Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~6 min read
Chapter 4: Citation format
KEN
She had written down his age.
In a field notebook. In the citation format she used for primary source data. He had read it over her shoulder — not difficult, he was quite good at reading upside down at speed, a skill acquired over several centuries of situations where reading things you weren’t meant to read was the most efficient option — and it read: *direct communication, Kenshiro (no family name), Yanaka district, first-hand account.* And then his age. In parentheses. With a question mark, which was academically honest of her.
He sat with this on the walk back to Yanaka.
The problem with the citation format was not that it was disrespectful. It was, in a way, the most respectful response he’d encountered to this particular disclosure in a very long time, because the citation format communicated: *I am taking this seriously as evidence.* He had told humans what he was, on various occasions over several centuries, usually in circumstances where concealment was no longer viable, and the responses had ranged from terror to worship to a kind of selective amnesia that the human mind sometimes offered itself as a protective measure.
She had reached for her notebook.
He told Yuki about it when he arrived back at the shrine.
Yuki was twenty-three tails of combined accumulated age younger than him and considerably less inclined to be serious about anything, which made him occasionally useful as a sounding board because he produced the reaction that Ken’s instincts expected and could then be measured against. Yuki’s reaction to the situation thus far was to find it entirely delightful.
“She wrote it down,” Yuki said, when Ken had finished the account.
“Yes.”
“In citation format.”
“Yes.”
Yuki said: “What does that mean?”
“It means she’s treating it as data.”
“You know what that means,” Yuki said. “For the bond question.”
Ken said: “I know what the tradition says about humans who see clearly.”
“Do you want me to say it out loud?”
“No,” Ken said. “I want you to stop smiling and tell me something useful.”
Yuki considered. He said: “You went back to the festival.”
“I know I went back to the festival.”
“You went back the next day,” Yuki said. “You sat down at her table yesterday without deciding to. You corrected her transliteration, which you had no practical reason to do. You gave her your contact information.” He paused. “You told her your age. How long have you been concealing your age from humans?”
“It varies.”
“You told her within forty-eight hours of meeting her. Because she asked.”
Ken said: “She asked directly.”
“She asked directly,” Yuki agreed, “and you answered directly, which is — when did you last do that?”
“The Edo period.”
“Yes,” Yuki said. “The Edo period. Approximately.” He looked at Ken with the expression he used when he was being deliberately annoying. “I’m not saying this is wrong. I’m saying it’s very fast.”
“I’m aware it’s fast.”
“You’ve been alive for several centuries. You are constitutionally capable of patience. And in forty-eight hours you’ve given this woman your name, your age, your contact information, and a commitment to three interview sessions.” Yuki paused. “Four things. Forty-eight hours.”
Ken looked at the shrine’s cedar tree, which was several hundred years old and in his opinion looked exactly like a tree that had seen everything and found it adequate.
He said: “She understood the transliteration.”
“She was also right about the transliteration.”
“The following phrase. Yes.”
“When was the last time someone corrected you about anything?”
Ken thought about this. He said: “Sometime in the Meiji period. A scholar in Kyoto who argued about a Heian text.”
“And before her. Who has seen the tails clearly?”
“Forty years ago. An old woman in Kyoto who looked at him the way very old people sometimes looked at things that had been there longer than they had — with recognition but not surprise. She had not been, in any sense he’d understood, someone his interest had fixed on.
“One person in forty years,” Yuki said. “And that person didn’t write it down.”
Ken said: “Your point is made.”
“My point is not made,” Yuki said. “I haven’t made my point yet. My point is that you are not approaching this the way you approach things that are going to resolve themselves on your timeline. You are approaching this the way you approach things that have already resolved, and you’re just — managing the disclosure schedule.” He tilted his head. “That’s a different thing.”
Ken looked at the cedar tree for a while.
He said: “She wants three interview sessions.”
“I heard.”
“She was very specific about sixty minutes each. She said she expected to need more than three.”
Yuki made a sound that was full of a kind of affection Ken found extremely irritating. “She said she expected to need more than three.”
“I’m aware of what she said.”
“She told you, in the second conversation, that she expects this to be an extended engagement.”
Ken said: “That’s a scholarly framing.”
“It’s a scholarly framing,” Yuki agreed pleasantly. “What is it, practically?”
Ken said: “I’m going to the tea house on Wednesday.”
“Of course you are,” Yuki said.
He went inside to look at the source texts she’d be interested in. He spent two hours selecting the ones that would be most relevant to her research framework — the older accounts, the pre-Edo documentation, the materials that corroborated the tradition’s consistency across periods. He built a list of cross-references that would take a careful scholar somewhere very specific if followed correctly.
He wasn’t going to hand her the conclusion. He was going to give her better material to work from and watch her arrive at the conclusion herself, because she was the kind of researcher who found her own way to things and the finding would be more satisfying to her than being told.
He also knew — in the way he knew things that were already decided without having decided them — that she was going to get there faster than he planned for.
She had, in forty-eight hours, confirmed the tails, dated him approximately correctly, and gotten the citation format right on the first attempt.
She was going to be very fast.
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