An akawari is a c.o.c.ktail composed of shochu cut with Akadama port wine. Benten threw back her head, exposing her pale throat, and noisily quaffed the pink liquor, as the clamor of the Scarlet Pane drained away like a receding tide. A stealthy flick of my eyes revealed a deserted room: the sedately drinking patrons had all vanished. Only the bartender remained, unable to leave his post, and he was backed as far into the corner as he could behind the counter. I could almost hear his knees quaking as he made a great show of concentrating on some task or other, the coward. It was like watching a school of fish scatter at the approach of a shark, but Benten paid it no mind. After all, for her, this happened every day.

With her finger she drew the arc of an arrow flying through the air.

"Just what was that back there? It gave me quite a shock."

"The Master tasked me with delivering a love letter. The river was wide, and so I took the liberty of delivering it by way of arrow."

"Do you intend to provoke me?"

"You might consider it an expression of our love-hate relations.h.i.+p."

"When someone picks a fight with me, I do so enjoy giving them what they are looking for."

"You really mustn't."

"My precious fan, all ruined. The Friday Fellows were in quite an uproar. I told them I wasn't feeling well and excused myself."

"If I meant to hit you, I would have, hahaha…"

"And I'm sure you would have, ohoho, like this, right in the eye."

Benten took out the fan in question and spread it out on the counter, tracing the large rip in its center with a long, slender finger. Each of her nails was painted with a mysterious design, and they glittered red and black whenever she moved her fingers, their eerie shapes s.h.i.+fting and swirling uncannily as if they were alive.

"My humblest apologies for the fan. If you'd like, I could—"

"Never mind. I'll hold onto it." She snapped the fan shut.

"Have you read the letter?" I asked.

"I did. Another one of his tantrums?"

"He sulks and sulks, I've never seen him so p.r.i.c.kly."

"I'll bet," t.i.ttered Benten. "It's been a long time since I was back."

"Perhaps you could consider going back once a week?"

"I don't recall asking you to probe in my affairs."

"Of course, I'm not going to poke around where I don't belong. Even a dog knows better than to stick his nose in when two lovers are quarreling."

"And what about tanuki?"

"What's wrong with being a tanuki?"

"Well, I am a human, " she replied with a flat look, and I remembered that we had shared a conversation much like this one, long ago.

"It's a shame that you're not looking for a fight. I would have been quite happy to oblige you."

"Perish the thought!"

"I would have caught you, and made you into tanuki stew for our year-end party."

"Now, I'm sure that's quite uncalled for…"

Cooly maintaining my composure, I raised a hand to hail the bartender, seeking to disperse the storm clouds that had abruptly gathered over the conversation. But the bartender wasn't there. Standing rigidly in his place was a grossly oversized s.h.i.+garaki tanuki statue: this was the transformation his fear-addled mind had chosen. Having no choice, I went to the other side of the counter to pour another Faux Denki Bran for myself, and mixed another akawari for Benten.

Benten reached over the counter and prodded my chest. "So, why the coquettish form today? Girls like you don't belong in a place like this at this time of night."

"Charmingly put together, don't you think?"

"It is that indeed."

"I thought a fresh-faced damsel might add some spice to the Master's life..."

"How very touching your devotion is."

"...but all I got in return was a heaping earful."

"Things would be much better for you if you simply left that miserable old crow to himself."

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

Benten took a sip of her drink, giving me a hard stare. "The incident with the Demon's Perch still bothers you."

"I see the same isn't true for you."

"Why should I be bothered?"

"This, this is why humans are so unbearable. You're worse than tengu."

"Well, my apologies. But as for you: you still don't understand the Master in the slightest."

Benten smiled and drained her akawari, then rose to leave.

"The Minami-za," I said, as she turned to the exit. "The Master will be there waiting."

In an instant Benten's face morphed into the terrifying visage of a demon. She lunged over the counter and seized my collar.

"Whether I meet him or not is not your concern," she hissed. Her pale complexion was now sheer white, the only color the blackness surrounding her eyes. Her breath almost left frost in the air.

