Next friday evening found Eva and Kurt sitting at the counter of Ratatoskr’s favorite bar. With both of them making full use of Yo, the bars owner’s promise to the late Mumei. Sometimes pretending to be beholden to old promises had its perks. Like free drinks.

“I still think it sucks how that cat roped you into working at her place for free.” Kurt grumbled as he put his empty cup back on the counter before refilling it from a flask of sake. “Just for trying to do your job, helping one of her friends at that.”

“It’s not that bad.” Eva said with a pronounced shake of her head while accepting a fresh flask of her own from the bartender. “You know how many breweries didn’t even give me the chance to interview for an internship for a while or something? Stupid Xenophobia.”

“Haven’t you tried with bigger companies as well?”

“Yeah.” She replied with a sigh. “But those usually don’t offer internships for only a week or two.” Taking a sip from her cup Eva paused herself for a moment, “And if I miss more than a week, maybe two of classes, I’ll get in waaay too much trouble back home for leaving a bad impression. So really the only bad thing about this is the time she expects me to get started at.”

“You know Fuchs,” Kurt spoke up after draining another cup of sake in one go, “You could just have pretended to be a local with your fancy fox magic.”

“Yes.” Eva concured, head dropping down before she brought her drink up to her lips. “Yes I could have.” She finished after taking a sip.

“So what’s the name of that brewery?” The werewolf asked after giving his friend a few moments to mope.

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This time, Eva’s head did hit the counter, albeit softly. “Ugh more things I should have asked.”

“I did learn something interesting recently that might help take your mind off this for a moment.” Kurt said, before emptying another cup.

“Hm?” She asked not very eloquently as she turned her head to look at him.

Instead of a verbal response, he simply let out a surprising, realistic bark. Not that it was surprising a werewolf could indeed bark, but Eva couldn’t tell any reason for him to do so in the middle of a conversation.

“Why’s nothing happening?” Kurt asked rather puzzled after a few seconds.

“What did you expect to happen?” Eva replied with a shrug.

“I, well, you see, lastweekireadkitsuneturnbackintoafoxwhentheyhearadogbark”

“Could you repeat that? Maybe without nervously mumbling through it all?”

Taking a deep breath, he slowly tried again. “Last week I read that Kitsune turn back into a fox when they hear a dog’s bark.”

“Did you just try to prank me?” Eva asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I thought it might get you angry and stop moping.” Kurt admitted with a shrug. “Besides, seeing you fall from your seat as a vixen would have been funny.”

“Sorry to disappoint” Eva said as she suddenly turned into a fox, still sitting on her chair. Two of her tails waved behind her, while the third barely managed to reach around to the counter. There it wrapped around her flask and tipped it to refill her cup. “But sitting on a chair isn’t hard. At least not if you spend any time at all trying. So anything interesting you plan to do while I’ll be busy?” She finished before carefully leaning over the counter to lap up the sake from her cup.

“Nothing interesting. Just going to need to start making plans for the next full moon.” Kurt admitted with a frown. “Staying in Tokyo for it is definitely not a good idea.”

“Do you want me to take you somewhere again?”

“Don’t think that will work this time, you’d need to be back at that brewery before I can go back the next morning.” Kurt replied with a shake of his head. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out.”

“If you say so.” Eva shrugged before returning her attention to the bartender to get a refill.