Fox Sister

shanastoryteller:

there is a farmer who has a beautiful and strong wife, and
she bears him three beautiful and strong sons. the eldest is of soft voice and
hard temper, and his name is jae-shin. the second is quick to anger and yells
too much, but is quick to forgive, and his name is ki-tae. the third is of even
temper and soft voice, and his name is min-woo.

the farmer loves his family very much, but he feels as if
it’s incomplete. he loves his sons, but he desperately wants a little girl to
call his own. he prays and prays, asking for a little girl. he doesn’t care if
she’s not like his other children, if she is weak or ugly, he vows to love her
just the same no matter what.

his prayers are answered, and nine months later his wife
gives birth to a baby girl. but she’s not weak, and she’s not ugly. she’s every
bit as strong and beautiful as her brothers.

they call her yeon-saeng.

~

yeon-saeng is smarter and stronger than her brothers, than
her parents, but she doesn’t say anything, never points it out, because she
loves them dearly and would never want to hurt them.

yeon-saeng is ten years old when the hunger grows to be too
much to ignore. she’s hungry constantly, and they are not a rich family, but
her mother gives her all the food she asks for with a smile, pats her hands and
kisses her cheeks and says nothing of the strain her eternal appetite puts on
their household.

but no matter how much she eats, she’s never full. it’s not
what she craves.

she is ten years old, and it’s the night of the full moon
when she sneaks into the barn. she knows what she wants, what she needs, but
she hesitates even now. she wishes there was another way, but she knows if she
doesn’t eat, then she’ll die. she doesn’t’ want to die.

she kills the cow, and eats its liver, bites into its heart,
and her hunger is sated.

the next morning, the cow is found, and her father says it
looks like a fox did it.

yeon-saeng burns with shame, and says nothing.

~

she doesn’t have to eat every night, if she did then they
would run out of cows and her family would go hungry. she doesn’t want them to
go hungry, and she does not want to die, so she waits. she waits until her
stomach is bloated with hunger and she feels ravenous with it, half mad with
it, then sneaks out under the night of the full moon to kill another cow. for
now, she does not need too many, can go months between feeding so long as she
pushed herself.

she’s changing. her nails are sharper, more pointed, and her
hair gleams red in sunlight. she doesn’t think she’s a little girl. she doesn’t
even think she’s truly her parents’ daughter.

but the thought is too heartbreaking to contemplate, so she
doesn’t.

~

the father worries after his livestock, and the fox he can’t
seem to catch. he sends jae-shin to hide in the barn and keep a look out, to
kill whatever is killing their cows.

jae-shin waits, and he hides, and he watches his sister kill
the cow and eat its liver and heart. her hands become claws, her hair turns
red, and fangs sprout from her mouth. she’s a fox demon forced to into human
shape, an abomination to humans and demons alike. he’s horrified, and afraid,
but he can’t bring himself to kill her.

she is his sister.

the next day, he tells his father everything. he says they
have to do something, that she’s a monster, that soon she’ll hurt them.

jae-shin could not bring himself to kill her. but he still
believes she should be killed.

the farmer is furious that his son could say such horrible
things about his beloved daughter. he says that jae-shin must have fallen
asleep, and had a bad dream, that he speaks of madness. but jae-shin will not
back down, and eventually the farmer throws his son from the house, saying
never to darken their doorstep again, that any son that could speak of killing
family is no son of his.

yeon-saeng pleads on her brother’s behalf. she can’t risk
telling them the truth, she should be happy it is jae-shin who is tossed aside
and not her. but she loves her brother. he is mean and surly, quiet in his
misery, but he let her ride on his shoulder when she was little and taught her
to tame a horse and let her huddle into his side when she became frightened by
thunder storms. she does not want him to go.

but father will not listen, and jae-shin is forced to go.

a few months, and another dead cow later, he sends ki-tae to
the barn, to find what is killing the cows and to kill whatever animal it is.
ki-tae is terrified of falling asleep and being thrown out like his elder
brother, so he stays wide awake and vigilant the whole night.