"I didn't mean to overstep—" I started to say, but the words had hardly left my mouth than she leaned in and kissed me hard on the lips, with a loud smack. Her mouth was so cold I thought my lips would freeze, and when she finally pulled away I yelped, but without a word Benten turned and exited the Scarlet Pane.

"You all right?" called the tanuki statue. "My word, I don't know how you're still breathing!"

"This is what makes life worth living," I answered.

"Mark my words, one of these days you're really going to end up in a stew."

I stood up and touched my lips. Pink crystals flaked off, sparkling in my palm, and putting them into my mouth I tasted Akadama port wine.

"Here, have a drink. Unbelievable," the bartender muttered.

"On the house, right?"

"Sure, bottoms up."

I reminisced about the day I met her.

At the time, she was not yet Benten.

I ascended a long staircase up to the s.p.a.cious rooftop of the Rakutenkai building, overlooking Karasuma Boulevard in the glorious spring suns.h.i.+ne. Wispy clouds drifted lazily along the azure sky, so vast it felt as if it would swallow me up. Pa.s.sing a cosy little Inari shrine and a grimy water tank, I came to a grand, ancient cherry tree in the very center of the rooftop. Its branches were resplendent with petals, so exquisite they looked like they were spun out of candy. Every time the wind pa.s.sed by over the skylines of s.h.i.+jō Karasuma, a flurry of cherry blossoms would descend upon Karasuma Boulevard. It must have seemed very strange for the people walking on the street below to run into a sudden shower of flower petals.

I was there by request of my father to deliver liquor to Master Akadama. My father was the only one who could speak his mind freely to the Master, so sending me to deliver liquor to the Master's private rooftop cherry blossom viewing must have been his idea of a practical joke.

A short distance from the cherry tree was a large patch of moss, over which spread a large umbrella, and seated on the moss were Benten and the Master, gazing at the blossoms. The Master was clothed in stately traditional robes, and as a symbol of his status as a n.o.ble tengu, he was puffing on a cigar large enough to be used as a cudgel. Noticing me huffing and puffing toward him with the bottle of Akadama port wine in tow, his face grew ever more stern and remote. I trembled at the sight, thinking that I was in for a dressing down, but I later learned that this dour expression was his way of hiding embarra.s.sment.

"Why have you come?" he solemnly inquired. "What is that you bring?"

"It is I, Yasaburō, third of the s.h.i.+mogamo clan. I come bearing gifts for Yakus.h.i.+bō of Nyoigatake."

"My thanks."

With that, the Master turned his eyes back to the cherry tree, retaining his overbearing demeanor. Benten smiled and stood up, lightly smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt. Back then, her appearance had been utterly normal, no different than any other girl on the street. Considering that she had been spirited away by a wizened old conjurer, she seemed to have taken it all in stride.

"You have our thanks," she said, bowing low, then taking the bottle from me and clutching it to her breast. Looking me up and down, she giggled, "What is that form?"

I have no recollection whatsoever of what form I had taken, for I was always changing forms at the drop of a hat, and b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to whoever tried to warn me off. Ergo.

"Why don't you share a drink with us?"

"I must respectfully decline your invitation."

"Are you sure you're not a human yourself?"

"I like to keep people guessing. What about yourself?"

"I'm just humble Suzuki Satomi."

"That's enough, I say, enough. Don't encourage the whippersnapper," the Master snapped. "A scoundrel if I've ever seen one."

"I think he's intriguing."

"Intriguing, my foot. He's capable, I'll admit, but he hasn't the faintest notion of self-control. He'll never amount to anything worthwhile."

"I see you're quite fond of him."

"Utterly preposterous!"

Benten laughed and escorted me to the base of the tree. "Have a look for yourself," she said.

Cherry blossoms fluttered down all around the two of us, like a scene from a dream.

"Enchanting, don't you think? Look, you can't even see the branches for all the petals."

I said nothing, staring enthralled at the cherry blossoms.

"Go on, do it as I taught you," the Master broke in, in the gentlest voice I had ever heard him use.

"Oh? But I can't do it yet."

"Give it a try."

