Kuro tilted his head the other way, the hot spring feeling pleasant against his chin. Men with men? Some men worked in the pleasure district, but Kuro paid them as much mind as the women. Only their clients held his interest, with pockets full of coin and their heads full of sake.

A fox would be ecstatic to find another weakness as easily exploitable. But Ren hadn’t asked what a fox would think, but what Kuro would think of Ren. And even with all the riches in his compound, Ren didn’t have a single mon to his name. “That seems fine to me.”

“Really?” Ren perked up, the smile returning to his cheeks.

Kuro smiled back. He much preferred this Ren to the the despondent one before. “Don’t samurai and monks do that with their apprentices?”

“Well, yes,” Ren said. “But not like husband and husband.”

Kuro laughed out loud. Ren might have been the mirror image of the boy samurai. Everything was right with the world. Kuro understood human males — they craved human flesh, and Kuro was in the perfect position to give Ren what he wanted. He crowned himself with another leaf. He used male forms even less often than female, but he had a few handsome ones he could use.

Ren jerked as smoke enveloped Kuro.

Kuro pulled his arms behind his head, flexing his new barrel-chest. “So this would be more your preference.”

Ren covered his eyes with his hands, his face fully red again.

“What? You don’t like?” Kuro ran a hand up his thigh, like he’d seen the courtesans do.

Still pressed into his hands, Ren shook his head.

“Then what about—” Kuro reached for another leaf.

Ren grabbed his wrist. “Please, can I just enjoy a bath with Kuro?”

Kuro raised a brow. His normal human form was shabby, though. He’d originally imagined it up to pass through humans without notice. Scrounging up food and sleeping in the mud had ground away any beauty.

But Ren was the Sun Prince, and if Kuro kept this up, he’d probably make Ren’s nose bleed into the hot spring. Kuro released the transformation, and returned to his normal form. “If you insist.”

Ren exhaled and collapsed into the wall.

“I don’t know why you made a big deal out of it,” Kuro said. “Humans. So obsessed with your genitalia. But then you only get the one kind.”

He jerked back, his eyes sliding down Kuro’s chest before his brow knit.

“Idiot,” he said. “Foxes change genders like you change robes.”

“So you don’t think…”

“I do think, a lot.”

A chuckle burst out of him like a burp. “I meant, you don’t think of yourself as a man?”

Not since man usually meant human. “When I’m like this, I do.” Kuro gestured down himself. “But when I’m not, I think of myself as a she. Most foxes do. Except my litter-sister, because she’s weird.”

“Sister?”

Damn, Kuro had not meant to reveal his familial relations. Ex-family. His litter-sister wouldn’t beg on the streets for him, or even smile at him, like Ren’s sisters. “Anyway, she was born a male fox, but she insisted she was a vixen. A hundred years pass in a blink of an eye for spirits, but she made it last forever. I kept telling her that it’s not as if male fox look different from vixens, not like humans. Everyone tried. A hundred years isn’t so long to wait to transform. But then I didn’t care about my gender one way or the other.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

When Kuro really needed a good internal stabbing, he spied on the Inari Shrine. The Inari foxes wore female forms as part of their service to Inari, spending the rest of their time as fox, but his litter-sister always wore her human form.

“Everyone?” Ren leaned a little closer.

Kuro shrugged. “Foxes.”

“Right.” He slid his back against the tile, tipping his head back to look up at the stars. They blinked overhead, distant and cold, and they seemed to seep into Ren’s pores because he turned equally distant and cold. “Uncle Gorou wouldn’t approve, if he knew.”

“So what?”

“I’m supposed to marry.” Then added, “A woman.”

“Is this another weird human custom?”

“Don’t fox get married?” he asked. “They say when it rains while the sun shines overhead, foxes are getting married.”

“Sure.” Kuro had never concerned himself with fox weddings, mostly because it required fox forms, and if any fox discovered his black pelt, he’d be in trouble.

“They marry to make little foxes, right?”

“Sure.” Not really.

“Do you…” Why so much hesitancy? “Do you want to get married? To a female — to a vixen?”