he sees what jae-shin saw – his little sister half
transforming into a fox demon, and killing and eating a cow’s heart and liver.
he’s not afraid. he’s furious. he is quick to anger over small things, but this
is not a small thing. yeon-saeng allowed their father to kick out their
brother, even what he told the truth. she said nothing as he left them, when
she could have saved him. she did nothing.

he sneaks back to the house and wakes his father, bidding
him to come to the barn quickly. but when he returns, yeon-saeng is gone. the
cow is there dead, it’s liver and heart gone, but his sister is nowhere to be
found. he runs back into the house, his father at his heels, and finds
yeon-saeng fast asleep in bed. he pulls her from her bed onto the floor. she
cries out in pain, and his father pushes him against the wall, furious. ki-tae
yells at her, says to tell father what she did, calls her a monster with all
the disgust he can muster.

yeon-saeng pulls her knees to her chest, crying, and for a
single moment ki-tae feels a stab or remorse. but she is a monster, and his father must know. they all have to know. how
long before she kills one of them?

father is just as furious with him as he was with jae-shin.
again, yeon-saeng pleads for brother, begging her father to let him stay. no
matter his temper, ki-tae is always kind in those small moments, in the quiet
lulls between his anger he has bandaged her scraped knees and braided her hair,
and he would roll her rice into the shape of a snake when she was little and would
grow stubborn and refuse to eat. she loves him, and she doesn’t want him to go.

but father will not listen, and ki-tae is forced to go.

a few more months, and another dead cow later, father sends
min-woo to spend the night in the barn, to find out what is killing the cows,
and to kill whatever it is. he sits, and waits, and sees what his brothers saw.
he sees yeon-saeng kill the cow, and eat its heart and liver.

he does nothing at all.

the next morning, he tells his father that he didn’t see
anything. whatever is killing the cows was too quick for him. father wants to
be angry that min-woo failed, but he’s secretly relieved that at least his
youngest son, so calm and even tempered, hasn’t been affected by the madness that
had taken his eldest sons, and resigns himself to the lost livestock.

it is not ideal, but it’s not crippling them, not killing
them.

~

yeon-saeng loves min-woo, but misses her eldest brothers
terribly. on the surface, min-woo is nicer, he’s never made fun of her or
gotten mud on her clothes, never yelled that she was too young to play with
him. he never seeks her out, but always welcomes her when she comes to him.

he’s not as mean as their elder brothers, but he’s not as
nice either.  

yeon-saeng is thirteen the first time she eats a cow’s liver
and heart, and still feels the gnawing pains of hunger. she keeps eating,
desperate, because this is her only option. she eats the rest of the internal
organs, the muscle, all of it. she keeps eating until the red of dawn beats
against the barn doors. she’s covered in blood, more fox than girl, and there’s
nothing left of the cow but bones.

she’s still hungry.

~

she hopes it’s a fluke, a mistake. she waits, to see if time
will make her full, but it’s just the opposite. her whole body aches with
hunger, her limbs grow sluggish and heavy. she sleeps the day away, hoping it
will help, that she’ll wake up feeling normal, but it doesn’t work.

her parents fret over her, and her brother watches her with
calm, even eyes that give away nothing at all. the days pass, and she seems to
flip, instead of becoming weaker, she becomes stronger. her body fills with a
frantic, desperate energy to feed, and she huddles under the blankets, afraid
to let her family see her. she can’t get her claws or teeth to go away, her
hair is bright red. she looks like a fox, and nothing she does makes it go
away.

late at night, her hunger becomes too much, and she snaps.
she’s outside her parent’s door when she realizes what she was about to do, her
hand just about to slide open their door.

she’s so certain that a single human heart could sate her
hunger.

yeon-saeng runs. it’s painful to walk away, she can smell
them, smell her brother down the hall, and her mouth waters. she’s so hungry. but
she forces herself to walk away and runs to the barn.

she kills half their heard that night, gobbling up hearts
and livers in a frenzy. she slaughters the next cow while the previous one’s
warm, wet heart is still in her hand.

it’s not quite daybreak, and she’s not hungry anymore. she’s
not quite satisfied, but the ravenous
yearning deep in her gut is gone.

it’s a devastating loss. her father will struggle to survive
now that half his cows are dead. and what’s worse is this – she cannot stay.
she will either eat the other half, and leave them penniless to starve, or she
will give in to her urges, and kill them herself. she’s selfish, but not that
selfish. she loves her family too much to do this to them.

when the sun rises into the sky, she’s gone.