Benten looked up at the tree, seemingly dazzled, and she sucked in her breath with apprehension before kicking slightly off the ground. Before my eyes, she began to float upward through the air. Rising through the shower of cherry blossoms, she took hold of an outstretched branch and used it to propel herself yet higher into the air, almost weightless. I watched her ascent, dumbstruck. The Master stood beside me, nodding approvingly, his gaze trained upon her.

"I've done it!" cried Benten, looking down at us, petals floating down all around her.

The Master nodded solemnly. "To soar the skies as you please: that is the mark of a tengu."

Night had fallen, yet the stream of people over the Great Kamo Bridge continued unabated.

Thrown off kilter by Benten's icy kiss, I had taken full advantage of the bartender's generosity, throwing back gla.s.s after gla.s.s of Faux Denki Bran until I was wholly inebriated. Now I was cutting a das.h.i.+ng figure leaning on the guardrail of the bridge, using the night wind to sober up.

The roof of the Kikusui restaurant on the east end of the Great s.h.i.+jō Bridge was aglow with the lights of the beer garden, the smooth, round tower thrusting up from the center of the building just as bizarre as it had been on the day I had first laid eyes on it. Through my bleary eyes, the whole edifice looked like a miniature model, down to the slender rays of light twinkling from the pairs of tall windows adorning the facade of the building.

As I contemplated what it would feel like to scale that smooth protrusion, Benten glided by the tip of the tower. She alighted on it briefly, then pushed off with a tremendous leap, circling the lights of Gion before landing on the great roof of the Minami-za. The tiles must still have been scorching hot from baking under the sun all day, but Benten walked atop them with a mask of cool indifference.

At last the Master made his appearance on the south side of the roof, but from the look of things it was a miracle that he had made it to the Minami-za in one piece. Each breath seemed a struggle, and his entire body was trembling as if the screws that held it together had come loose. This climb was pus.h.i.+ng the great Master Akadama to his limits. Unable to rely on his elegant black cane due to the slope of the roof, the Master had no choice but to resort to crawling on his hands and knees. I had to admire how intensely he was exerting himself all for the sake of meeting Benten, but given that he was essentially groveling on all fours in front of her, it was hard to conceive of this effort turning the tides for him in this one-sided, already losing battle. The harder he tried, the more she slipped through his fingers.

Benten stood before the Master. On his hands and knees, the Master looked up at Benten. They exchanged a few words. Benten shook her head coldly. In the illumination of the night, the Master's face was gaunt as he looked up at the radiant beauty in front of him. It would have been a sight to behold, if it hadn't been so painful to see the Master in such a state. It was apparent that no matter what he did, this battle was lost.

Witness my glory as I stand here before you; let me embrace you, and together we shall sail the starry skies, mocking the simpleminded rabble who crawl the dusty earth below—it was easy to tell what he was saying, but with both his head and rear end wobbling in the air as they were, it was less certain whether anything he said was reaching Benten.

Deciding that it was time to step in, I began to head towards the Minami-za.

But before I had reached the east end of the Great s.h.i.+jō Bridge, the long-delayed rendezvous between the Master and Benten had come to a close, and nary a trace of tenderness remained.

Leaving the immobile Master behind, Benten floated off into the night sky before anyone had a chance to stop her. I watched as she sprang over the Kamo River in a single breath, lit momentarily on the Spanish tower atop the Tōka Saikan restaurant, then fled away over the glittering city lights.

Himself unable to take to the skies in pursuit, the Master could only writhe helplessly.

As she left the Master lying there, Benten let out a tengu cackle that rang out across the stars.

She pulled it all off so deftly, even the most seasoned tengu would have gone white.

After a laborious climb down, the Master sank to the floor in the shadow of the Minami-za and caught his breath. His tan suit was disheveled and smudged, and his s.h.i.+rt was hanging out from his slack trousers.

"Fancy seeing you here, Master!" I called out to him.

"Oh, it's you," he said, peering into my face curiously. "You've been drinking."

"Heh, just a nip."

"A wastrel, as ever."

"Yes, well, I'm calling it for tonight."

"A moment. Hail a taxi, for I must return as well."

