My New Boss at the Yokai Pharmacy Is a Fox Who Cannot Lie novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Threshold

At a quarter to six, the last patient left and the lanterns dimmed one by one.

Tsukumo went to sleep early, curled on a pile of cushions in the corner with her yellow raincoat pulled over her head.

The shop grew very quiet.

Haruna folded her white coat over a stool and stood in front of Kuzunoha.

"It's first light in a few minutes," she said. "You told me to ask."

"I did."

"Have you ever seen daylight?"

"No," Kuzunoha said.

"Not once in forty years?"

"Not once since I took the shop."

"Why not?"

Kuzunoha stood up from her stool, tall and slender in the dim light, and walked to the door.

Haruna followed her.

The door stood slightly open, and through it she could see the alley in the blue hour before dawn, with the brick wall at the far end growing pale.

"This door opens for one minute at first light," Kuzunoha said. "Anyone who is not a keeper steps out, and the door becomes a wall again. It stays a wall until midnight."

"And the keeper?"

"The keeper stays in."

"You can't step out?"

"I tried once, the first year. My feet won't cross the sill." Kuzunoha lifted one bare foot and set it down again on the wooden threshold, exactly at the line. "It's the oath. The shop holds me. I don't go out."

"That's what you said the first night."

"It was true."

Haruna stared at the floorboard under her foot.

The line between the floor of the shop and the stone of the alley was no wider than her thumb.

"I thought you meant you stayed in because you liked it," she said.

"I do like it. I like it better with you in it." Kuzunoha's voice was low. "But I'd like to know what the street looks like at ten in the morning, and I never have. That's also true."

It was said without self-pity.

It sounded like a sentence from a very old book.

The sky above the alley turned from blue to pale grey, and a thin, cool line of gold slid across the roof tiles.

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