The Fox Cafe

[Biwabashi]

With the highway linking the library-city dungeon to Iruma now complete, and with Senba Village along the way fully up and running, traffic to and from Iruma had increased dramatically. A checkpoint was set up on the far bank of Biwabashi, the Iruma side, with a telephone installed so that any trouble could be reported at once to Senba and to the library-city dungeon.

One day, after the rice transplanting was more or less finished, a call came in to Marie from Senba Sama-no-jō: there was a troublesome guest asking for backup.

"You're late. The nerve, keeping the esteemed Lady Yōko waiting even a moment. Have you no divine powers?"

By the look of her, a rather aged fox-beastfolk. A literal old fox, and since she styled herself an enchantress-fox, presumably a shapeshifting one.

"I am no tengu, and besides, this dungeon's unique law grants no divine powers. Though I confess of late I may have let it all go a little to my head, grown a touch tengu-nosed myself. Forgive the late introduction. I am the Shiso, Director of Books."

"From now on this highway will see foxes and tanuki passing through too, so the least you could do is keep some treats on hand. So inattentive."

"I have heard that tanuki are fond of cockscomb, but what is a fox's favorite?"

She meant the plant, cockscomb. The fox, however, took her to mean a chicken's head.

"From of old, speak of a fox's favorite and it's rat tempura."

"Not inari-zushi?"

"That's what humans eat at the feast after a festival. Humans don't eat rats, you see. Fried tofu, on the other hand, doesn't really suit foxes, so it's best not to make a steady diet of it. What a fox eats is basically rats and rabbits, plus a bit of fruit after a meal. An omnivore leaning carnivorous, at heart. A different class of creature entirely from those mongrel dogs gnawing on leftovers."

Dogs, for their part, look down on foxes. Mutual, then.

"Rats, is it."

"You'd do well to breed them. Plenty of beastfolk eat them."

"If rats grow beyond what we can manage and escape, they'll ravage the food stores. That's the difficult part."

"Now, to the main matter. From here on, this dungeon will swell with people, won't it. Asura not so much, but humans and beasts, yes. And when that happens, it spells a business opportunity for us foxes. For the dungeon it's no bad thing either, since it'll keep public morals from rotting and order from breaking down. Of course, there are people in the world who prefer cats or tanuki to foxes, but that sort of thing can be left to races that aren't foxes."

"… Cats or tanuki… Erm, so you want to open a fox cafe, rather than a cat cafe."

"Ah, so here you call it a 'cafe.' A fox cafe it is, then. I'll call up fox shrine-maidens, and since with the dungeon's power they can 'shapeshift,' they could take on a perfectly human form, or leave just the ears and tail. With that, we'll open a shop of that kind. That's the plan."

"A shop, is it."

"A conspicuous building would be good. A castle keep, even."

"There are nineteen castle keeps in the otherworld (since there was no Second World War, and Matsumae Castle burned down in a fire), but naturally none of them are libraries, so I cannot summon them. This dungeon can only summon libraries, you see… Although, in the Shōwa era, there was a case in Sakai Prefecture of a keep-style library being built. It was a 'restoration keep,' a keep raised on the site of the original castle without being strictly faithful to it."

"And how big is it?"

"Three stories, about three hundred tsubo."

"A bit cramped, but at the start that can't be helped. If you can get hold of any other building with an unusual look, prepare those too. It's a trade where you live or die by standing out."

"Whereabouts shall we put it?"

Marie spread out a map.

"The back side is fine. For instance, right here, just north of the main building, in a spot not even along the road."

"Then in that vicinity let us summon a castle, or rather a former library in the style of a castle keep."

A fox cafe, it is.