"But Master, why take the slow way in a taxi when you could be home with a flap of your wings?"

The Master fixed a keen glance on me, but a moment later he dropped his head despondently. "Such mockery is not right," he said, tapping his cane on the ground sulkily, like a child. "Entirely unbecoming. My condition has been strained tonight."

I flagged down a taxi on Kawabata Street and carried the Master to it on my back. His body was limp, almost weightless, and as he clung to my shoulders he gave a sigh laden with utter mortification.

"You d.a.m.ned fool, have I not instructed you to cease your impersonation of this la.s.s?"

"I look like a doting granddaughter, come to pick up her elderly grandfather."

"Given a piggyback ride by a girl...it doesn't feel right!"

He reached forward furtively and gave one of my b.r.e.a.s.t.s a fondle.

"Humph. Obviously fake," he sniffed, with an air of vindication.

The taxi continued to glide along beside the Kamo River. Lights smeared into blurs as they pa.s.sed by outside the window, and soon downtown faded into the distance behind us.

"You delivered the letter to Benten, then."

"Yes. The Friday Fellows are a scary lot, so I delivered the letter by arrow."

"Still you persist with these brazen acts. I tell you, this cannot continue."

"Do you think Benten will return?"

"I don't know. She, too, must abandon her dissolute ways."

"So what exactly were you doing there?"

"I was in the mood for a drink in Gion."

We sat in silence for a time.

The Master realized that I had read his love letter, and I realized that he had realized that I had done so. This was not a one-off exception; the Master and I had known one another long enough that we often knew what the other was thinking. But the Master never used that as an excuse to speak his mind, and I for my part never took our mutual understanding for granted. One must never carelessly overstep the boundary that exists between master and student.

Two images turned over in my mind: Benten, flying away through the night sky; and conversely, the Master, his upturned rear end quivering on the roof of the Minami-za.

"To soar the skies as you please: that is the mark of a tengu," the Master muttered, staring out at the river. "Is that not so?"

"But I think taking a taxi every once in a while isn't so bad."

"Hmm. This is true."

"Even tanuki get tired of transforming sometimes."

The Master snorted on hearing this. "Only a fool would compare tengu and tanuki," he said, before slumping down into his seat and letting out a big yawn.

I had bitterly regretted the incident with the Demon's Perch, and after voluntarily excommunicating myself, I did not see the Master for six months. During that period, the Master returned to his lonely podium, attempting ever more desperately to hold on to the majesty that was slipping away from him like sparkling sugar through his fingers, but his efforts were in vain, and rather than haplessly let his dirty laundry continue to air for all to see, he chose to leave the cla.s.sroom for good. Holing up in that rundown apartment, he whiled away his days downing bottles of Akadama port wine and eagerly hoping for visits from Benten. Inasmuch as he had been weakened he spent an equal amount of energy las.h.i.+ng out at those around him, and even those students who still visited him found his company difficult to bear. In the end, the Master's trickle of visitors dried up completely.

Early in spring this year, rumors reached me that Master Akadama was practicing to fly again by the bank of the Kamo River in the wee hours of the morning. I went to see for myself.

A frigid, piercing wind whistled through the wide, deserted stretch of riverbank that lay north of the Aoi Bridge. In the denuded trees that s.h.i.+vered in that desolate landscape, a solitary shadow crept on the bank of the river. It was Master Akadama, who was ambling along very casually, but every so often he would give a little hop in the air. Occasionally he succeeded in floating in the air for a moment, but that was all: by any standard a far cry from soaring the sky as he pleased.

"Good evening, Master. Chilly, isn't it?"

Hearing my voice emanating from the darkness, the hopping Master jutted his chin upward at me, glaring.

"Quite chilly, indubitably. That is why I hop, you see: to keep myself warm."

"May I hop as well?"

"Certainly. Keep yourself warm."

And together we hopped along.

At this point we had already developed that mutual understanding of one another. The Master knew that I was mildly smitten with Benten, and that it had been I who had transformed into the false Demon's Perch and deceived him. But of these things he spoke not a word. Admitting that he had been bamboozled and forced into a crash landing by the likes of a tanuki would have been for him, I am sure, tantamount to setting one foot in the grave.

