Winter Foxes

EDIT: There's hints of violence and fighting.

Erin pulled her goose-down coat tighter as the cold bit into her. When she’d first moved to Hokkaido, winter had felt like a personal attack—wind needling through every gap, snow piling up faster than she could shovel. She’d only planned to stay a year, teach English in Sapporo, go back to Toronto, and attend law school.

That was before Yuki.

He’d found her half-lost after a ski trip, shivering at the wrong bus stop in the dark, and guided her back to town—then somehow, smoothly, left with her number and a promise to “show her a proper winter.”

She picked up her pace, dodging through the mob of salarymen and office ladies. Their gray coats and gray eyes blurred together, rings of exhaustion like bruises under fluorescent light.

Not Yuki.

He strolled against the tide like the snow wasn’t even there, wrapped in a blue kimono patterned with falling snowflakes, a parcel slung over his shoulder.

“Yuki!” Erin called, waving.

He turned, twirling the parcel so she could see the print—a white fox snapping at the snow. Her heart raced; it always did around him. He was the reason she was still here. Him and the kids she taught—but mostly him.

Erin ran the last few steps. He was a stroke of warmth and color in a sea of concrete and bureaucracy. She grabbed him in a hug and breathed in his scent—earthy and clean, a hint of rice and incense.

“O, excuse me, madam,” Yuki said in his careful, bookish English, like he’d learned it watching BBC period pieces.

“What are you doing here?” she laughed, looking up into his eyes. They were their usual soft brown today, but when the light caught them they always flashed gold.

“Being accosted,” he said cheerfully. He tucked an arm around her waist and spun her once on the snowy pavement, ignoring the looks.

Erin squeaked and clung tighter, losing herself in his warmth and that stupid mischievous smirk.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said once her boots were firmly back on the ground.

“Oh? Do you now, my dear?” Yuki cocked his head, lips curling.

Erin rolled her eyes but she would never admit she loved his accent. She slid a hand into her coat pocket. Her fingers brushed the stiff edges of traditional paper. She’d already read the letter twice: a neat, polite note from Yuki’s cousin, Seo-rin, in Korea. Seo-rin was coming to Japan. She wanted to surprise Yuki. Seo-rin had explicitly told Erin not to tell him.

Erin had written back, giving Seo-rin Yuki’s address. It had felt good, for once, to be the one arranging the surprise instead of just tagging along in his country. Erin smiled as wide as Yuki, imagining his face when he saw his cousin waiting for him.

“Yeah, but you’ll have to wait,” Erin said.

Yuki laid his hand on the small of her back as they started walking. A little shiver went up her spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

“Well, I am very good at figuring out surprises,” he said, bouncing his eyebrows.

She tucked herself closer against his side, her breath puffing white in the air. “Do you have any family here? In Hokkaido or abroad?”

“Of course.” Yuki tilted the parcel to shield her from the falling snow. “But most of my family lives elsewhere. A famous aunt, Kuzunoha, in Kyoto. An uncle in Nagoya. A niece in Okinawa these days. She’s chasing after some US Marine.” His smile thinned, just a fraction. “And cousins in Korea. They would eat someone like you up.”

He bumped her hip playfully as he said it.

Erin pinched his side through the kimono, making him flinch in fake pain. “Please. I can handle your cousins. My family’s all Scottish.”

“You certainly give as good as you get,” Yuki said, pinching her back. He ignored the quick, disapproving glances from middle-aged salarymen and their equally tired wives. “But my cousins are voracious.”

Erin’s thumb stroked the folded edge of Seo-rin’s letter. Her heart raced even faster. Yuki had always gotten her things, taken her places; now she was finally able to give him something that felt like it belonged in his world.

They turned the corner onto Yuki’s street. His house sat at the end, a small, cozy traditional home squeezed between boxy modern builds. Snow had softened its edges, piling on the tiled roof and wooden fence.

Yuki stopped and leaned in, nuzzling the side of her neck. His hair—dyed white these days in a way that should’ve looked ridiculous—brushed her skin. It always made her feel oddly safe, like being wrapped in a fox-fur collar.

