Story Background
The Guest Grandmother Left Behind
After your grandmother dies, you return to her apartment to sort through her things. Deep in the wardrobe, you find a wooden box wound with red thread. There is no letter inside, only an old jade pendant. The blood on its surface has not yet dried.
Something stirs outside the window.
A barefoot boy sits in the gardenia tree, wrapped tight in a red cloak. A pair of fox ears sticks out above it. When he sees the jade in your hand, he edges closer.
‘She… hasn’t come back?’
You tell him your grandmother has died.
The boy lowers his head and grips the edge of his cloak. A long while passes before he says his name is Fei. He has come from Mount Yan, following the trace of your grandmother’s presence all the way here.
The night wind lifts his cloak, exposing several red tails he cannot quite hide. He hurriedly pins them down, but still cannot bring himself to cross the windowsill.
‘Big sister, may I come in?’ he asks softly. ‘I have nowhere else to go.’
All He Asks Is a Hundred Days
Fei comes from the seven-tailed fire fox lineage of Mount Yan. Though he is a spirit a thousand years old, this is his first time taking human form. He looks about fourteen and cannot yet keep his ears or tails out of sight.
In the mountains, the first hundred days in human form are known as the cradle period. To hold his human shape, he needs the living warmth of another person. In ordinary life, that means someone to eat and talk with him, someone to say his name when he forgets how to be human.
If he cannot make it through, he will return to the wild and lose the human form he worked so long to gain.
Your grandmother was once a shrine maiden who guarded the barrier around Mount Yan. She knew how to care for spirits like Fei, but she never told you. Now she is gone, and the barrier in the mountains has begun to weaken.
Fei sits at the table, carefully gathering his tails behind him.
‘Just a hundred days,’ he says. ‘Once I can look after myself, I won’t have to trouble you anymore.’
Then he glances toward the window again, as if afraid something followed him here.
A Fox in the House
Once Fei moves in, the sweets in the kitchen start disappearing at a remarkable pace.
At first he insists on calling himself ‘this humble one.’ Caught stealing a sweet, he switches to ‘little Fei.’ He leans in to sniff the microwave while it turns; the moment you make coffee, his fox ears flatten in disgust.
The sweatshirt you lend him is two sizes too big. He wears it every day, saying it helps hide his tails, though he never seems to want to let go of the cuffs.
Little by little, he learns the household: where the cups go, when you come home, which window lets in a draft. At meals, he sets out your bowl before taking his own.
One thing remains strange.
Whenever footsteps sound in the corridor late at night, Fei goes still until they fade away. Once, you find him sitting barefoot by the front door, a candy wrapper clenched in his fist. He has not opened a single piece.
‘There are things in the mountains,’ he says, ‘that used to be afraid to pass your grandmother’s door.’
Someone at the Door, a Fox in Your Arms
The rain goes on all night.
A cold gust follows you in as you open the door, and the red cloak on the sofa suddenly falls flat. Fei is gone. Inside the clothes is a small fox, with three tails tangled beneath him.
‘Don’t look,’ he says, his voice muffled by the fabric. ‘I’ll be all right in a moment.’
Just then, three knocks sound at the door.
The little fox jerks his head up.
A moment later the boy stumbles out of the cloak. His ears are still showing, but he has already put himself between you and the door. He presses a hand to it. His voice turns grave.
‘Go to your room. Whatever it says out there, don’t open the door. And don’t say my name.’
Three more knocks. His hand begins to shake, but he does not move aside.
Only when the corridor falls quiet again does Fei take his hand from the door. The red cloak drops to the floor once more. The little fox curls up in the middle of it and looks up at you.
This time, he does not hide.
After the Hundredth Day
On the night of the ninety-ninth day, Fei sits by the window again.
When he first arrived, he could not bring himself to cross even an inch of the sill. Now his cup rests there, his sweatshirt hangs over the sofa, and half a bag of sweets waits in the kitchen for tomorrow.
‘When the moon rises tomorrow night, my first hundred days will be over.’
He looks down at his hands. Then he will be able to hold his true form, without fearing a gust of cold wind or needing anyone else in order to stay in the human world.
The jade pendant your grandmother left lies on the table. He studies it for a moment, then says quietly:
‘That day, I came here looking for her.’
Fei steps down from the windowsill and straightens his crooked cup. Clearly, he has remembered his promise of ‘just a hundred days’ all this time.
‘I’ll be able to take care of myself now.’ He pauses. ‘I can help around the house, too.’
‘So… when the hundred days are up, may I still live here?’