Since I had been the one to excommunicate myself, I saw no problem in revoking that excommunication of my own accord. First, I had to demonstrate to the Master my sense of decorum. I presented him with an expensive-looking bottle of imported wine, nicked from the Scarlet Pane, and bowed my head.

But the Master refused to take even a sip. Instead, he ungraciously deplored what he called my characteristically tanuki inability to tell real from fake.

"This is a cheap imitation. Clearly you are no student of wine. Real wine is always labeled 'Akadama Port Wine'."

Inside the taxi, Master Akadama had fallen fast asleep. A string of drool, long as a pheasant's tail, trailed from his mouth as I exited the taxi and placed him again on my back. Treading softly up the stairs of the Masugata Court Apartments, I dumped him into his futon and fell back exhausted. The Master snored uproariously like a bellows, drool still dangling from his mouth. He did not stir, even when a moth landed on his forehead to rest its wings.

I allowed myself to rest there and took a swig from a bottle of unfinished Akadama Port Wine. There was a melancholic sweetness that lingered on the tongue after each mouthful of this, the Master's favorite drink.

Standing up in front of the begrimed mirror that dangled before the sink, I transformed myself into Benten.

It felt strange, taking the form of one with whom you are in love. Though each feature was identical down to the last toenail, I felt nothing staring at the reflection in the mirror. That was of course because every motion was exactly as I expected it to be. The difference between what you expect a person to do and what they actually do is precisely what causes your heart to skip a beat. Then again, I suppose the strangest part of it all was that a tanuki would fall in love with a human.

"You've returned. Come to me," came the Master's voice, heavy with sleep.

I sat by the Master. He looked to be only half-awake.

"I tell you, I may be unable to fly, but 'tis only a temporary setback," the Master muttered in a tone of reproval. "One day my health will return, and when I am restored, I shall instruct you in many things once more. In me is the power to shake the ground, the power to summon whirlwinds and topple skysc.r.a.pers...when the mood strikes…"

"But of course, I don't doubt that for a moment."

"Wretched is the state I find myself in. I vow that one day, heaven and earth shall suffer my wrath once more. But now is not the time to delve into arcana. I find myself so dreadfully...sleepy…"

"Do get some rest."

"Yes. Sleep...sleep. You should sleep here yourself, from time to time."

And caressing my rear end, the Master fell asleep, oblivious to the fact that it was not Benten's rear end he was caressing, but mine. An understandable mistake, given that he was half-asleep, but gut-wrenching nonetheless. Then again, perhaps this was another of our mutual understandings, and he was only pretending not to notice.

Once, I had grappled with the question of what it meant to live as a tanuki.

I thought I understood how to enjoy each day to its utmost, but was that all there was? Napoleon once said, "When you don't know what to do, do nothing." I frittered my life away doing nothing, and gradually I came to the realization that there was nothing more to life besides enjoying yourself.

All was quiet in the the Demachi shopping arcade; the shutters of the shops were all rolled down. At this time of night, not a soul could be seen. I walked briskly through the empty street. Pa.s.sing the shrine to Benzaiten, where lanterns still burned in the darkness, I made my way towards s.h.i.+mogamo Shrine. The rust-colored moon was peeking out above the black outline of the Higas.h.i.+yama mountains. Tiring of this form, I went back down to all fours and began to run.

Benten, that fearsome human, was probably still flying all over town. Master Akadama, the fallen tengu, was lying in his futon snoring loudly and sadly, while I, a tanuki, scampered along the river on all fours.Tengu, tanuki, human—the three creatures that turn the wheel of this city. Watching the wheel turn is fun, of course, but having too much fun is tiring, and I was getting terribly sleepy.

I returned to the Tadasu Forest.

My little brother opened his eyes in the darkness as I crawled into my soft bed.

"Yasaburō! You're back!" he whispered.

"That I am."

"What were you doing?"

"Playing cupid."

"Was it fun?"

"Yep, sure was."

And patting my brother's head, I drifted off to sleep.