by T. Isilwath
In that respect he was very high maintenance, much like an abused animal (or person for that matter) who needed constant reassurance and attention, and he required a level of patience she hadn’t realized she had. But the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks, and she committed herself to doing whatever she could to help him. So far she seemed to be doing very well, although she could tell that he was fast becoming completely smitten with her.
It was dangerous ground because she couldn’t be more than a friend to him and still stay faithful to Michael. And even though there was still no sign of anyone looking for her, she hadn’t given up hope of being rescued.
“Joanna-sama,” Akihiro’s light voice greeted as the object of her thoughts appeared in the “entry.” “I’m back.”
She’d managed to get him to say her name correctly, but still had no luck in getting him to drop the –sama suffix. Even though she kept insisting that they were friends, and such formalities weren’t necessary, he still adamantly refused to be “so familiar” with her. He, of course, wouldn’t let her call him Akihiro-kun because he was beneath such distinctions and not worthy of them.
It irritated her to no end, but she couldn’t push too hard because that only made him think she was displeased with him, and he would react by behaving even more submissively. It was a vicious cycle that fed upon itself, and she did her best not to get sucked in. When she saw him going into a tailspin of doubt and apology, she would redirect him with a touch or a change in subject or give him something to do in order to “redeem” himself in her eyes. It could be a hassle sometimes, but it was better than allowing him to continue punishing himself for something he didn’t do.
“Akihiro, welcome back,” she replied, despite her dismal mood.
“I think the rain will stop soon. We should go out as soon as we can.” She nodded. They were dangerously low on food. In fact, they’d eaten the last of it for breakfast. Now all she had was some dried emergency rations from her pack, and she didn’t want to resort to them if she didn’t have to. They’d gone out hunting the previous two days, but had come up with nothing. It was unusual for her to return empty-handed, but the rain had flooded the marshes and ran most of the game to ground. If they didn’t have a successful hunt today, they would be in serious trouble. Akihiro felt her urgency and shared it. He knew that her “blood sickness” required her to eat regularly, and he was worried for her health and safety.
She knew that the Japanese word for the diabetes was tounyoubyou, and it had been known to the Japanese since the 8th century. The word translated to
“sugar urine disease,” but she doubted if Akihiro had ever heard of it. She had only given him the most simplistic explanation about her illness, but she hadn’t known the words to explain it before, and now, even though she could give him more detail, she avoided speaking about her illness because she knew it would only make him more overprotective.
“Good idea,” she agreed as he came in. She saw him make sure his feet were clean before he entered.
“Where should we try today?” she asked.
“Hmmm. The meadow. Once the rain stops, the rabbits and ground birds will venture out to feed. We may be able to snare something. The marsh is still too wet. I just came from there.”
“Will this rain ever stop?” she complained.
He gave her a reassuring smile. “Yes. I promise it will stop. Then it will get very hot, and you will pray for rain.”
“Why did I ever think Japan in the summer would be a nice time to visit?” He hunkered down. “It isn’t so bad, although spring and fall are better.” She nodded. “So I’ve heard.”
“You’ll see. When the rains stop and the summer is over, it will be fall. The days will be sunny and dry.”
“Until a typhoon comes along,” she replied drolly. She knew very well that September and October were typhoon season.
“We don’t get them every year, and most of the time they aren’t bad. I can sense them coming days away. I’ll warn you like I warn the village.”
“Thanks.”
He looked at her. “Then winter will come and it will be cold.”
“Not that cold. The cold I’m used to is much colder, but I like it.” He smiled. “Then our winter will be easy for you, and I’ll let you dig for rabbits in the snow.”
“I’ll be sure to whack you with a few snowballs just for that.”
“What’s a snowball?”
“It’s a ball made of snow that I’ll use to hit you in the head,” she teased, ruffling one of his ears playfully.
“Ah. You’ll have to catch me first,” he quipped with a wry smile.
“Oh, I don’t think that will be too hard,” she claimed, tickling him.
He yelped, then giggled and fell back, his hands half-heartedly batting hers away. He relaxed the moment she graduated from tickling to rubbing, and he even stretched to give her better access because he loved belly rubs.
‘Just like a fox.’
Of course, his allowing her to rub him, and even exposing more of his vulnerable places, was all part of his submission to her. Like a fox, he showed his acceptance of her dominance by letting her see and touch his soft underbelly.
The fact that he liked being rubbed was just an added bonus.
“See, and now that you are helpless and at my mercy, it will be very easy to bop you with a snowball,” she told him, patting him on the head lightly.
“But you would have resorted to tricks and deception. Not very becoming for a lady,” he countered, his eyes twinkling.
“I never said I was a lady,” she quipped back.
He rolled over, hiding his belly from her and cushioned his chin on his arms. “But you are. You’re the fairest lady in all of Japan.” She stuck out her tongue. “You’re biased. I rub your belly and feed you.”
“Joanna-sama is also the best cook in all of Japan,” he said brightly.
“And no matter how much I feed you, you never seem to gain any weight,” she noted.
“Do I eat too much?” he asked, suddenly serious.
