"I was nursed back to health by a rat—a little old rat with wild white hair." Chichiri sighed gently, and seemed to relax, even smile, briefly. "I don't know if you've ever had feverish dreams, but that was mine. Of course, it was odd to wake up and find it wasn't a dream at all.
"It was a mask, of course, and a rather gaudy, theatrical one, but it seemed to have grown into the old man. He was thin, small, with a reedy voice and a herky-jerky way of moving even when he tried to be at rest. It didn't seem so strange, then, when he introduced himself to me as the Dancing Rat.
"Like any rat's nest, his home was a murky maze, and packed to the gills with things. It had been a theatre, a thief's den, a tenement; no one owned it. He didn't know the half of what was stored there.
"There are legends, and not all have heard them, of men who can no longer be men because of some wrong they have done, but take up the faces of animals to help those who are still human. No questions, no debts.
"It was any easy thing to find myself a mask in all the boxes, to wear it and tell myself that I was healed. My new face was bold and ugly and brave: a brightly painted fox with a lolling tongue. I could be a new name before I had finished mourning the old; the Laughing Fox had no demons.
"The Dancing Rat taught me all of this. He taught me calm, to meditate, even with the palsy that kept his muscles dancing. He taught me to scour the back streets, to bargain with shopkeepers, so that we would always have money to give the newly widowed and food for the innumerable street urchins.
"He taught me to cook, no da!" Genrou's eyes brightened sharply, but the old habit was only a passing ghost. "He did not teach me magic, but he told me that learning it should be my goal. On that same day, he set off for the hills, and made it very clear that it would be a short journey with no return.
"After he had gone, I was in a dilemma. I disliked living in a nest of other people's lives, but I stayed, unable to leave the building to be consumed by the city.
"We're all supposed to be rovers, or bandits at twenty," Chichiri nodded toward Kai, "or smugglers. Just a guess. You both know how much I itched. I slept on the roof; I wandered the streets around the market at dawn. All those romantic things young men do.
"On one particular morning, I remember a small child carrying a pile of paper taller than he was, and a runaway horse. I remember jumping, but not landing.
"When I sat up again, it was broad daylight and I was in the back of a market stall. A girl in boy's clothes was cutting paper into pieces; muddy-colored old scrolls with the writing soaked off. She greeted me, and apologized; saving her brother had shattered my mask and nearly my head.
""The woodcarver and I made you a new one. Here," she said, "But be careful, it hasn't quite dried yet."
"So the face you knew me in was painted by a thirteen-year-old girl. It wasn't as gaudy, but I liked being a man with a foxlike face rather than a fox in a man's body.
"She told me she wrote letters for people who couldn't write, when I asked. I was frankly surprised she could write at all.
"Dou-chan taught me," she said, and pointed at the little boy. His feet didn't reach the ground from the stool he sat on, but he was writing quickly as an old woman told her faraway son the news from home.
"Of course, a boy of seven writing in perfect script was confusing to me. "I think he must be the smartest boy in the world," she said. "He's going to be quite famous some day." I remember how much conviction she had about that, how much she knew she wouldn't ever be the famous one.
"Suddenly, her brother jumped from his seat and ran to her. "Aki-chan, where's my ball? I can't find it!" Tears formed in his eyes. The girl sighed, handing him the bright toy from where she'd stashed it. "He's really very clever," she assured me, "But he needs my help sometimes." She took over dictation from the old woman where her brother had left in mid-sentence.
"Twenty minutes later, he had left off playing in the dirt and was conversing with me as though we'd grown up together. He and his sister and mother lived in a crumbling manor, bought for its library. He would memorize the books and then the children would cut them up. It seemed the only money the family had came from the children and their absent brother, who was much older, a colonel in the Emperor's army. All their hopes lay on seeing the little boy enter the civil service.
"What moved me most was how torn he was, the guilt he felt about being special. "Aki-chan wants so badly to study martial arts," he said, "I can teach her all the theory that's written down a thousand years back, but I can't teach her to be strong! She won't ask mother, because it's frivolous, and she won't believe that anyone will ever teach a girl."
"That was the – Ah!" Chichiri turned sharply at the jangle of porcelain, throwing an arm across his face.
Kawako stood mid-stumble, her tray and everything on it in the beginnings of a frozen fall. Chichiri began to quickly remove the most precarious, distributing them between his stunned friends. Finally, he could remove the tray from her hands. "It's all right," he said, and touched her arm gently.
She staggered forward, caught herself. "No harm done," Chichiri assured her, but she had already turned, shuddering, and shuffled out of the room.
"What was that?" Kai gasped.
"It was just a reflex, I apologize." Chichiri busied himself with rearranging the hastily set tableware.
"Finish the story!" demanded Genrou, snatching bowls out of his friend's reach.
"Oh! Well, I bartered the old man's house and left the city. I didn't return until I met Miaka."
Both young men groaned. "But what happened?" cried Kai.
"I heard it burned down a few years later, actually. Very sad."
Genrou slapped the table with an open palm, then wrung his sore hand. "What happened to Chiriko?"
"Oh! That was what I did for him, you see. I bartered the house to a fighting school as his sister's tuition. He knew I wanted to become a magician, told me all the forgotten legends of Mt. Taikyoku he'd read of. I just carried out my legend in return for his, I suppose. I set out to find my fortune and I forgot all about him.
"And really, did it matter that we had met before, in the end?" Chichiri sighed. "His brother died in the battle with Kutou."
"Damn it, we both loved that kid. How can you—"
"We both knew, Genrou, and we both knew that it was in the past. It wouldn't have made a difference. He still would have died—he wanted to be strong. For us, for his sister." Another silence fell. "I'm sorry, Kai. We're here to share new stories, not dredge up old memories. I only meant to set the stage with all the characters.
"I've droned on too long. Perhaps it would have been better just to say that, when Genrou and I parted a year ago, I meant to make a promise that I'd already broken…"