Chương 86: A Moment of Peace I

We stared at each other for a stolen breath. Not wanting to look like an idiot, I sent the system a mental question. Because if that earlier message was any indication, that scoundrel was always listening. Hey Mochi, how does the system even compute everything it does? [Oh, err, we got like, lots of server farms on the moon. Looots and lots.] Neat. Followup question: What happens if you run out of computing power? [The system cannot run out of compute. Expansion of infrastructure is self-sustained and consistent. Expansion is ahead of the increase of demand by 1. 5% per annum. The system will not run out of compute.] I frowned. The system sent that second message. And it was known to lie. Mochi presented itself in a much more human manner, but at least they were a terrible liar. Which was probably why they passed the question off. Addy seemed to think this was an issue worth sharing, which meant it was an issue we could tackle, together. Somehow. Maybe.

There would be enough time to avoid ramifications if the oncoming apocalypse was simply the inability of the system to continue functioning as it was. It wouldn't be great. Assuming a total service collapse. There would be no magical containment domes plonked down over incursions from other planets. Also making containment more difficult would be that Custodians wouldn't have access to the system shop anymore, nor would we be able to revive.

But the worst result for the people of Earth would likely be that no new Custodians could be made. Other planets had heavily developed magical, and-slash-or technological advantages that permeated their entire society. We had three hundred thousand hopefuls with a couple years of magical training. There simply weren't enough Custodians. We were barely keeping up with attrition as it stood. On the flipside, what if the system was telling the truth?

Addy could be wrong, she was no expert in the magi-technical systems that spanned the world. But she wasn't stupid either, and she kept things to herself unless she felt it was truly important to share.

"What makes you so sure?"

"I divined it." And since that wasn't enough, she added: "At any point, time branches into infinitely many possibilities. Weighing all the future possibilities against each other is difficult. It becomes less difficult the closer you are to the point in time you're scrying, because there are less options to take into account. It's like… a car crash. Far away, and you can swerve, brake, or do nothing, if the car's a hundred feet away you can only brake, or do nothing.

If your bumper is already fusing with the other car's trunk, the only option that remains is doing nothing."

"Thanks for making things relatable," I snarked, earning me a glare.

"Sorry. And you can divine it because we're already at the bumper-fusing stage?" Addy huffed.

"Please. I'm not that incompetent. I repeated the Pactmaker's divination, and cross-referenced with the two other available open-source spells. It took months to set up, and a couple thousand soulcoins of reagents. All three had the same response." I brushed a hand across the back of hers, another feeling the hairs standing at attention on the back of her neck.

"Two years ago, the masquarade broke, not because secrecy no longer benefited us, but because the system could no longer afford it's upkeep. Cutting those costs freed up resources, but those have been slowly eaten away at. What do you know about how the system fuels itself?"

"It, uh, uses lots of electricity?" I hedged.

"No, wait, it casts a bunch of magic. Domes, teleportations, et cetera. So it needs to get magic somehow, which I suppose means it's either using magic from one of the other planets, or…"

"It's using emotions, Sam," Addy noted.

"Emotions don't just dissipate. They rise up, form clouds, clouds that are sucked up into the sky, or wherever the system needs it."

"Huh. Like a giant Custodian?"

"More like a million giant ECCs working in tandem." Addy shrugged.

"It's more efficient to do that than to use them to quadruple the Custodian headcount. Earth's living population only makes up a fraction of the total emotional power generated though. The rest is generated by the eight afterlives."

"Oh, yeah, the afterlives." The places we go to after our final deaths. Mochi offered me to go there on my first death, if I didn't want to become a Custodian. One afterlife for each emotion. In hindsight, rather obvious.

"Addy. That's pretty fucking scary."

"Not as scary as what comes next." Addy stared me straight in the eyes.

"Sometime in the next three months, this system is going to collapse. We don't know why, or how, but all the possibilities converge into a single bumper-fusing fact. And without the system, we are screwed." That… is terrifying.

"Why is nobody talking about this?" I asked.

"This should be at the front of the news!"

"It should not," Addy countered.

"A panicked populace will unbalance the world's emotions in favor of fear. That will only make implementing our response more difficult."

"Oh, and what is our response?" Addy beat her chest.