“Not at all. I’d feed you more if I had it to give. You keep telling me you’re not done growing, my seventy-four year-old teenager.” He snickered, his good mood returning, and it was brightening hers. He had a way of doing that. Somehow she couldn’t stay miserable when he was around.
“And I’d eat it. Haha-ue always said I could out eat any human she knew, even some of Ojiisan’s strongest and biggest warriors. But I can also go many days without food as long as I have water.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that. Your body is probably designed to adapt to the yearly cycles of feast and famine.”
“Summer is the best season for fruit. There are melons and peaches and berries. Everything is ripe and sweet,” he said, rolling to his side.
“Mmmm,” she agreed.
She didn’t have the heart to tell him that fruit should be the last thing she ought to be eating. As it was, she had just opened the third vial of insulin that she had brought with her and only had two unopened vials left. By her calculations, she would run out of insulin sometime in September. After that, how long she lived depended entirely on her diet, and her own body’s meager supply of insulin. Her pancreatic islet cells weren’t completely non-functional, but the amount of insulin they produced was severely deficient. She estimated that she had between six and eight weeks once she was out of insulin before things hit critical mass.
“Then fall comes and the rice ripens,” Akihiro continued, one hand absently combing the fur of his tail. “Hiroshi will tell me to help the women gather chestnuts and mushrooms, and harvest the rice. It’s women’s work, but I can carry ten times as much as they can.”
“That’s because you are a super-strong hanyou,” she told him fondly.
“You shouldn’t say such things,” he said, looking away.
“Why not? They’re true.”
“They aren’t. I am weak for a kitsune; even one half my age would be stronger than
me.”
“But you’re ten times stronger than a human,” she pointed out.
“That only gives them another reason to hate me,” he countered.
“I don’t hate you.”
He looked away. “I know.” He was quiet for a moment, then added, “The rain’s stopped. We should go. We have to catch something today or we’ll run out of food.”
He didn’t wait for her as he headed out of the hollow, and she blinked at the empty spot he had left behind. She frowned and donned her leathers and boots, then she grabbed her knives, hunting net and spear, and followed him.
Although it had stopped raining, it was still heavily overcast, humid and miserable. She’d never realized how much she needed sunlight until she hadn’t seen it for three weeks straight, and she trudged through the damp forest with Akihiro beside her.
Neither of them spoke as they headed out to one of the meadows where ground birds nested and small game foraged for food. Most of the birds had already raised their offspring for the year so the nests had been abandoned in deference to family outings, and they no longer had numerous nesting hens with vigilant mates occupying the meadow. It made for more difficult hunting even without the daily downpour.
She relied on Akihiro to tell her where the birds were feeding so she could set up the ambush. He could hear and smell their quarry, and he would indicate which way to go. Then he would come from the other direction and run the prey right into her trap. The setup required perfect synchronization and depended upon his reading her signal so he could move when she was ready.
Silently and carefully, they stalked their prey, and Joanna crouched down low in the tall, wet grass so she would not be seen. It started to rain again, a light drizzle, and that did nothing to improve her mood. Akihiro gave her a nod and made his move to circle around their intended targets. While she couldn’t see the birds, she could hear them making small noises in the grass just ahead of her, and she began gathering up the net in preparation for the trap. Unfortunately she’d lost sight of her hunting partner in the dense growth, and she put up her hand to shield her eyes from the rain as she tried to catch a glimpse of him.
She heard him move and began to swear, realizing that he had misinter-preted her gesture and had begun the hunt. ‘Aki no! I’m not ready!’
She scrambled with the net but it was too late. The birds flushed and scattered before she had a chance to even attempt a single throw.
“Damnit. Crap. Crap. Crap,” she cursed as their dinner flapped away. Of course another attempt would now be impossible because the birds knew that they were there, and the whole hunt was a bust.
Akihiro popped up from behind the tall rushes, his face confused and distressed. “Joanna-sama? What happened?”
“I wasn’t ready,” she answered sharply, stating the obvious.
“But… I saw you…”
“I didn’t make the signal.” She made the “peace” sign with her left hand.
“This is the signal.” She put her right hand, palm down, up to shield her eyes.
“This is not the signal. I couldn’t see you. I didn’t know where you were.” Her voice was hard and flustered and she knew it, but she was wet and miserable and she’d just watched their prey escape. Akihiro responded by flattening his ears against his skull and looking devastated. She turned away because she didn’t have the patience to deal with his self-recriminations, and his expression only triggered her anger. She had to pinch the bridge of her nose to get her emotions under control and grit her teeth to keep from snapping at him.
She could yell at him all she wanted, but it wouldn’t change what had happened nor would it help them find more game.
‘It’s a long shot, but maybe I can net a carp or something…’ she thought dourly, stomping her way towards the pond.
The pond was now twice as large as it used to be because it had over-flowed its banks, and it was surrounded by several yards of shin deep mud and water. Trudging through the muck, she attempted to put her net across the drainage stream, but there was nowhere to fasten it, and it soon became clogged with silt and debris. Akihiro tried to assist her by digging out a trench, but the only thing he succeeded in doing was further clogging up the net.
