Fox, Landslide!! Get Out of the Way!! Into the Corner!!
The night after that, I guarded my bag with all my might, drank clean water for the first time in ages, and filled my stomach with tuna cans together with Boss.
The lid on the tuna can was so stubborn that I had a terrible time getting it open, but before the great fox Naru, it was nothing more than a one-paw job.
...
I had never, ever bitten down too hard and made my teeth hurt until I cried.
Anyway, with my belly nice and full, I was just about to curl up in the crack between the rocks and sleep when Boss tapped my head with a front paw.
“What is it, Boss?”
“Meow.”
“It’s humid? Come to think of it...”
I had been so out of it all day that I noticed it late, but just as Boss said, the air smelled heavier than usual, thick with moisture.
Which meant rain would be coming soon.
“If it’s going to rain, then I guess we should stay in the crack between the rocks tonight.”
“Meow.”
“You say it smells even stronger than usual?”
At Boss’s warning, I looked over at the bag I was supposed to protect beside the rocks.
There wasn’t enough room in the crevice for both me and Boss, let alone the bag.
“I promised I’d protect it properly...”
I paced in circles, thinking hard about how to keep the bag safe from the rain, and then a brilliant idea came to me: I could dig a hole and hide it securely underground.
Of course I’m an intelligent fox!
I immediately started digging with all my might.
But after a while, I realized there was one major problem.
“Huff... huff...”
Unlike the times I’d hidden a mole or a bundle of cash, this bag was huge.
Which meant the hole had to be much bigger, too.
Foxes are naturally good at digging, I could feel that in my bones.
But my hands weren’t fox paws, just ordinary human hands.
No matter how great a fox I was, I still wore down little by little, and my hands started to bleed.
“Keng...”
I had barely dug even half of it when drops of water began falling from the sky.
The heavens, inconsiderate as ever, kept dumping more and more rain on us, and the dirt I’d been digging through grew soaked and even harder to work.
In the end, I gave up on digging and settled for burying the bag halfway.
After shaking off as much dirt and moisture as I could, I hurried into the crack in the rocks where Boss was waiting and took shelter from the rain.
“Boss, I’m back.”
“Meow.”
I lay down with the blanket Yerin had left behind, Boss beside me, and stared blankly at the rain-filled sky.
“Boss.”
“...”
“That Yerin who came today. I don’t know how to put it... but it felt all warm and fuzzy in my chest.”
“...”
“She said we should go together, but... I want to succeed on my own.”
For some reason, I remembered something I’d heard before: even if you accept help from someone else, it doesn’t make the success any less yours.
She was someone I’d met for the first time today, but she felt warm.
Of course, I am an intelligent and careful fox.
“Even if she gave me Castella, I won’t fall for it!”
“Meow.”
“Right, that thing.”
After Boss corrected me and said it was Castella, I thought back to the handshake I’d made with Yerin today and slowly closed my eyes.
She said she’d come back tomorrow... but would she really?
Kuul...
Kwaaaa-rumble-
“Keng?!”
With a sound like an explosion, I jolted awake in a panic.
Then, by instinct, I shot my tail upright, took a defensive stance to prepare for the sudden threat, and shouted, “W-what is it!! I’m the great fox! Who’s there?!”
I didn’t even know what I was saying, but I was blurting out anything I could think of when a cold splash of water hit my face.
“Keng!?”
Struck by this sudden attack, I toppled backward and showed my belly.
To think they’d ambush me while I was sleeping, how despicable... but that was the cruelty of nature.
I exposed my belly in surrender and lay still, pretending to be dead just to survive, but the mysterious attacker made no further move.
Then another splash of water struck my tail.
“..Keng?”
Sensing that something was strange, I opened my eyes cautiously and looked out from the crack in the rocks.
“Rain?”
It turned out the thing I had mistaken for an attacker was just the rain coming down in a truly outrageous amount.
I quickly stopped embarrassing myself by showing my belly and cleared my throat, but Boss, who was sitting right beside me, was already looking at me like I was hopeless.
“...”
“C-cough.”
Lately, Boss seemed to be looking at me that way more and more, but that was just my imagination, right?
Flash.
“Huh?”
Then, all of a sudden, a bright light flashed past for an instant.
Just as I tried to focus every sense I had on it, there came a huge crack of sound.
“Keng!?”
Since I’d opened my senses as wide as they could go, my ears rang so badly I could hardly gather my wits.
I realized that the thing that had flashed and made that enormous noise was lightning, but for some reason, my whole body started trembling little by little.
“I-I’m... a b-brave fo-fox...”
I wasn’t the sort of fox who would be scared by lightning.
I immediately clapped my hands over my ears, squeezed my eyes shut, and pulled the blanket over my face.
Rumble-
“Keng!?”
Even so, my annoyingly sharp ears let the thunder come through in full force, and every time lightning struck, I flinched and shuddered hard.
“Meow.”
“B-Boss, I’m only hiding because I don’t want to get wet.”
Rumble-
“Keang?!”
It was clearly nothing more than rain and thunder, and yet my danger sense was ringing out warnings at me by instinct.
It was telling me something dangerous might be coming soon.
So the safest thing was to stay hidden with Boss like this...
“Ah.”