"We are the response. This is what we Custodians were made for. The southeast-asian lodges are preparing fallbacks to keep the worldwide teleportation networks functioning at emergency capacity, and I hear a group of wizards is preparing an open-source library for spellcasting using cheap and commonly available ingredients." I draped arms over my eyes and groaned.

"They could've started years ago. Not t-minus three months to the apocalypse!"

"T-minus three months at most," Addy helpfully corrected.

"Also, there was too much pushback until now. Mundane countries have tossed their hands up at legislating magic, so we've got no trouble on that front." Oh great. Everything was racing towards the end of the world. So the world is all, like, 'Don't worry about it, if the Custodians can't handle it, we're doomed anyways'?

"That's a lot of responsibility, so business as usual," I noted, to which Addy just nodded.

"So, since we can't really solve that problem right this moment, how about visiting your parents." I was going to finally get to know Addy's family, and woah, she did not look amused. The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention. She wore that characteristic fight-or-flight tension I was so familiar with, tensing her body down to the tips of her toes, ready to jump, duck, or run away.

"Parents?" she asked.

"Which ones?"

"The Kobayashis. Are there other ones I should be aware of?" Tension visibly bled from her frame.

"No. No, there are not." Smooth Sam, who had at some point entered the room, seen disarray we were planning to leave it in, and promptly decided to start cleaning, cleared her throat.

"They seemed quite relieved when I told them about you. They thought you were injured, or worse."

"Hm," Addy hummed. Hesitation. Unspoken thoughts, clear as if a cloudy bubble were growing from her hairline.

"Addy. When was the last time you visited?"

"I. Uh." The window to her left suddenly seemed so very interesting to her.

"Maybe like… five years ago?" Smooth Sam and I shared a look. She pinched the bridge of her nose. I rubbed my face with four hands.

"Addy—""Hey—" I stared at the other me, gesturing with a hand for her to take the lead.

"Addy. If you're planning to embark on some great quest to save the world, I'll be right next to you, we all will. But I won't have you torture yourself over some ineffable moment in the past holding you back. I need you feeling emotionally centered and in control, not least because we literally use emotions to fuel our magic. I care about you, Addy, and I know you don't run away from fights. So please, don't run away from this one."

Addy squirmed back and forth, trying and failing to do more than open and close her mouth repeatedly.

"I… no. You're right." She sighed in defeat.

"When are we scheduled to depart?" Smooth Sam checked her wrist which the system projected a small digital clock onto.

"About five minutes ago." +++"Shit, shit, shit." We raced along the roof of the Chicago airport at a breakneck speed, luggage in tow. The convergence event forecast projected a low risk period for the next three days, reducing convergence events by nearly 35%. That meant we finally had a weekend together, and I was not going to bungle it up.

"Addy, did you pack your toiletries?"

"I barely had the time to grab some probably fresh underwear! I just unpacked yesterday, and you didn't exactly leave us a lot of time. Why are we even leaving so early in the first place?"

"Because of the fourteen-hour time difference of course," Smooth Sam said.

"Also, it's the only free non-emergency teleport slot for months."

"Since when do we even need to book teleports? We're Custodians!" We jumped off the roof and landed on the asphalt with a thump. Some pedestrians waiting at a crossing jerked away. They stared in confusion as I smiled and waved while walking down a pair of stairs backwards.

"Sorry, sorry, just passing through. Trigger Happy's taking a weekend off. Be good, Chicago! And kids, don't do drugs!" The underground part of the Chicago airport hid a small confectionary kiosk tucked away in the most far-off dead-end passage. The kiosk was a cover, an old holdover from when the system and the society of magical folks and things operated in secret. Now, a line of people snaked back and forth for nearly two hundred feet.

They were people of all ages and sizes, though they all looked at least moderately well dressed. Teleportation was open to the public, but that didn't mean it was affordable.

"Rubens! Last call for Rubens!"

"Here, here!" My system initiated a handshake with the terminal of the old woman managing this place. She frowned slightly before waving us ahead. I tried not to make it too obvious that we were cutting the line. Mostly by avoiding eye contact.

"Oh god, I could feel the people staring at us."

"So what?" Addy asked. I fidgeted with Addy's hand.

"Just feels a bit awkward to be treated like a VIP."

"That's because you are one. The VIP to my heart." I gave Addy a look.

"We're going to have to work on your flirting skills."

"You have a fast pass to my lips too. Infinite rides."

"Addy!" Smooth Sam and I yelled in unison.