“Don’t help me,” she told him angrily. “Let me do this myself.” He gave her a shattered look but obeyed, slinking off to hunker dejectedly on the edge of the marsh. She shook her head, her irritation growing.
‘Aki. Just once I wish you’d drop the kicked puppy look. Just once.’
An hour later the drizzle had graduated to a full downpour, she was soaked to the skin, and she still hadn’t caught a thing. Her mood had turned decidedly for the worse, and now she couldn’t even see Akihiro because he was hiding somewhere, no doubt to avoid her wrath. Then she heard her insulin pump beep a warning that her subcutaneous glucose levels had gone below 70, and she had to eat something soon or she would go into insulin shock. She had no choice but to pull up her net and give up for another day.
To make matters worse, the insertion point for her infusion set was starting to itch. That meant it would need to be replaced, which translated to a cold bath in the rain. Just what she needed to make her day complete. With a heavy sigh, she pulled up her mud-caked net and dragged it behind her as she headed back to camp. She knew she’d had worse days. In fact, she’d had the mother of all bad days on September 11, 2001, but this day had undoubtedly been the worst she’d had during her time in Japan.
She didn’t see or hear Akihiro following behind, but she could feel him.
His sense of Other always tingled at the back of her neck, and she didn’t have to look behind her to know he was there. Her mood was such that she didn’t feel like bitching at him for not walking beside her, and she figured he was doing it more because he knew she was pissed off rather than any sense of inferiority he was feeling.
By some cruel joke the rain stopped just as she was getting back to camp, and she had a few choice words for gods with a sense of humor. She dumped the filthy net on the edge of the grove, shoved a glucose tablet down her throat to prevent a hypoglycemic episode, grabbed some clean clothes, her bathing supplies and a new infusion set for her insulin pump, and headed down to the stream for a quick wash. At least she wouldn’t have to bathe in the rain, but it was a small blessing.
When she came back she found Akihiro sitting cross-legged next to the fire pit with his head down. He didn’t look at her when she walked past, and she noticed that there was a long stick lying next to him, but she didn’t really pay any attention because she had more urgent matters to attend to. She needed to stretch her soaked leathers on a drying rack, hang the rest of her wet clothes, start a cooking fire and make a packet of the instant bean soup.
“Akihiro, start a fire please,” she said neutrally as she returned her supplies to the hollow and fished out the bag of dried soup.
She didn’t have to look to know that he was complying with her request, nor was she surprised to see that he’d coaxed a flame from her damp wood. She filled her saucepan with water from the gourd she kept next to the hollow and put it on the grate to boil. Then she turned her energies towards preparing her leathers for drying.
Through it all, she didn’t speak to Akihiro and he barely made a sound.
Once he was finished building the fire, he returned to his cross-legged sitting position and kept his eyes focused on the ground. With his head down, his ears drooped, and his hair partially concealing his face, he was the very picture of dejection, and her anger faded as she realized how badly he was feeling about the botched hunt.
‘He’s taking all the blame on himself when it really isn’t all his fault,’ she sighed, feeling guilty about how coldly she’d treated him. ‘Way to go Jo-Jo. It isn’t like he isn’t already beating himself up over it; you had to go and make it worse. Poor guy must think I’m furious with him.’
“Akihiro…” she said softly, moving to stand in front of him.
His reply was a tiny whimper, but
he picked up the long stick and offered it to her without raising his head. She accepted the rod and looked at it. It was a fresh cut section of bamboo about two inches around with the leaves ripped off and the end shredded. Obviously, he wanted her to do something with it, and she was still trying to figure out what he wanted from her, when she heard the rustle of clothing.
She looked down and saw that he had dropped his short kosode from his shoulders, then she watched him pull his hair aside, baring the smooth expanse of his back with its ridge of fox fur. She stood there, confused, looking at the rod and his naked back as he hooked his arms behind the lumbar vertebrae of his spine. The pose was completely submissive and disturbingly familiar.
There was a form of corporal punishment made famous in Japan. A man convicted of a crime would be bound with a rope that was wound around his neck, legs, torso and arms with his wrists lashed behind him. The technique was called Hojojutsu, and it was used by Samurai to subdue prisoners. Then the accused would be beaten across the shoulders and back with a bamboo stick until the skin broke. How severe the flogging would be was dependent on the crime, and the person administering the sentence, but regardless the convicted would be punished in full view so that everyone could witness his disgrace. It was the Japanese equivalent of public whipping, but it hadn’t been ordered by a judge in decades. Now the practice was relegated to the world of BDSM and the occasional “hazing” incident or rape.
From Akihiro’s posture, and the presence of the bamboo rod, he clearly expected her to beat him for his earlier transgressions, and she suddenly remembered the welts she had seen on his back the first day she had met him.
‘Oh my god. Oh my god…’
Bile rose up in her throat and she had to choke it back to keep from vomiting. With a rough cough, she snapped the rod over her knee and threw it across the grove as she dropped to the ground before him.
“Never,” she said fervently, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look at her. “I will never hit you. Not ever.”
He stared at her, shocked, as if he couldn’t comprehend what she had just told him, and she took her hand from his chin as she yanked his clothes back up, placing both hands firmly on his shoulders.