And that was a whole bento box he refused to get into. The dark months, always interfering in his plans. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I understand that.”

He didn’t. He couldn’t. A human could never understand.

“I can’t be with a man. I have to marry a woman and breed tons of heirs. Uncle Gorou will expect it of me any day now.”

“I doubt it,” Kuro said.

“He believes in the natural order,” he said. “And I’m not natural.”

“Who says?”

“Uncle Gorou. If he knew.” Ren slid down into the water, low enough he blew bubbles on the surface.

“Who cares? If he won’t even crown you emperor, then he definitely doesn’t want to encourage you into breeding little heirs.”

Ren shoved himself up. “He doesn’t have the funds.”

If Ren wanted to believe that. “Look. If the Shogun wanted you breeding, you would be by now. You’re what…” Why must human ages be so difficult?

“Twenty-one this spring,” he said.

So young! At that age, Kuro’d only just been declared a spirit, while his animal litter-brothers and -sisters had long since died off. “That’s more than old enough for a human.” Possibly. But if he said it certainly enough, Ren would believe him. “So he mustn’t be planning to.”

The distance remained in his eyes. “My mother wants grandchildren.”

“You have eight million sisters.”

“Nine sisters.”

As if the number mattered. “More than enough to squeeze out a litter.”

He felt stiff next to Kuro. “Humans don’t have litters.”

“Well, how many does your mother really need?”

His smile seemed too forced. “My sisters aren’t allowed to marry.”

Their children couldn’t inherit the throne, but the Shogun wouldn’t like to provide Ren with an in-law behoved to provide for him, or worse yet, get influence to rival the Shogun.

“There’s just me. I’m going to be the sixty-seventh Tendo emperor. And if I don’t marry, if I don’t want to marry, then I add one more item to the list of disappointments. If she knew…” He ducked his head.

Kuro stared at the surface of the water. The wind had calmed, leaving the surface as smooth as the Imperial Mirror. Nothing like how the waters had churned on that day. He reached through the water, his hand finding Ren’s and clasping around his fingers.

Ren parted his lips with a soft gasp, but then his fingers tightened around Kuro’s.

When Ren refused to fill the silence, Kuro shocked himself by muttering, “I know what that’s like.”

Ren shook his head, pulling his legs up to hug them. “I heard from a certain someone foxes don’t lie.”

“They don’t.” Omit, paraphrase, reword and even twist the truth so far around like wringing out linen, but they don’t lie. “My mother despises me.” He shook his head. “No, despises is too strong for how she felt. She’d never waste so much energy on me. Irked by my existence, maybe. I never lived up to my mother’s expectations, not even before…”

“Before?” Ren prompted.

“Doesn’t matter.” She’d never cared when he won second in their litter hierarchy. His litter-sister had won first over the five, and Reiha hadn’t cared anymore than about him. His litter-sister had ascended to become another familiar of Inari. She got to keep her home. Kuro threw his head back with a broad grin that would have counted as a lie. “But that’s why I’m going to become a god.”

He bit his tongue. Had he really admitted that? Gah, Ren was going to pity him, no matter how many times Kuro reminded him of his own disadvantaged situation. New subject, new subject. Anything that would replace the gleam in Ren’s eyes. “So, this man you’re attracted to.”

Kuro much preferred the blush that overtook Ren to any seriousness. “Who said I was attracted to any particular man?”

“Your face.” Kuro prodded his cheek.

Ren splashed Kuro in his defense. Kuro splashed him back.

“But seriously, you should tell me,” he said. “That is why you brought me here, right? If I can see him, I can transform into him. I’ll work on the tail.”

“I didn’t bring you here for that.” His voice strained like a shamisen string plucked too hard.

“So you keep saying,” he said. “But if you haven’t noticed, you protest an awful lot. Admit it. You’re a cat refusing fish.”

“Actually,” he drew out the word, “I do have a reason.”

Finally. “So what is this dangerous mission you’re so afraid to tell me about?”

“I want you to show me the city. Tonight.”