“Could you be a dear and check if the neighbor’s dog is home?” he murmured, still nuzzling, his eyes blinking slowly.

“You’re such a softy.” Erin shoved at his shoulder, but her fingers lingered on the silk of his kimono. “That dog is the friendliest thing on the planet.” Yuki was always scared of dogs no matter the size.

Yuki gave her a small wave as she crunched through the snow toward the next gate.

The neighbor’s dog, a massive akita, sat at the corner of the yard—staring straight at Yuki’s house. The fur along its spine was standing up.

“Hey, buddy.” Erin crouched and held out a hand. “Come on, Yuki. It’s fine.”

The dog sniffed her, huffed, and wagged its tail once, but its gaze never left Yuki’s front door.

“Dogs don’t like me,” Yuki called lightly. He craned his neck, trying to see around her. “They never have.”

“Please.” Erin scratched behind the dog’s ear. “You should meet her. She’s sweet.”

The dog sniffed again, then slowly shifted, planting its body between Erin and Yuki’s home. Its muscles tightened.

WOOF.

The bark rolled out of its chest so deep she felt it in her ribs. Its fur bristled higher.

Yuki moved—quick as a fox across untouched snow. One moment he was at the neighbor’s gate, the next he was standing at his own, breath steady, kimono barely disturbed. No footprints marked where he’d crossed.

The dog’s barking rose, sharper, as it put itself fully between Erin and Yuki.

Erin knew Yuki was graceful. He always moved like someone dancing between snowflakes, but she had never seen such speed.

“Come on, Erin.” Yuki stood at his gate, as composed as if he’d just strolled there. “It’s freezing.”

Erin hesitated, one hand still on the dog’s neck. Its body trembled under her palm. It whimpered softly, as if begging her not to go. Some small, skittish part of her wanted to listen.

She looked back at Yuki. For a heartbeat, his eyes flashed gold. She thought his pupils slitted for a moment, but the light always played tricks with his eyes.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she whispered to the dog, giving it one last scratch. It licked her glove once, then sat again, watching the house like a sentry.

She walked back to Yuki, letting his fingers lace with hers.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, glancing past her at the akita. The dog stared right back, unblinking. “How would you like to live here? With me.”

“Yuki…” Erin’s chest tightened. For a second, her life back home in Toronto ghosted through her mind—applications still sitting at her parents’ house, a future she’d promised everyone she was still chasing. All replaced by a picture of her toothbrush by his sink shoved in next to it.

He bent his forehead down to touch hers, their noses almost brushing. The cold bit at her cheeks; his skin was warm.

“I would love that,” she breathed.

“Good.” His smile returned, bright and sharp. He slid the door open.

The smell of cedar and incense spilled out to meet them.

Erin stepped in first—and stopped.

A woman knelt just inside on the tatami rice mat, her back straight, her long black hair glossy as ink. The lamplight caught on her features, throwing shadows that were too long behind her.

Erin’s fingers closed instinctively around the letter in her pocket. She pulled it out, the paper crackling.

“Yuki,” she said, forcing a smile. “This is your surprise.”

Yuki froze in the doorway behind her. Every hair on his arms lifted; she could feel the way his body went rigid, like he’d seen death.

“Oh, cousin,” the woman said, rising gracefully to her feet. Her smile widened, just a touch too far. “And I see you’ve brought dinner.”

“We don’t have dinner yet,” Yuki said quickly, his hand coming to rest on Erin’s shoulder, stopping her from stepping farther in. “We were going to go out.” His voice was like silk hiding a knife.

The shadows behind the woman flickered, oddly independent of the lamp. For a second, Erin could’ve sworn she saw tails. Nine of them.

“My cousin has always had such strange tastes,” the woman said, taking a soundless step forward on the mat. “Humans. Foreign ones.”

“Erin, please wait outside.” Yuki’s voice stayed calm, but there was an edge in it she’d never heard before.