"What? I thought that was pretty smooth." Smooth Sam groaned.

"And that's part of the problem." We bypassed a tiny check-in section and a metal detector. Nobody bothered checking our luggage. We were Custodians, checking what magic wonders and horrors we had stored for later use was more dangerous than just letting it be. In a way, we were trusted to handle ourselves.

"No spider backpack?" Addy asked.

"Left it back at HQ. I… upgraded it to the point that teleporting it costs just a tiny bit too many soulcoins."

"Huh. Hocchi doesn't have that problem." She tapped her size-changing knife hanging at the side of her hip. It thrummed with power in a way that only cats, dogs, and Custodians with over 200 in Sense could pick up on.

"I'm told it's to do with the type of magic. Spatial magic plus teleportation magic equals… difficulties."

"Yeah, makes sense. You bought tickets for three?" Addy asked as we were ushered into the phonebooth-looking teleporter.

"For six actually, ten soulcoins per head," I grumbled, silently cursing inflation while Smooth Sam helpfully clarified exactly how I'd wasted enough money to buy a couple laser pistols on this trip. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

"Well… it was supposed to be a bigger thing. I thought everyone could use a vacation, so I bought them on impulse. But then Becca got a quest binding her to defend Chicago for a year as the local anti-kaiju quick response team, and her and Orianna are inseparable, of course. Clem is too busy meeting an unquenchable demand for potions and trying to shake more pixiedust out of Rico, who is having way too much fun pranking her and the rest of the office.

I thought of maybe giving Akira one since he just finished his masters, but he wasn't interested in third-wheeling. Silica detests traveling via our teleportation network for, quote, 'personal safety reasons', Parsnip is having too much fun being a Custodian, and Pol is back on his home planet tending his farm."

"The demon?" I showed her a picture of Pol, the ten-foot furred bat demon. He was standing in a field of corn, a sickle in one hand, a look of pride on his face. The corn was on fire. Addy shook her head.

"It shouldn't surprise me by now, but somehow it still does. You make odd friends."

"Better that than odd enemies." The phonebooth teleporter rumbled before dinging like a microwave. We stepped on out, the rush of differing air pressure hitting us in the face. It was colder and darker. We'd left Chicago at five AM, meaning it was around seven in the afternoon in the north of Japan, give or take a few minutes.

"Welcome to Asahikawa."

"That should be my line," Addy said. Her nose twitched as she sniffed the air, exhaling with a relaxed hum.

"Yep. Asahikawa." It looked remarkably similar to any normal small town in the US. There were flattop buildings and neon shop signs, convenience stores and a baseball field all in immediate sight. The system translated the various katakana into plain English without a prompt. The biggest difference was that the roads were slimmer, the cars smaller, and everything from the neatly arrayed canal to the often-swept boardwalk was orderly and clean.

Oh, and there were the powerpoles of course, dozens and dozens planted at every step and corner, as if someone had decided to unravel a ball of yarn and drape it in a criss-cross pattern across the entire city. It reminded me in some ways of a spider's web. I could vibe with it.

"Alright," Addy said.

"You probably know this, but the Kobayashis live in the absolute boonies. The bus doesn't stop anywhere near it, and we just missed the last one for the day. So, we're going to have to run—" I stopped her with a finger to her lips, raising a second one to signal patience. Moments later, a man attached to a rainbow colored smattering of balloons landed right next to us. [Bernard, The Great, LvL 45]"You the questgiver?" he asked. Me and other me both gleamed with self-satisfaction.

"Why of course. Transport for three Custodians, please." He gave us a look over before finishing with a nod. The man had the red suit, wacky fly tie, and flamboyantly fixed tophat of a classical ringmaster of a circus from the early 20th century. He proceeded to reinforce that image when he pulled out a tiny origami cannon from his pocket. The end was ringed with red flames. He unfolded it, and it doubled in size, again, and again, and again.

"You made a quest," Addy said.

"Yep."

"For saving us an hour or so of running."

"You always looked so envious of all the, and I quote, 'darn uppers thinking they're better than us because they can fly'. So, here's your chance to see the world from their perspective." Addy eyed the cannon with evident trepidation.

"I'm not saying this is bad, just… you planned all this. Why?"

