My New Boss at the Yokai Pharmacy Is a Fox Who Cannot Lie novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Tell the Patient the Truth

A kappa's cure works because Haruna says the plain truth, and the plaque over the door has a stone tail.

The first patient of Haruna's night job was a kappa with a dry head.

He came in at half past midnight, dripping on the entrance mat, wearing a green windbreaker and holding a small plate in both hands.

It was a shallow white dish, the size of a saucer.

It sat on top of his head, and it was cracked and bone dry.

"He's a regular," Tsukumo whispered, climbing down from the counter. "He comes in every month. Mostly he gets a bottle of river water."

"I don't see why I can't have that again," the kappa said. "It's always worked."

Kuzunoha had come through the curtain on bare feet, with her hair tied back and her face still too red.

She leaned against the doorframe and said, "Tonight Haruna takes the case."

"The new girl?" the kappa said.

"The new pharmacist," Haruna said. "Please sit."

He sat.

Haruna looked at the dish for a while.

Then she looked at his hands, which were cracked too, and at his eyes, which were bloodshot.

"How much water do you drink in a day?" she asked.

"I live in a river."

"I mean drink."

The kappa said nothing.

"Do you eat anything besides cucumbers?" she asked.

"No."

"Do you sleep?"

"Not well. I'm worried about the dish."

"Then I'm going to tell you something, and you won't like it." Haruna set down her pen. "The dish isn't dry because you're short of river water. It's dry because you're not drinking, you're not eating anything with salt, and you're not sleeping. You're dehydrated and worn out, and the bottle only treats the symptom."

The kappa's face fell.

"Everyone says it's the river," he said quietly.

"It isn't the river. It's you."

Tsukumo made a small hissing noise through her teeth.

Haruna kept her eyes on the kappa.

"You need to drink a glass of water every hour you're awake, eat something salty with your cucumbers, and go to bed before dawn. I can give you a salt powder for the first week. After that it's your job."

There was a long silence.

Then the kappa began to cry, big wet tears that ran down over the dry dish.

And the dish drank them.

Haruna saw the white surface go dark, then shiny, and the cracks closed from the edges inwards.

Within a minute the dish was full and smooth and glossy as a new cup.

The kappa touched it with both hands.

"It's been this wet since I was a boy," he whispered.

"That's the shop," Kuzunoha said from the doorway.

Her amber eyes were on Haruna, and she looked, for just a moment, pleased.

"A cure works here only when the patient is told the truth," she said. "Most of my pharmacists couldn't do it. They said what people wanted to hear."

"That's not medicine," Haruna said.

"No."

The kappa paid with a jar of river pearls and a small bow, then left through the door, which opened onto the same alley.

But when Haruna looked through it, the alley was a street she did not know, with lanterns hanging from the eaves and small people in coats walking slowly under them.

Tsukumo shut the door.

"Don't stare," she said. "They hate it."

Haruna spent the next three hours learning where the drawers were.

The drawer labelled "Snow-lotus root" held pale shavings that were cold to touch.

"Pine-needle ash" smelled like a campfire and, strangely, like her grandmother's kitchen.

Tsukumo handed over a stack of tiny paper envelopes, a pestle and a bowl, and refused to explain any of it in order.

At two o'clock Kuzunoha called from the back, "Haruna. Fever check."

"I thought that was tomorrow."

"It's every night. You told me it's part of everything."

Haruna had said that, and she could not take it back.

She went to the back with her thermometer.

Kuzunoha sat with her chin on her hand, and a damp line of hair was stuck to her temple.

The number came up on the screen.

"Forty-two point one," Haruna said. "It was forty-one point eight when I arrived."

"Yes."

"It went up in two hours."

"Yes."

"Kuzunoha, that's not a normal body temperature for a person or a fox."

"I know what it is."

Haruna crouched so that she was looking up into Kuzunoha's face instead of down.

"What's causing it?"

Kuzunoha looked at her for a long moment.

"Ask me something else," she said.

"That's the second time you've said that."

"Yes."

"You can't lie, but you can refuse."

"I can," Kuzunoha said. "I'm very good at it."

It was a strange thing to hear, said with such calm.

Haruna stood and went out to the front to put away her bag.

The door to the alley was open a hand's width to let in air.

Over it hung the wooden fox on its plaque, with a lantern light falling across it.

Its tail tip was grey stone.

But the grey was larger than it had been when she came in.

Now it covered the last two fingers' width of the tail, and a thin line of it ran upward along the wood like frost.

Behind her, Tsukumo said very quietly, "It started on the day she stopped answering."

"Stopped answering what?" Haruna asked.

Tsukumo took a long bite of her rice ball, and said nothing at all.

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