Nine Tails - Chapter 1

The university’s Halloween party was only halfway through when I grabbed the young man’s hand and hurried out.

All I did was take him lightly by the wrist. I hadn’t even used magic, yet he followed me straight out.

The roof would be too cold, and people might pass us on the stairs. I used a little trick to open a locked door nearby instead.

He seemed to have guessed why I’d dragged him away. He leaned against a table, smiling, his tail swishing back and forth.

I had the distinct feeling I’d walked into a trap.

“Hu Ke. History department, University A.”

“Fu Junsheng. Computer science, University B.”

Introductions made, then. Except we’d both given the names we used in the human world.

Nine-tailed foxes were practically fox royalty. We were also incredibly rare. In my generation, I was supposed to be the only one.

Now the lone flower had apparently become a matching pair.

Fine. I’d wait for him to make the first move.

Fu Junsheng had a fair complexion, but none of a fox’s slanting eyes. The outer corners turned downward, making him look innocent and rather pitiful.

While I sized him up, he was looking at me too. His gaze lingered for a long time just beneath my eye.

There was a tiny red mole there.

“Your costume looks great. I wasn’t expecting anyone else to have the same outfit.” Better to approach this indirectly. In case I’d misjudged him, I didn’t want to lay all my cards on the table right away.

“You can touch it.”

Well, he was certainly open about it. We were both real foxes. He knew perfectly well that touching another fox’s tail was outrageously indecent.

I shook my head and kept probing. “Halloween only lasts a day. Why didn’t you get yourself a pair of ears too?”

“Want to see?” Before I could answer, he took my hand and set it on his head. Something soft and fluffy suddenly appeared beneath my palm.

If Mom found out I was going around touching male foxes’ ears, she’d give me a beating and accuse me of taking liberties.

I tried to pull my hand away. He held it in place. “You can stroke them.”

His eyes were so soft and liquid as he said it.

Shameless fox! He was trying to seduce me!

I was not that kind of fox. And I certainly didn’t want to reveal what I was.

After a brief struggle, I freed my hand, clapped both hands over my mouth, and gasped. “A monster!”

My acting was atrocious.

There wasn’t a trace of panic in Fu Junsheng’s eyes. Enough. I gave up the act.

“What’s your angle, showing me what you are like this?” I clasped my hands behind my back and rubbed a tuft of my own tail between my fingers.

Foxes weren’t social animals. Even cubs got kicked out by their mothers once they grew up.

The few foxes I knew who could take human form all had homes of their own. We rarely visited one another.

They didn’t even like my WeChat posts.

The young man opposite me was still smiling, apparently finding me very interesting. “Done pretending?”

I clenched my back teeth and waited for him to continue.

“I don’t want anything. It’s rare to run into one of our own here. I thought we could be friends.”

With thoroughly modern ease, he pulled out his phone. “Add me on WeChat?”

Something felt off, though I couldn’t put my finger on it.

It was hard to refuse someone being so friendly. I scanned his QR code.

And promptly lost the power of speech.

He was an actual fox spirit, and his profile picture was a rabbit?

While I was still deciding what to save him as, he plucked my phone out of my hand. Without looking at me, he calmly typed something, then handed it back. “Remember. That’s how you write Fu Junsheng.”

As if putting his name in wasn’t enough, he’d smugly added a fox emoji after it.

Before I could finish mentally mocking him, his face came close enough to make me nearly drop my phone.

“Nothing else you want to say to me?”

Such long eyelashes…

“See you around, then. We’ll keep in touch.”

And such nice skin…

Only when he walked past me did I realize there was a word for what he’d been doing.

Seducing me.

A dignified nine-tailed fox, resorting to the tricks of a seductive fox spirit.

My heart raced as I mourned the decline of public morals.

For the record, female fox spirits and male fox spirits were not the same species.

Much like Cancer women and Cancer men.