~

her hair never goes back to black. it’s a permanent dark
orange, and her nails are too sharp, and her teeth a little too long. but she
almost looks like a person, as long as no one looks too closely.

the first few years are the hardest. she wanders through towns,
too young to do any real work, but sometimes a kind innkeep would let her clean
tables in exchange for a room. other times, she sneaks into barns and sleeps
among the warm, dry hay.

she has to eat, and she has to eat often. small animals
don’t satisfy her, she tries chickens and rabbits, even sheep don’t sate her
hunger. cows and boars will do, and horses probably would too, but she’s
reluctant to test her theory. partially because killing a horse will certainly
garner more attention than she wants. but also because, well, she likes horses. she thinks they have kind
eyes, and she’ll sooner eat a horse than she will a human, but would prefer to
have neither, honestly.

she misses rice cakes. they were her favorite as a child,
but now they taste like ashes in her mouth.

when possible, she hunts for he own food in the forest,
searching out wild board to feed herself with. but sometimes that’s not
possible, and when that happens she sneaks away to a pasture and kills a cow.
they always say it looks like a fox attack.

she doesn’t want people to go hungry because of her, to
suffer because of her, so she doesn’t stay in one town for long. she moves
around constantly, killing and stealing the livestock of farmers she needs to
live, trying to keep her head down and not cause trouble.

she still craves human hearts more than anything else. but
as long as she keeps herself well fed it’s … well, not easy to ignore it, but manageable.

she’s managing.

~

yeon-saeng is sixteen, and it’s much easier. people hire her
to serve drinks in restaurants now, will hire her to smile at customers now.

she still doesn’t look quiet human, but people never seem to
notice that.

she’s beautiful. they don’t know what she is, they don’t
care, all they care for is her pretty face. she always smiles with her mouth
closed so they don’t see her teeth, but that’s okay. things are easier now.

she is sixteen when she makes a friend.

it’s not one she expected to make, if she ever thought she’d
have one. she keeps everyone way, women are nice to her and men want her, but
she rejects them all, keeping to herself and offering them nothing more than
her close-lipped smile.

she’s a monster. those around her risk one day being eaten
by her, and the pain of that potential loss stops her whenever she fees the
urge to reach out to someone. she thinks of her parents often, of her brothers.
she hopes they’re happy. sometimes she hopes they’ve forgotten her, but she’s
still a selfish girl, and the thought that not one person cares for her cuts
like a knife.

but one person does come to care for her.

his name is bou, and he’s a monk. he is plain, and
nondescript, but there are not many buddhist monks, and he stands out, somehow,
with his calm face and plain grey robes. he follows her from town to town, and at
first she thinks it is a coincidence, that maybe they are simply traveling in
the same direction. but soon it’s too much to be a coincidence, and she can
only think of one reason a monk would have for following her. he must know what
she is, and be here to kill her.

she does not want to die.

yeon-saeng corners him, nails and claws out, eyes blazing
red, and says she will not die easily, says that she does not want to kill him,
but she will to preserve her own life.

she’s already thinking that if she does kill him, she’ll
have to tear out his heart and liver and grind it into the dirt so she does not
eat them. once she starts eating humans, she doesn’t know if she could stop,
and to leave them whole would be a temptation she would be unable to refuse.

he looks at her, unflinching, and tells her a story. he happened
upon two brothers not long ago, with very strange histories. born into
near-poverty, they were separated as teenagers and led remarkable lives. the
eldest was adopted into a noble family and became one of the hwarang, the
refined and cultured warriors who live on the edges of the country. the younger
became the assistant to a yangban, the high level civil servants of the
country. both now had prestigious positions rarely achieved by nobility. they
happened to pass each other on the street one day just a few short months ago,
both visiting a city they were not from, and recognized each other instantly.