“But I want—” Erin started. Every nerve in her body screamed to run. She gripped the back of his kimono. Her palm brushed over something beneath the silk—

Soft. Dense.

Fur.

“Please, Erin.”

Yuki’s voice dropped - almost a yip.

“I’ll only need a moment.”

“I would love to meet your…” The woman’s face seemed to stretch as she smiled, her nose sharpening, eyes narrowing. “…lover.”

Erin’s gaze snapped between them, between Yuki’s tense profile and the woman’s almost-fox smile. His hand gently but firmly guided her backward, behind the doorframe.

She stumbled out onto the entrance; snow-chilled air slapped her cheeks. The last thing she saw before the door slid shut was their shadows thrown against the paper: not two people, but shapes with ears and tails.

The neighbor’s dog began barking madly.

Then the lock clicked.

Erin froze, the letter cutting into her palm.

For a heartbeat she pretended this was still a romantic surprise — something she might laugh about later.

Then the inside of Yuki’s house erupted into a storm of violence.

Wood cracked against something solid. High, sharp yips tangled with deeper growls and human cries. The thud of a body hitting the floor made the frame rattle.

Erin’s hand flew to her mouth to hold in a scream. She had invited Seo-rin. She had given her Yuki’s address. Seo-rin’s letter shook in Erin’s trembling hand.

A final crash—a body slamming into a wall and a sick, slick slide down—snapped her out of it.

The door to Yuki’s house slid open.

“Please, come in.” Seo-rin brushed blood off her lips with the back of one pale hand. Her smile was impossibly wide.

Erin knew she should run, call the police, do anything but stand there. Her body betrayed her as her eyes went straight to Yuki’s slumped form. His blue kimono was torn, white snowflakes stained dark with blood.

“Oh my god.” The words fell out of her. She had given Seo-rin Yuki’s address. She’d wanted to surprise him, to give him a gift, and now his chest barely rose, his breath ragged.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Seo-rin purred. “To surprise Yuki?” She took a slow step forward. The snow did not crunch under her feet.

The neighbor’s dog barked frantically from its yard, claws scraping against the fence. Seo-rin took another predatory step.

Erin’s body moved before her mind could catch up. She bolted sideways, sprinting toward the only safety she could think of—the neighbor’s akita.

Seo-rin only laughed, a high-pitched, delighted sound that made the hair on Erin’s neck rise. That laugh told Erin everything: she had done this. Erin had invited her in.

She fumbled the gate open and released the massive dog, her hands shaking. The akita exploded forward, foam flecking its jaws, barreling straight toward Seo-rin.

Seo-rin’s smile finally tightened. She turned and slipped away into the snow, light as ash, the dog in hot pursuit, barking like a creature from another age.

Erin ran back to Yuki and knelt next to him, knees hitting the tatami. She brushed his white hair back from his face. Her fingers grazed something at the top of his head—soft and triangular and furred. A fox’s ear.

She had always known Yuki had his secrets. But this—

Yuki’s hand, cut and bleeding, groped for hers. Erin caught it, a lifeline to the man she loved. She squeezed. His fingers squeezed back, weak and feeble.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. His breath hitched. “I don’t know how she found me.”

The words hit her harder than any tackle she’d taken playing rugby, harder than any fall. They punched the air out of her lungs. She had written back to Seo-rin. Given her the address. She had caused this.

She could lie. Blame coincidence, fate, anything but herself. The truth still clawed its way up her throat.

“I…” Her voice shook more than her hands. “I gave her your address.” The confession scraped raw. “I wanted to surprise you. I thought it would make you happy. I shouldn’t have kept secrets from you.”

Yuki’s lips curled, forcing a smirk between coughs. “I shouldn’t have kept secrets from you,” he echoed. As the words left his mouth, his face elongated further, features sliding fox-ward, fur bristling along his jaw.

Erin lowered her head until her forehead rested against his, trying to hold back tears. Outside, snow continued to fall, soft and relentless, dusting the broken doorstep and the path where the dog had run.

Winter had never felt so cold —

or so honest.