The Tall Woman
"Yes. The job includes room and board."
As I answered, I lowered the basket a little. When it had held only onions and carrots the weight had been fine, but after everything else went in, the handle was beginning to dig into my fingers.
The woman didn't so much as glance at the basket.
"Anything strange happen there last night?"
There had been, as it happened.
A man claiming to be searching for someone had come in and tried to head up to the guest rooms, and turning him away had left me feeling as though a few years of my life had been quietly shaved off. But I had no idea how much of the business surrounding my guests I ought to share with a merchant I'd met five minutes ago.
"What do you mean?"
At my question, the woman glanced at the stall next to hers. The young woman sorting eggs pressed her lips shut and looked away.
By now it was clear her hesitation had nothing to do with trouble making deliveries.
"You haven't heard? They say a strange woman comes around your place at night."
I set the basket down. Ara's face came to mind — the man yesterday had been looking for a red-haired fox beastkin. If he'd been asking his way through the market, then every word out of my mouth from here on needed care.
"What sort of woman?"
"A very tall one. White hair, and long — long enough you couldn't miss it from a distance."
So it wasn't Ara.
I started to relax, then stopped myself. Not being Ara meant there was some other problem I knew nothing about. The list of things I needed to learn kept growing, and I'd held this job for all of one day.
"Did you see her yourself?"
The woman nodded.
"I was walking home after dropping off a load. Sun had already set, and there was someone standing in front of your door. At first I took her for something somebody had propped up beside it."
"Why would you think that?"
"Because her hair went up over the top of the door."
I pictured the entrance I'd been in and out of all day yesterday. I never had to duck passing through it. If her head cleared the top of it, she wasn't simply a little taller than most.
"Are you certain you weren't mistaken?"
"I wish I had been. But she ducked her head and went right inside."
The woman set down the salt packet she'd been filling and rubbed her palms against her apron.
"I didn't see inside. I don't know what happened after, either. I just walked home."
The young woman at the next stall spoke up carefully.
"Someone who slept there said they heard strange sounds all through the night. Like someone laughing. Or like someone calling out to someone..."
"Did you hear that from them directly?"
"No, that one's secondhand for me too."
I nodded. It was worth keeping the two straight — what had been seen with someone's own eyes and what had merely been passed along. A rumor only needed to cross a few lips before it sprouted arms and legs it never had.
Even so, I couldn't afford to dismiss either account.
"Are there any stories of her actually harming anyone?"
The vegetable seller considered it for a moment, then shook her head.
"Not that I've heard. But would you sleep easy knowing that thing comes and goes every night? There are other inns in town."
That I understood. A paying guest had no reason to test their own nerve. If the price and the distance were comparable, I'd have chosen the inn where ordinary guests came and went, too.
The problem was that I was both the person sleeping there and the one who had to receive those guests.
"The owner didn't tell you any of this?"
"I was given the explanations I needed for the work."
"Well, so is this."
It was a fair point, so I had nothing to say.
I made a mental note of the address the owner had given me. Going to verify it in person was clearly in order — just not now, when heading back into the heart of the city wasn't an option.
Ara was alone in the inn.
Getting through last night unscathed was no promise that nothing would happen going forward. Whether she came only at night, or whether she was certain to come at night, I had no way of knowing yet.
"Thank you for telling me all this. I'll head back for now."
As I picked the basket back up, the woman held out a paper packet. Only then did I realize I'd never actually collected the salt.
"There are other jobs out there. If you walked into that place not knowing, think long and hard about it."
"Yes. I'll look into it."
I tucked the packet into the basket and counted out the coins. Even as she pressed the change into my palm, the woman's eyes drifted once toward the road that led to the inn.
Not long ago, these were the people asking whether I'd be back tomorrow. Now it felt as though they were asking whether I'd be able to come back tomorrow.
I didn't stop at any other stalls on the way back.
The goods knocked together in the basket in time with my steps. I would have liked to walk faster, but the eggs nestled in the straw were on my mind — rush, and the egg dish would be finished before I ever made it back to the inn. I shifted to cradle the basket in both hands.
A tall woman with white hair.
Something about the combination nagged at me. I was fairly sure I'd come across something like it among the stories I'd read on the internet in my past life. But pinning down one specific ghost story off nothing but height and hair color, with as little as I actually knew, was a stretch.
This world already had people with fox ears and tails. There was no law saying that what looked strange by my old world's standards had to look strange here.
Then again, the market folk's fear probably wasn't baseless, either.
I caught myself imagining how tall a woman I'd never even met might be, and stopped. Working up a head of fear over someone I hadn't laid eyes on would change nothing. What I could actually do right now was go back and check.
When the inn came into view, I checked the windows first. The downstairs ones were still shut the way I'd left them, no one stood at the entrance, and the notice I'd stuck to the door hadn't fallen. I took out my key and turned the lock.