they cried to find each other again, and it is here when bou
overheard them talking while at a tavern. they spoke of their sister, who killed
their cows and devoured their hearts and livers, and was the reason they’d been
thrown from their homes. they spoke of their sister, who was not their sister
by blood, but a demon sent from the heavens, for some misdeed none of them knew
of. they spoke of their sister, who they knew to be a monster, and who they
could not face. they spoke of their sister, who they loved in spite of everything,
to this very day.  

bou intended to find her, and kill her, to rid the world of
her evil. but he finds her, and finds that she is not evil. that she is kind,
and hurting, and alone, and trying so desperately to do no harm, to be a good
person in a world that does not have enough good people.

a demon she may be, but a monster she is not.

yeon-saeng is sobbing by the end of this, stepping away from
him. bou has decided that she is the best kind of person, and that he would
like to follow her, to travel with her, if she will allow it. she tries to refuse,
says she will put him in danger, but bou does not listen.

she doesn’t have to let him be her friend. but he will
follow her wherever she goes, so she might as well make this easier on both of
them. she does not give in until he makes her a promise – if she ever does
become a monster, he’ll kill her himself. when she cannot trust herself, she
can trust him.

bou and yeon-saeng travel together, and although she worries
constantly, yeon-saeng never harms him. years pass, and she grows stronger, she
leans even further into her demon powers.

she is at least part kumiho, part nine tailed demon, and there
are certain skills that come with that. with bou and his holy powers by her
side, she feels comfortable exploring them for the first time. if she ever goes
too far, bou will stop her.

she is a young woman when bou convinces her to seek out her
family, to try and make amends with them. she cannot yet face her eldest
brothers, whose lives she forced off course so dramatically, but agrees to try
and visit her parents and youngest elder brother at home.

when she arrives, there are no cows in the pasture, and she
worries. the house looks worn, and it feels empty. she knocks on the door, fear
and worry making her shake, and it is only bou’s presence at her back that
steadies her.

but the door opens, and it’s her brother, min-woo. he’s
older, of course, but he looks healthy, looks fine. he’s startled to see her,
but welcomes her inside like nothing has changed, like she hasn’t been missing
for a decade. he doesn’t move to embrace her, and she holds herself back,
uncertain. he tells her she has good timing, because he has invited their elder
brothers home.

min-woo tells her that their parents have died, and she’s
nearly bowled over in her grief. but he implores her to stay, says that now
they can be a family once more. yeon-saeng agrees because she doesn’t know what
else to do, her kind mother and father who loved her so very much are dead, and
even though she hasn’t seen them in years their loss is just as devastating.
min-woo comforts her, tells her they were simply old, and these things happen.
she doesn’t think they were that old, but what does she know, she hasn’t been
there for years.

she agrees, and min-woo tells her he has nothing to feed her
and her companion, but she doesn’t mind. pretending to enjoy rice that tastes
like dirt is a waste on both of them, and bou has endured much worse than a
night’s sleep on an empty stomach. min-woo does offer them water, which they
accept. it doesn’t taste clean, but both are too polite to say anything about
it.

so they settle down, and bou falls asleep at her back, like
he always does, and she eventually falls into a fitful sleep, thoughts of her
dead parents and her living brothers chasing around her head.

when she awakes, everything has somehow gotten even worse.

she’s tied up, and she twists to see bou is as well,
wide-eyed and with a gag in his mouth. min-woo sits in front of them, a cruel
twist to his mouth she’s never seen before. her head is foggy, and it takes her
a moment to process everything. the water must have been drugged.

he tells them their timing is perfect. he’d nearly run out
of their parents’ flesh to eat, and so had invited their elder brothers home,
intent on killing them and eating them. but eating her flesh, consuming the
heart of a kumiho, will sustain him so much longer than mere humans would.

