Ichiro helped Gin sit up on the stone floor. If it was dirt, we could dig our way out, Ichiro thought.
"They tore my new kimono!” Gin said again. "I just bought it too. But at least you're okay, big brother.”
“It’s just a seam, little sister. Easy to repair.” Thinking about trivial things was easier than their future. Ichiro imagined getting beaten or executed, like the hanged Kitsune they’d passed on the way into The Capital.
Gin told Ichiro about her trip to the bath house. Ichiro laughed with her when she told him about the kami forgetting the cherry blossom smell and the “incense” was revealed as dirt. Why not laugh? We’re doomed now.
Ichiro told her about selling meat with Yone and the delicious smell he pushed into the crowd.
“I’m almost as good at smells as you are,” he said.
“No, you’re not, big brother,” Gin teased him.
She filled the air with the scent of cherry blossoms and Ichiro filled it with meat. Then he stopped because it just made them both hungry.
They sat on the floor back to back each lost in their own thoughts.
A while later, when the daylight that came in through the high, small windows dimmed, the door opened and a man in a bright yellow robe entered. He was older than Ichiro, but younger than their father had been. He looked at them briefly and Ichiro realized that he was looking at the kami in the room. The breeze and stone kami looked back at this man. He whispered, "Gin look."
"This human is like us." She whispered very quietly hoping that this Mr. Yellow was deaf like all the rest. She pulled her kimono tightly around her and shifted slightly behind Ichiro. The man in yellow scared her. Humans weren’t supposed to see through their illusions.
The onmyoji had arrived.
The man looked at the pair of them. "Yes, you’re Kitsune. I see a young man and a,” he pinched the bridge of his nose, “well, still girl really, Kitsune before me. So who was at the Sixth Street bath house this morning?” He asked the question like he knew the answer already.
Gin and Ichiro exchanged glances. Gin took a breath, but Ichiro shook his head. The yellow robed man watched them.
Gin realized that if her brother was on the women's side of the bathhouse he would be in a lot of trouble. She had to confess to Mr. Yellow. "I was sir."
Meanwhile Ichiro said, "It was me, sir. My sister had nothing to do with it." Avoid the yellow robes, they see through our illusions.
"Ichiro,” Gin began. Ichiro continued as if she hadn't spoke "Oh yes sir, that was all me. Snuck into the bath house this morning.” He reflexively pushed an image of him being clean to the kami, and the kami listened. “See? All clean now.” He knew the man in yellow saw through his illusion, but he could talk Gin out of trouble.
“Uh huh,” said the man in yellow. “And I suppose you sold some girls dirt that you made look like spring scented incense?”
Ichiro pushed an image of a silent Gin to the breeze kami. The kami surrounded Gin’s head and grew fat as it ate all of her words.
“I needed to make some money, and couldn't find work any other way," Ichiro explained.
Beside him, Gin began arguing, but no sound escaped the hungry breeze kami. She didn’t have the force of will to tell the kami to stop eating her words. Of course, knowing our luck, this is when she’ll begin to do so, Ichiro thought.
The man in the yellow robe nodded and pretended not to notice a silent and increasingly aggravated Gin hit her brother and finally grab the kami to force her words out of it. "Now which one of you was selling the fake rice in the market yesterday?"
“That was all me too, sir. Yes indeed.” Ichiro imagined a rice bag, and one hovered above his hands. “See?” He smiled in what he hoped was a convincing manner.
The man in the yellow robe pinched the bridge of his nose again. "Eyewitnesses contradict what you say. Several at the market said that a very glamorous woman was selling rice. However, frequently she would vanish and instead a young girl stood there."
Gin stopped squeezing the breeze kami like a bellows when Mr. Yellow said that. She remembered the crowd clapping, something she dismissed as a strange human shopping custom.
Mr. Yellow continued. "It seems that everyone in the market who saw thought it was a fun show and a few people bought rice bags stuffed with sticks as a souvenir. ‘The Friendly Kitsune,’ they called her."
That explains how she got lucky, Ichiro thought. She didn't, but she was just so silly so everyone thought it was a performance.
I got caught because my illusions are so bad. I’ve got to get better and find a way to make money! Gin was embarrassed. She released the kami and hung her head. Ichiro waved his hand and breeze kami floated away.
The man in yellow said to Ichiro, "You were arrested because you, a man, were bathing on the woman's side of the Sixth Street bathhouse and using Kitsune tricks to sell incense to young girls.”
“What’s the penalty?” Asked Ichiro dreading the answer. Gin hugged herself.