"I don't get nearly enough opportunities to show off how cool magic can be," I said with a dejected sigh. During the time it took Addy, me, and other me to gawk at and process the unfolding cannon, Bernard The Great had already aimed it towards the hilly hinterlands pointing eastwards.

"Alright, madames," he said, waving his top hat.

"Hold on tight to reduce your spread when you hit the ground. My magic will prevent most conventional harm during your lift-off, flight, and subsequent landing." We followed his instructions, me and other me wrapping Addy in a comfortable hug-cocoon.

"Any last words?" the ringmaster asked with a grin. Addy tensed up.

"What do you mean last—" Then came the blast. The landscape turned into a smear as we were launched high, way past the clouds. Smooth Sam screamed. I laughed. Addy grabbed onto me so hard it hurt. But we were flying, sailing through the sky on a pillow of magic. We crossed paths with a passenger plane on its landing approach, coming within half a mile or so, close enough for a few people to turn their heads in our direction. I waved.

"Sam!" Addy clenched down harder.

"Don't let go!"

"This is insane, this is insane!" yelled Smoothy. I just laughed. I opened my minimap out of curiosity, watching the landscape flit by beneath us at truly terrible speeds. We were going north of three-fifty miles per hour. In a straight line, that would deliver us to our destination in roughly three minutes' flight. By minute two, Addy's grip lightened enough for her to look around and appreciate the landscape. Smoothy had gone nonverbal. She looked distinctly unwell.

"If you need to throw up, please do it backwards — oh, yep, there she goes."

"H-how can you be so calm?" she asked.

"Because flying is cool as heck!" Smoothy disagreed by retching some more. A minute later we started losing height. Following a flat parabolic arc, we first blasted past a layer of clouds, then pine trees, then snow. The magic really did cushion us, a twenty-foot-diameter sphere around us pressing a convex hole through the treeline and the snow beneath before dissipating with barely a whisper. Which of course dropped us straight into several feet of snow.

"Gah!" Addy sunk deep, clawing her way out with every inch of superhuman ability.

"Cold, cold, shit, that guy sent us all the way up Asahi-dake. Next time tell him to — Sam?" I grinned at her from where I was lying in a pile of snow, my skin the exact same color as it, courtesy of [Of many Colors]. I grinned a sunbeam-smile before pouncing on her from the side.

"Yaaah! Got y— hey!" Addy fell through the shadow of a large pine tree, emerging a couple yards away from a connected shadow. We stared each other in the eye, chests heaving, gaze roaming.

"Are we doing this now?" she asked, eyes transfixed on my face.

"Really?"

"I thought you didn't mind a bit of exposure." I bit my tongue and broke out into a cheeky grin.

"Your folks are not expecting us for another hour or two, sooo..." Her eyes narrowed. She tried to leap, only for two spidery arms to grab her ankle. Smooth Sam emerged from the cover of snow. Great tag team, girl! But Addy was slippery. What followed was a wild, heartstring-thrumming chase through snowdrifts and half-sunken forests. Whenever I thought I had her surrounded, she teleported away, or cast some stupid minor spell out of nowhere. At one point she abducted one of my one-point copies for five minutes.

We found her twitching on the ground, the happiest smile on a face flushed and covered in hickies.

"She's taunting us," Smooth Sam noted.

"Plan B." I told her, raising my cybernetic hand, Sin. <<target acked>> the somewhat sapient arm said. <<shooting goo>> Short, concentrated spiderwebs shot out of the metal wrist, mine and Smooth Sam's both. There was a distant yelp. A tree wobbled as something thunked against it. When we cleared a wall of pines, both of us froze at the sight of Addy pinned to a great conifer tree amidst snow white as a freshly made bed. A splotch of web had glued her hands to it above her head.

Another had hit her neck, fixing it in profile. A third and fourth trapped her left knee and ankle to bark. The right leg was completely free, but even outstretched it just barely fell short of the ground. Still, she kicked it, looking for leverage, her gaze flicking between her free limb and at us. At me. She was beautiful. She was everything I ever wanted. More than that, the instincts of spider and vampire inside of me were going haywire.

I would've stood there, transfixed by the sight, were it not for the other me beckoning me forward with a tug at my hands. I, she, we slid across the distance in a trance, twelve arms reaching, grasping, touching, and caressing Addy and everything around her. Smooth Sam circled a nest of kisses along her neck and lower jaw. I grabbed Addy's free leg, lifted it around my hip. Addy's breath hitched and she shuddered.