Then I suddenly remembered the bag I’d hidden before sleeping and lifted my head to peek outside.
“Oh no...”
Water was pouring down as if someone had punched a hole in the sky, but strangely enough, the entrance to the crack in the rocks wasn’t letting the rain in, thanks to the direction of the wind.
Of course, some water was still getting blown in, but with rain falling this hard, I’d say the rocks were doing a pretty good job of keeping it out.
And the real problem was the bag I’d half-buried beside the rocks...
“Keng?!”
It was already soaked through, the dirt had mostly been washed away by the rain, and it looked like it might get swept away any second.
“What do I do? I promised I’d protect the bag...”
I stretched out just one hand from the crack in the rocks and tried to pull it closer, but my arm was too short to reach.
Instead, the hand I had stretched out got soaked in an instant.
“If I’d known this would happen, I should have buried it closer...”
Regret washed over me, but regretting it now wouldn’t change anything.
“What do I do...”
My danger sense had been screaming at me not to go out since a while ago, but this was something I had promised after shaking hands on it.
“It’s dangerous, but... I’m a brave...”
Rumble-
“Keang?! I-I’m a brave foxoo...”
I was still covering my ears with both hands, but the thunder was so loud it seemed to shake my bones.
Still, just as I gathered my courage and tried to leave the crack in the rocks to go get the bag, Boss suddenly bit down on my tail.
“Keng?!”
Startled, I looked at Boss, and Boss told me in a grave expression not to go.
“But...”
That’s what it means to shake hands when you make a deal.
Handshake?
You grab each other’s hands and promise to keep the deal.
“I promised.”
“...”
“She said she’d come tomorrow. There’s no such thing as something for nothing in this world... she even got a Karoro out of me.”
“Meow.”
“Right, that thing.”
I took back my tail from Boss’s mouth and said with a serious face, “I’m going, Boss.”
“...”
Boss still looked at me like I was impossible to trust, and held onto my tail with a front paw, but I struck a dependable pose so Boss could feel reassured and said, “I’m the great fox... I’ll be the best in the future...”
Rumble-
“Keang?!”
“Meow...”
“I-I’m the fox who’ll become the best...”
I felt like I’d been screaming a lot today, but anyway, the bag was right in front of me... bag... bag??
“The bag is gone?!”
In a panic, I looked around quickly, and far off down the rain-slick slope, the bag was running away.
“H-hey!!”
On impulse, I burst out of the crack in the rocks and sprinted toward where the bag was escaping.
But the moment I started running, the steep slope was already bad enough, and with rain pouring down on top of it, the ground became unbelievably slippery, and I fell flat on my face.
“Kyaaang!”
Even after I fell, my body didn’t stop; it kept sliding down the rain-slick slope.
I flailed my arms and legs, desperately trying to keep my balance, but I couldn’t stand on the slick ground and only slid faster and faster downhill.
I started to cry, thinking that at this rate I wouldn’t be able to save the bag and would be swept away down the rain path all the way to the sea.
So maybe even awakening wasn’t enough for me...
You’re useless, useless!
Remembering what my parents had said to me, I was just about ready to give up when I clenched my teeth and opened my eyes.
“I...! I’m Naru, the fox who’ll become great!!”
Give up?
Giving up is a word that has nothing to do with foxes at all.
Instead of trying to climb up the rain-slick slope, I started running along it, heading downhill at full speed.
Thanks to that, I was able to catch the bag as it rolled along at high speed while I tore down the mountain, and I grabbed hold of a nearby tree to stop myself from sliding any farther.
“Huff... huff... I did it!!”
I roared my triumph in the middle of the rain, proving that I was different from my past self and carving out the beginnings of a successful future.
“Now, if I just go up this wa—”
I immediately tried to drag the bag back uphill, but the soaked bag weighed far more than I expected, and climbing the slippery mountain path was impossible.
“Should I just wait here until the rain stops?”
Clinging desperately to the tree, I struggled to keep from being swept away by the rain-slick ground.
“Keng...”
I had been trying to hold out until the rain stopped, but maybe because I’d been getting drenched all over, my body was starting to feel colder and colder.
“Boss must be worried...”
Even my fluffy tail was soaked through, so it had gone slim like Boss’s tail.
And it was covered in mud, so I had no idea how much grooming it would take to fix.
Rumble-
“Keng?!”
And then thunder struck again, making my whole body tremble.
At that moment, my danger sense rang out at full force, and at the same time, an ominous sound came from higher up the mountain.
“W-what is that?”
At first I thought it was thunder, but it was a little different.
With the sound came a faint trembling through the ground, and then small stones began to roll and tumble one by one.
“I-I have to run...”
I knew instinctively that I had to run right away, but at the moment I couldn’t move.
And then, from above, a mass of earth came collapsing down with the water, hurtling toward me at terrifying speed.
It was already too late to dodge, so I hugged the bag tightly and braced myself for the impact that was coming.
A floating sensation, as if my whole body had gone weightless.
It didn’t hurt at all. It was soft, and warm.
“...?”
“Haa... haa... thank goodness... thank goodness!!”
Before I knew it, a dirt-covered Yerin was holding me in her arms, and I started crying without meaning to.
Yerin gently hugged me tighter and said,
“Sorry I’m late, Naru.”