“A good flogging for a man being on the women’s side and two days picking up chamber pot waste or paying a hefty fine for Kitsune tricks. Since this is your first offense and you made a good impression yesterday.”
Gin and Ichiro looked at one another. Gin took a deep breath. “I was at the bath house and sold those girls incense.” Ichiro won’t be flogged, and that’s all that matters, she thought.
The onmyoji nodded. “And?”
Gin’s face was bright red and she couldn’t look Mr. Yellow in the eye. “And it was me selling rice in the market yesterday,” she mumbled.
“There was no man on the women's side of the bathhouse, a good decision on your part," the man in yellow said to Ichiro. I like him, Ichiro decided.
“What’s the fine?” Gin asked. She still couldn’t raise her head.
Mr. Yellow told them. Gin was very disappointed, it was far more than the two of them had ever had in their lives. Two days of chamber pots! I’ll have to concentrate on cherry blossoms and hear that laughter all day or I’ll be sick constantly.
“Tell me, are you from Big Fork?” Mr. Yellow asked seriously. “If you answer me, and I believe you, I’ll pay the fine. But,” he said seeing Gin’s horrified expression, “But, you’ll have to work for me for the next two months.”
Ichiro and Gin exchanged another glance and nodded. Work means money, Ichiro thought. Gin’s eyes filled with tears as she stared at the floor again. “Yes, we are from Big Fork,” Ichiro answered quietly.
The onmyoji nodded. “In that case, by the end of two months, you may wish you’d chosen to empty the chamber pots. Now, what happened last winter in Big Fork?” He asked gently.
Gin didn’t speak, but the room filled with a distant maniacal laughter. The same laughter that Gin heard every time she talked to the kami. The same laughter she heard every time her mind wandered. It was the sound she heard the last happy day of her life.
The man in yellow stiffened.
"Gin, is this …" Gin’s memory of the laughter made his skin crawl and teeth hurt. All the death and sadness was bad enough, but hearing this almost constantly? No wonder she can’t control her illusions, Ichiro thought.
"Yes big brother. I heard it underneath the water when we were swimming at the hot spring. You are under the waterfall and never heard it. When we returned home, everyone was already sick, don't you remember Ichiro?" Gin said quietly. That day she'd rushed out of the spring without drying off and run home on four legs. Icicles formed on her fur. By the time Ichiro joined her, everyone was coughing and dying. Gin rolled her parents over so they wouldn’t choke, then the two of them flipped as many Kitsune as they could, but it didn’t matter in the end.
The laughter faded. “That’s what happened,” Gin said numbly, then went very still. Ichiro let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. The sound had made him wince. The onmyoji relaxed as well. It bothered him, too, Ichiro realized.
“I believe you,” the man in yellow said kindly. Gin didn’t react.
“Gin, Gin. Make the room smell good.” I don’t want to lose her again, Ichiro thought. What a terrible burden she’s carried.
Gin mumbled something to the kami and the smell of cherry blossoms filled the cell. A few petals drifted between them and the onmyoji.
"That is a very lovely smell indeed, young Kitsune," he said.
"My name is Gin. Thank you sir," She looked him in the eyes for the first time, then bowed.
“I am Tenth Rank Taira no Reizo. And you and your brother have been staying at one of our family’s granaries. We’ve had very little rice lost this year. It’s a pleasure to meet the two Kitsune responsible for killing all the rodents. If only it were under better circumstances.”
“I am Ichiro, sir. We are happy to serve,” he added, then bowed.
“After Big Fork, everyone in Hot Springs Pass died as well.” Tenth Rank Taira said. Gin looked confused.
“The human village,” Ichiro whispered. Gin scowled.
“There are reports of other villages in the Province where people fall ill. Some survivors, few that there are, report laughter. Many who live are quite mad. I want the two of you to help the Ministry of Onmyodo investigate and determine if this is a threat to The Capital. Perhaps now you see why I wondered if chamber pot duty was preferable,” Tenth Rank Taira said.
Ichiro nodded and looked at his little sister. Is she ready for this?
Gin stood straight and a fire burned in her eyes. Ichiro hadn’t seen that look in a very long time. “I want vengeance. Blind and deaf humans shouldn’t have to suffer either. Then I will never hear that horrible sound again,” she said.
The room filled with floating cherry blossoms and the smell of a beautiful spring day.
Ichiro, Gin, and Taira no Reizo return in “Laughter is the Worst Medicine.”
Pic By Keven Law - originally posted to Flickr as Whispering I love you...:O)), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4730047