"Remember the first time you pinned me to a wall?" she asked.

"Mhm."

"At the time, I thought I was going crazy.

'Is this really happening?'

'Why is someone like her giving attention to someone like me?'

'Stop charging your spells off of this. It's inappropriate.'

'Just one more second, please'." I smiled, running smooth arms along the side of her hips as she continued.

"It was immensely frustrating that you didn't seem to notice what you were doing to me, and that I didn't have the words to tell you what I wanted from you. I think I have them now though." She closed her eyes, a sign of accepting defeat — and then melded into the shadows. Her shirt was left behind, her pants too. She appeared above me in her hybrid form, wrists still glued together.

Within the disbelieving blink of eight spider eyes she looped her arms around me, pulled back in a judo grip I had no hopes of escaping, and twirled me around until I slammed into the ground. She whispered into my ears with that husky hybrid voice.

"Today, I'm doing the pinning. I've always wanted to pin you. I—" An unfamiliar sound intruded on our ménage à trois. Three heads twisted to the left. There, a creature in the shape of a small fluffy dog was staring at us from between pine needles, a bundle of twigs strapped to its back. I… a tanuki? Addy blanched. She stumbled to her feet, pulling me with, and accidentally squeezed me so hard I squeaked like a dog's favorite chew toy.

"Cousin Hideo!?" +++ The cleanup was quick, dirty, and somewhat embarrassing. More so for Addy than for me. She'd gone from shocked to mortified to staring daggers at the back of the tanuki as he led us down the mountain. <<What do you think she's more angry about, that she was caught, or that her cousin dared to interrupt her right as things were getting good? >> I texted to Smooth Sam. Every part of the original was duplicated in a body double.

Therefore, it only stood to reason that I had a system connection, and that I could send messages to myself in an empty chatroom. Any clone at or above four charges was functional enough to come with a working system implant, and they all had access to it as well. <<Probably the latter. >> The probably-maybe-very-likely original me dragged a hand through the snow, another grabbing Addy's left hand while I grabbed the right. <<When has she ever cared about what others think of her? >> <<Fair point.

>>"So, Addy," I said, trying to break through the uncomfortable silence, "Is everyone in your family a tanuki?"

"No. Hideo's just trying to be annoying."

"How does one try to be annoying?" Smooth Sam mused. She turned to the Tanuki.

"Are you trying to annoy your cousin?"

"Yip!" She turned back to Addy.

"See? He's on his best behavior. A model tanuki if I've ever seen one."

"No comment," Addy grumbled. We walked down the mountain along a thin animal path trodden into the ground over generations, passed a small pond of meltwater, then a house made entirely of old cobbled stones. It wasn't the Kobayashi's house, as the hike continued for another half mile before passing through something unseen. It was a sense of energy that fizzled against the skin, pulling all my hairs straight up in an awfully familiar feeling.

"Is this…"

"A barrier," Addy said.

"It's from around the end of the Edo period. My… the Kobayashi's moved here on the orders of the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune in 1740, to 'keep the spirits around the mountain in balance and appease the kami'. The volcano had erupted just a year before. In spite of the remote location, and the volcano, the Kobayashi's managed to build a home here. Fast forward to today, and the Kobayashi clan has garnered significant ties to the society while remaining isolationist and neutral towards anyone else. Hence the barrier."

"Huh." I peered down at where we were holding hands.

"I suppose I should count myself lucky." Addy swung our hands.

"Of course. I'm quite the catch."

"Ooh, confidence, I like it." She answered with a sharp toothed grin that told me she hadn't forgotten about our chase, that the final part was still to play out. The path ahead was at times made of cobbles, at times of wooden planks pressed into the ground. It led us across and around a glade covered in heavenly soft moss. The moss drank from a nearby meltwater pond with a small waterfall happily burbling out of sight. There was a cave ahead, built into a massive rock face.

A rather small cave, round and homely as a hobbit hole. The tanuki waddled inside, depositing his gathered tinder with a flourish of teeth, then waddled on through an abutting tunnel. Addy sighed, and followed after with the two of us. I… didn't really know what I was supposed to expect from a cave for a home. Maybe neatly furnished walls, some tasteful lighting, a certain homeliness. What I got was a hard cave floor, wall, and ceiling, rough as if it had been mined yesterday, hemming me in from every side.