Before the door was even halfway open, footsteps sounded from inside.
"Grain?"
"Yes. I'm back."
Ara stood at the foot of the stairs, a cloak in one hand and the other resting on the banister. Only after she'd confirmed it was me did she let go.
"You're back sooner than I expected."
"I bought everything we needed. Nothing happen while I was out?"
"No one came."
Only then did I set the basket down on the table. As I rubbed the marks the handle had left on my fingers and caught my breath, Ara studied my face.
"Did someone follow you?"
"No, nothing like that. I heard a bit of talk about the inn at the market."
Ara's gaze slid to the front door.
"About me?"
"No. About another woman."
Ara went quiet for a moment. I added the details before she could draw the wrong conclusion.
"Apparently a woman with white hair — very tall — has been coming here at night. They said her head rose above the door."
Ara looked up over the doorway. Taking the eggs out of the basket and setting them down one careful handful at a time, I relayed what the merchant had told me, including which parts she'd seen with her own eyes and which she'd only heard.
"And you didn't see her?"
"Yesterday the only people I saw were you and that man, Miss Ara."
"I haven't seen any woman like that either."
Ara hung the cloak she'd been carrying over the back of a chair.
"I didn't hear any laughing at night, either. There were footsteps a few times, though."
My hand stopped mid-reach into the vegetables.
"Footsteps?"
"Downstairs. I assumed it was you moving around."
I thought for a moment, then nodded.
"That was probably me. I got up to double-check that the doors were locked."
Twice, actually, not once. After checking the first time and lying down, I couldn't remember whether I'd looked at the back door, so I went out again. Confessing that now was a touch embarrassing.
"So you didn't sleep well."
"It's a new bed, that's all."
Ara looked at me but didn't press. Instead she caught an onion rolling toward the edge of the table with her hand.
"So that's why you hurried back?"
"Yes. Since you're here by yourself, it felt like something I should tell you."
Ara's hand stayed on the onion for a moment.
"You said you'd be back before lunch."
"Were you waiting for me?"
Ara set the onion down beside the basket.
"I came down because I heard the door open."
I nodded. Even I would have come out to check if a door opened in a building I was alone in. Ara glanced at me once more, then pointed at the packet sitting on the table.
"What's that?"
"Herbs for cooking. A little of it is supposed to cut the gamy smell out of meat."
When I opened the packet to show her, Ara's nose twitched slightly. Then her ears tipped back.
"Don't use too much of it."
"They told me the same thing at the shop."
I folded the top of the packet closed. It would have been nice if more meant tastier, but cooking, it seemed, was not that accommodating.
Once the vegetables and eggs were put away, I went out to peel the notice off the door. When I came back in after one more look around outside, Ara was wiping the moisture off the table — water from the damp vegetables had pooled under the basket.
"Leave it — I'll take care of that."
"I can manage this much."
Ara finished the spot she'd been wiping and set the cloth down. When I thanked her, she gave a small shrug, as if it were nothing.
I recorded the purchases and prices in the ledger. Ara stood beside me watching for a moment, then took the chair across from me — not the seat against the wall like yesterday. Not that she sat with her back to the door, either.
I checked the recipe I'd jotted on the back of my list and went into the kitchen. This time I planned to start with the onions; I wanted to see whether the same soup could taste any different.
I was peeling an onion when a sound came from the front door.
Tap, tap.
Not the bell hung on the door — the sound of knuckles rapping against wood.
I set the knife down on the cutting board. Ara had already half-risen from her chair, eyes fixed on the door.
"Is it locked?"
"No. I left it open."
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
I dried my hands and stepped out into the dining room. It might be someone else searching for a missing person, like yesterday — or a guest who couldn't tell whether we were open and hadn't dared come in.
I murmured for Ara to stay back by the kitchen, then approached the door. Rather than open it right away, I asked first from inside.
"Who is it?"
In place of an answer, something brushed across the top of the door.
I took hold of the handle. There had been no one out there when I came through — I had no way of knowing when she'd arrived in front of it. I opened the door a crack and looked out through the gap.
A person was standing there.
White clothing was the first thing to register, and long hair spilling down over it. I raised my eyes to look for her face, but where I would normally meet another person's gaze, there was only the lower part of her neck.
Without thinking, I tipped my head further back.
Her face was hidden above the doorframe.
The market woman's words flashed through my head. At the same moment, the woman outside began slowly to bend down. That very long white hair spilled forward, and through its curtain a pale face emerged.
Red eyes settled on me.
It was a beautiful face. But what struck me first, right now, was the fact that she was tall enough that standing straight, you couldn't even see it.
I froze with my hand around the door handle. A story I'd failed to place the entire walk home finally began to take shape.
Then, from between the woman's lips, a low sound slipped out.
"Po... popo."
Ah.
The Hasshaku-sama.