Chapter 3
I’d overheard the poachers say they planned to sell the fox alive to a foreigner as a pet.
I figured that even if they caught it, I could call the police as soon as I got back. Surely I could get it rescued!
So I stared at the foolish fox, pointed at its tail, and asked, “Can I touch your tail?”
It tilted its head. I didn’t know whether it understood, but it hopped toward me and jumped into my arms.
The impact sent me rolling down the slope with a ball of fluff in my arms.
The little fox squeaked happily. Once I stopped, it patted my face with its big tail and pawed snow onto my face, as if it thought we were playing.
Was it actually an idiot?
Before I could get up, the poachers lunged over, grabbed the snow fox, and threw it into the cage.
Its shrill squeals echoed through the forest. Its eyes were terrified.
“Let it go!” I cried.
One man kicked me. “Get lost!”
The other carried the iron cage away. “Thanks, brat!”
They didn’t kill me outright, but they beat me unconscious and abandoned me on the snowfield to freeze to death.
If the whole village hadn’t come searching with my parents, I really wouldn’t have survived.
When I woke, shivering, the first thing I said was, “Call… the police… there are… poachers…”
Dad, a successful man who’d done well for himself in the big city, carried a Nokia phone. He immediately called 110 for me.
But the snowy forest was vast. It took three days for the police to catch the men.
The rabbits had been eaten. The roe deer and pheasant were dead. The iron cage was covered in blood, and the fox was gone.
The poachers said it had escaped.
I didn’t believe them. How could it have escaped a cage?
Even if it had, after losing so much blood, how long could it survive?
That incident became a sore point for my whole family.
Afterward, Dad ignored the school’s rules and spent a fortune buying me a phone to carry everywhere, terrified that if something happened again, I couldn’t reach anyone. And I never wanted to return to the Northeast or go near small animals again.
I was guilty.
I’d thought that fox was dead. I’d never imagined it was a fox spirit.
A beautiful male fox spirit, at that.
I looked at him guiltily. “How did you escape back then?”
The young man snorted. “How could a mere cage imprison me?”
I fell silent.
Right. He wasn’t just a fox spirit. He was the Fox King. He must have tremendous powers.
But being tricked by me must have been terribly embarrassing.
“It happened twenty years ago. Why have you only come for revenge now?”
He hurled down his chicken drumstick in anger. “You have the nerve to ask? I looked for you in the Northeast for twenty years, and you were in fucking Shenzhen the whole time! This damn place is roasting me alive!”
“…”
Was it so strange for a northeasterner to move south?
“How do you plan to get revenge?” I asked.
The Fox King sneered. “They’re pressuring me to marry. You’re coming home with me to be my queen!”
Me: ??????
I paled. “I’m human! And male! Are foxes really that indiscriminate? Do you understand species barriers?”
He suddenly lunged at me and tore off my T-shirt, exposing skin left pasty white by endless days indoors under air-conditioning, apparently intending to force himself on me.
I shrieked. “You pervert!”
But he only bared his teeth, buried his face against my chest and neck, and noisily gave me hickeys. He even tried to kiss my mouth.
I slapped away the man who’d just finished gnawing a chicken drumstick. “Your mouth’s covered in grease. Have you even brushed your teeth?”
The Fox King: “…”
Fuming, he pulled out a phone and started a video call to someone. He slung an arm around my shoulders and told the person on-screen, “Elder, I’ve found someone. I’m bringing him home to marry over the New Year!”
An old man in a floral shirt was sunning himself on a beach, fanning himself with a straw hat. “Oh, Your Majesty, you’ve found someone? Let Grandpa see… Why’s it a man? The Red Fox family’s third son? He’s handsome, but why’s his hair black?”
Me: ????? I’m a perfectly ordinary Chinese man. Of course my hair’s black!
“He’s not a fox,” said the Fox King. “He’s human.”
The old man was so startled he dropped his phone onto the sand. “What? What was that? Your partner’s human? Are you messing with me, Your Majesty? How’d you go and fall for a human?”
The Fox King affected shyness. “Don’t you remember, Elder? That boy I fell for at first sight when I was little. I’ve been looking for him for twenty years. What do you think? Handsome, isn’t he?”
Me: Love at first sight? Between a foolish fox and an underage boy?
The old man picked up his phone and leaned close to the screen, apparently inspecting me, his face full of worry. “Can he have cubs? Our clan’s never crossbred with humans… Your Majesty, you didn’t just grab someone to fool us because we’re pressuring you to marry, did you?”
Listen to that insanity. Who was having cubs?
I couldn’t take any more. I ended the call and told the Fox King, “Just kill me. I’ll atone with my life. Okay?”