Chapter 17: Night Off

The sign on the door said CLOSED, and for the first time in forty years Kuzunoha had not written it herself.

The shop had written it for her, in neat brown brushwork, and she stood in front of it holding a lantern and looking foolish.

"I don't know what to do with a night," she said.

"You sleep in it," said Tsukumo."

""Or you eat, or you go to the bathhouse."

"I'm going to the bathhouse."

"I'm taking the kappa."

"The kappa's coming?"

"He needs a good soak. He's been crying on the doorstep for two days."

She swung out through the door in her yellow raincoat, with a very large towel and a very small, damp kappa behind her.

Natsuki had promised to stay home and be a nurse in her own bed.

So that left two people in the empty shop, and a long, quiet night.

Haruna turned down the lanterns, one at a time, until the front room glowed amber and low.

"What are you doing?" Kuzunoha asked.

"Setting a scene."

"For what?"

"For a date." Haruna turned and pushed her glasses up her nose."

""We haven't had one."

"We've had a thermometer and a petition and a funeral argument with a heron."

"I'd like one evening where nobody is dying."

Kuzunoha's face did something complicated and soft.

"I'd like that very much," she said.

Haruna cooked.

It was the first real meal she had made in the Dispensary kitchen that wasn't soup, and she did it badly and happily.

There was grilled mackerel, and rice with chestnuts, and a pickled radish Tsukumo had hidden at the back of a drawer.

Kuzunoha sat at the low table with her chin on her fist and watched every move.

"You frown when you slice," she said.

"I'm concentrating."

"It's charming."

"It's a knife."

"I find knives charming on you."

Haruna pointed the knife at her, and Kuzunoha held up both hands in surrender, grinning.

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