There was movement in the shadows, of small things walking around, sitting, sleeping, or making animal noises at one another. One of them, a fox-like thing with thick fur, walked up to me and bumped me in the thigh with its nose. It whined. It looked so hungry. Its eyes told a story of never having been fed in its entire life. What was there to eat on this mountain? Which grocery store would service a fox, a tanuki, or any other animal?

"Goddamn Uncle Daigo," Addy muttered.

"Don't give them anything."

"What am I supposed to do then?"

"Ignore them. Maybe that way they'll get bored faster." We crawled into a main room, where half of the trunk of a great tree lay on the ground in place of a table. The upside was barely carved straight, with bark flaking off the side. A number of shallow wooden bowls stood at the various seats, which were essentially piles of leaves and mulch. Each bowl barely had a tanuki's handful of nuts, a wafer of dried seaweed, and a single dried fruit, an apricot of some sort.

As we sat down, nearly two-and-a-half dozen animals of all shapes and sizes approached their seats. A fluffy tanuki with a gray streak running through his hair put his front paws on the table. He looked at me with those big, sad eyes, eyes that told me he was but a poor tanuki, and though he was stricken by fate, he would share what meager earnings the land could give him in these trying times.

On shaky legs, he waddled over to me, and with the grace of someone who knew he could count his future winters on one paw, deposited the tiniest of small fry into my bowl. The tiny fish was as long as my pinky. It was covered in drool.

"I, uh…" I turned to Addy for help.

"Don't say a word. Don't encourage them. In fact, don't make a sound." I turned back to the Tanuki.

"Um. Okay. Uhhh…" <<System, help me out here. I don't have a fork, I don't know what to do! >> [In Japanese culture, when trying to show politeness and appreciation for the food, one typically says 'Itadakimasu'.] [Say 'Itadakimasu', lol]"Itadakimasu?" The old tanuki's left eyelid twitched. Somewhere in the background, a tanuki sniggered, then broke out into a full-throated laugh. The laughter spread.

There was a puff of smoke, and suddenly there was no old tanuki sitting in front of me, but a rather short, rather balding man. He was jolly faced, red with laughter as he rolled over the plates and off the table.

"Y-you were actually going to eat it! The look on your face! Bwahahaha!" The walls and ceiling fell away. They were drapes colored and patterned to look like cave walls, a slight magical flourish giving them depth and texture. They were obvious in the renewed light coming from genuine electric bulbs flickering overhead, and even in the darkness of the caves, I should have noticed the trick. But I was too focused on the weirdness of the situation.

All the Sense and spider eyes in the world couldn't help you if you didn't know what to look for. The real dimensions of the cave were large, and it was indeed quite homely, with wood and stone so artfully crafted together that it looked like the insides of any other normal house. A fireplace crackled in the distance, the warm swell of air buffeting me like the rarest of rare comforts. Only the table remained as it was, though that lent the entire place a rustic sort of charm.

And it hit my ability to parse the situation out of left field like a wrecking ball.

"… what?" The old man spread his arms.

"It was a prank, girly, a prank! Come round, people, come round, family, have no fear, show yourselves and welcome a sister, a daughter home!" All around, tanukis and other animals of the forest poofed. They turned into big people and small people, mostly kids with an awkward gait or that sniffed the air and came away unsatisfied. Only a few had a fully human appearance, with most of them showing signs of fluffy ears on top or the side of their heads, odd noses on their faces, and tails drooping out of their pants.

Some remained in full animal form, though whether that was by choice or by lack of ability I couldn't tell. They produced various instruments, some I could recognize as drums, others that looked self-made, or entirely foreign. A pair of a weresheep girl and a vulpine boy produced a toy bow with sticky arrows. The boy shot the girl across the head. She clobbered him with a headbutt straight to the chest that had him on the ground, gasping for air.

Shortly after, she was tackled by what looked to be his brothers or cousins, and a small brawl broke out in the back, complete with low stakes gambling of bits of food. And Addy was digging her face deeper and deeper into her palms.

"Welcome home, big sister Adelaide!" the tanukis and deer and everyone else sung while Addy just shrunk together more and more. This was nice. Her family was nice. They all seemed quite the jolly, merry-making type of folk. And they were so unlike Addy that a part of me couldn't help but egg on the embarrassment taking over my stoic tanuki girlfriend. This was going to be a fun stay.