When Sunday morning rolled around, with the merciless rays of the sun soon finding Eva’s face, the more unpleasant aftereffects had faded fully. Giving up the struggle to stay asleep moments later, Eva got up. Letting out a long yawn, the Kitsune stretched her forelegs, tails hanging lazily behind her.
Leaving her room she didn’t bother to change into a human shape just yet,and instead used one of her tails to slide the door open. Downstairs in the kitchen, Toya was already working on breakfast.
“Morning.” She greeted the Tanuki, before another yawn sneaked out of her muzzle.
Looking down at the white fox that was squeezing in, Toya smiled down. “Morning Eva, hope you slept well.”
“Mhm.” Came the reply as Eva transformed so she could see what breakfast would be. Which turned out to be miso soup with the leftovers from the evening before.
“So what did you do most of yesterday stuck inside?”
“Well mostly I was stuck watching Yukiko be paraded around.” Eva said before she started lending a hand with breakfast while going into a few more details about her surreal experience the day before. At least feeling ‘herself’ resting in the shrine and what was probably Ms. Unagi’s home gave her reassurance that it had actually occurred.
Of course when everyone had arrived for breakfast, both Karasuza and the resident Yuki-Onna were curious about Eva’s activities the day before. Which meant she had to repeat her explanation. Yukiko seemed somewhat concerned as she heard that Eva had more or less been stuck to her face for most of the ceremony without her noticing. After the Kitsune had reassured her multiple times that she had neither possessed the younger youkai, nor tried to read her mind or anything of a similar nature, the Yuki-Onna seemed to relax again. Karasuza meanwhile seemed to be so in awe at the Kami sitting before her having a casual conversation, she dropped her chopsticks twice, apologizing profoundly each time. Komaki meanwhile had been silently enjoying his breakfast watching the youngsters, only speaking up once to repeat what he had told Eva the evening before when asked.
“Well I hope that answers most of your questions.” Eva said as she got up after finishing her meal. “But I promised Kurt we’d check out the festival today.”
With that she changed her more casual clothes into a facsimile of the kimono Yukiko had put her in earlier that week when teaching her how to actually put on such garments.
Which immediately prompted Yukiko to get up and place a hand on Eva’s shoulder. “Didn’t we spend a few hours this week teaching you how to put on the real thing?”
While she let herself be guided around the table, Eva complained. “But no one would be able to tell the difference anyways.”
“Except for the fact the leaves on this fake are too perfect, and from a simple touch one can tell it’s made from simple cotton like a cheap T-shirt.”
“Okay no normal human would notice.”
“It’s the principle of the thing. Besides I gave you all that with the expectation you would actually wear it.”
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“But Kurt’s going to be here any moment, I don’t want to make him wait until I am done putting all of that on.” Eva said with a small pout as they arrived at the door to her room.
“Well that’s easily solved.” Yukiko said as she pulled her phone out of the sleeve of her yukata and began typing out a message.
A bit under half an hour later, thankfully Yukiko accepted Eva doing her hair and makeup the quick way, Eva was standing near the shrine’s outermost torii, waiting for Kurt to show up. While they had agreed to meet here about 20 minutes ago, she had no idea what message she had sent Kurt. When he finally came into sight, Eva carefully waved to him, which caused the long deep green sleeve of her kimono to flap around. This meant the leaves printed on the silk resembled those fluttering in the wind nearby even more closely as Kurt noticed her.
Kurt for his part was dressed up in a similar fashion to Eva, wearing a red-brown kimono held closed by a light green Obi. The Werewolf’s outfit was not adorned with large images like the maple leaves on the Kitsune’s. Instead it featured a pattern of tiny brown hexagons all over.
“Hey, sorry I am a tad late.” Kurt greeted her as he finally arrived next to her.
“Don’t worry about it.” Eva said with a wave of her hand. “I didn’t know you own an outfit like this.”
“Well I actually don’t. But thankfully Yukiko managed to point me towards a nice kimono rental place nearby. Which is why I am a bit later than expected, convincing the nice lady that runs it to let me keep my beard in a braid took forever.”
“I can imagine.” Eva said with a light chuckle.
“Now how about we explore the festival held in your honor?” Kurt inquired as he offered his arm to Eva, who took the invitation before the two of them began to wander past all the stalls.
As they explored, they found that most stalls sold various festival foods. At most of these they selected two of the items offered more or less at random to try and eat as they walked on. While they were walking past a stall selling masks, the two bought each other one as a little joke. For the rest of the day, Eva had a wolf-like mask tied to the side of her head, whereas Kurt had a more fox-like one. After a while they decided to try some of the games. After surprising both herself and Kurt with a near perfect result at a shooting stand, Eva decided to not try her hand at the goldfish catching which Kurt seemed surprisingly excited to try.
While he did end up catching one, when he was done the werewolf’s sleeves were rather wet, so the two of them decided to enjoy some grilled meat standing close to the yakitori stall they bought it at so the heat of the grill would help dry Kurt’s sleeves.
Lastly they decided to try their hands at a ring tossing game. But after winning only some small keychains after spending a hundred yen each on trying, the two of them decided to leave the games be, and instead focused on finishing their attempt at trying all the food they could smell.