days from now?"

"I don't have a lot of money to take you out on the town."

"A picnic then?"

"Yeah. That sounds Nice."