she looks at him in horror, not understanding. she asks if
he was born a demon too, if he’s like her, but he laughs at her. he is just a
human, but if he eats her maybe he will be something more.

min-woo takes a hunk of something folded in butcher paper
and unwraps it, and in the center is a heart. the scent hits her nose all at
once, and she knows it’s a human heart.

that it’s her father’s heart.

he’s been saving this for himself, but the stronger she is
when he kills and eats her, the stronger she will make him. he holds it to her
mouth, and parts of her wants it, it’s not fresh but it hasn’t gone bad, has
been kept frozen and recently defrosted by the smell, and her mouth is already
watering. she lives with a constant low-level hunger, but now it’s out in full
force, begging her to bite into the heart her brother is holding to her lips.

she closes her mouth and shakes her head, turning away from
it. this isn’t right. it’s not fair. she asks why, asks if it was because they
ran out of food, was there truly nothing else for him to eat?

he says business was fine. they had plenty to eat. he just
wanted to eat them, he just wanted to
kill and eat human flesh, says he wanted to become stronger, and this seemed
like the easiest way to do it.

this is incomprehensible to yeon-saeng, who has struggled
against the gnawing in her stomach her whole life. she could break the ropes,
could break min-woo. she’s a kumiho. her power is so far beyond min-woo’s that
it’s laughable.

but guilt and grief swallow her. maybe the true reason she
was born into her family was not divine punishment, maybe she was meant to
protect them, to keep them safe. maybe her true purpose was to protect her
beloved parents from min-woo, and she has failed. her parents are dead, her
brother is a monster, and she has failed at the one thing she supposed to do.

she has no reason to live. once min-woo eats her, he will
have no need of bou, her friend will be fine. she won’t eat her father’s heart,
even now, at the end, but she can’t seem to muster the will to defend herself.

bou is screaming through his gag, surely begging her to do
something, but she can’t move, too numb to do anything at all. min-woo gets
tired of trying to force her to eat the heart, and lifts up a knife, moving to
slit her throat.

before he gets the chance, a blade is shoved through his
chest and out his mouth, killing him instantly. yeon-saeng looks up, wide eyed.

min-woo slides off the blade, revealing the man holding it.
it is her eldest brother, jae-shin. her second eldest brother ki-tae is at his
side. they’re older too, more steady, firmer than she remembers them being. she
bows her head, waiting for her own death blow, but it doesn’t come.

instead ki-tae throws his arms around her, her eldest
brother doing the same. they heard everything, they know everything. they cry
as they hold her, apologies falling from their lips. she is their sister, and
they love her, and they’re sorry they ever doubted her.

they could never bring themselves to hurt her, but did not
hesitate to cut down min-woo. maybe deep down they’d always known who the true
monster was.

jae-shin cuts her free, and does the same for bou. yeon-saeng
is shaking in ki-tae’s arms still, but jae-shin pulls her forward and cups her
face in his hands, kisses her forehead and tells her he’s sorry, that if he
hadn’t acted so rashly so long ago maybe none of this would have happened.

yeon-saeng won’t accept their apologies, instead offering
her own for letting their father throw them out when they only spoke the truth,
for remaining silent in the face of their banishment.

their parents are dead, killed by their brother, who has
been killed by jae-shin. they are as broken as ever, but the three of them are
together once more, are willing and eager to rebuild their relationship. they
all made mistakes, but all are willing to forgive.

bou is furious with yeon-saeng for freezing, for doing
nothing to save herself. but he’s pulled between his anger and his worry that
now she has her brothers back, she won’t need him anymore. but she knows him
just as well as he knows her, so she assuages his worries and apologizes for
freezing, says she won’t do it again. she tells bou that he’s her best friend,
and she never wants him to leave.

so now this incredibly strange group is traveling together,
roaming the country – a short tempered yangban’s assistant, a charming hwarang
warrior, a buddhist monk, and a kumiho.

together, they do their best to figure out the extent of
yeon-saeng’s powers, and try to leave everywhere they go a little better, a
little less broken.

they succeed.

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