I somehow became a prankster.

I don't understand.

I wasn't like this in my previous life.

Well, it can't be helped—when you have an ability like that, it's almost like the universe wants you to toy with people.

I've tried restraining myself to only the village kids, and maybe some of the adults I'm more acquainted with, but sometimes I still go a bit too far.

That said, usually I just misplace certain things, like clothes or toys. Often I'll completely screw with someone's sense of directions. And sometimes, I just like seeing people freak out at seeing a (non-venomous) snake or spider crawl out their pants.

This weird habit of mine began when I turned 8, and learned about my ability. That said, I've managed to control myself to show some moderation. It would be bad if people came to hate me.

On the other hand, I'm quite a tease. Because I'm so fast, I'm not as defensive about my tail, so I sometimes play with the boys, or even girls, with a mock seduction. I don't know why, but it's fun seeing them become flustered.

Is this the onset of my rebellious stage? Maybe.

Or maybe I just broke?

There's a hand-full of peddlers that come by this small village to exchange goods, at regular intervals. Because I'm something like a village secret, I usually hide myself when they come by, but thanks to my newly learned ability, I was able to check on the peddler's goods.

Among them, was a mirror. Thinking about it, it was pretty big, so I wonder why he'd bring it to a poor village like this one. He probably was just bringing it through to his next destination?

Anyways, I may have snapped upon seeing myself in that mirror.

I still carried the same beautiful face, that had a delicacy that could hardly be described, with soft cheeks, and sharp red eyes that seemed to want to pierce the soul. My fiery-red hair, almost universal among Kitsune, flowed freely down my back, with two long triangular ears popping out of the top of my head.

Even though my chest was as flat as board, being a man and all, what truly crushed me were the curves of my hips and legs, which seemed to have an alluring charm to them.

Watching this figure of mine that had somehow diverged into trap territory, and crossed the point of no return, what little pride as a man that I had, just snapped.

That was 3 years ago now, and even as I enter puberty, I can't seem to find even a hint of masculinity on this body of mine. The only consolation I have received is that my son seems to be growing with me healthily.

Still, in my old world, 11 years old is the time when I already began to notice various body hair. Yet, I have not noticed a single stray hair anywhere buy on my head or my tail. My armpits are smooth as a baby's butt, my face hasn't grown a single bit of fuzz, and even down there hasn't had anything to speak of.

It's a body many women would kill to have—I don't need to shave, and my body odor seems to be kept to a minimum. Even my hair is easy to manage despite its length.

I guess, even though I'm a male, I'm still a Kitsune, which is an all female race, huh?

According to various books I read, the features I mentioned above are pretty common among Kitsune. It can't be helped that I ended up with very feminine genetics.

It just hurts my soul is all.

Anyways, the only person I don't really tease like this is my sister.

Why you ask? Because I live under the same roof as her.

If I try to toy with her emotions, she'll just pounce me and beat on me until I apologize. If I pull a mean prank on her, I won't be able to sleep in my own home. Once I left a few spiders in her dresser and she screamed for hours while they scurried about. I on the other hand, laughed hysterically, basically giving it away that it was me.

When I went to sleep that night, my tail was crushed, and I was dragged along to be her pillow.

On the other hand, some of my teasing seems to have made some unexpected... relationships among my group of playmates. This happened when I'd notice the wandering eyes of a boy or girl, and I'd tease them, and practically out their crushes.

Somehow, a few of these pairs even ended up together...

You guys?

You're not much older than me.

You shouldn't already be in a relationship...

Stop. I'm too lonely to be seeing you guys like this.

Please?

Well, I'm not certain these relationships will really last long—they're hardly even teens, you know? But in a world where arranged marriages are the norm, it's not unlikely that they'd be pinned together by their parents, solely for the fact that I had a part in these... matches.

But it's not like I put serious thoughts into these matches, you know? The kids around my age are entering puberty, and are all very impressionable. I thought it would be amusing to see them get with crushes that they'd otherwise not.

Well, I hope I didn't create a whole generation of unhappy couples in the future.

Ohen Village resided at the southern border of Senilea, a mid-sized Kingdom when compared to its various neighbors.

The Kingdom itself had little military power, and instead relied on its allies in times of war. It managed to avoid being the target of conquest thanks to how little resources there were. The forest that surrounded Ohen Village was just a small piece of a greater forest, that acted as a border for the Kingdom.

The majority of the country was plains and hills, so it at least had a fair amount of farm-land. Valuable, but not quite worth the effort of going to war.

For the most part, Senilea is mostly populated by humans, and all of its neighbors are also human-controlled nations.

However, some races just don't care about such territories.

Kitsune are lone nomads who travel from place to place unhindered by humans. There are also goblins and other fay that simply travel between borders, ignoring whatever rules the humans make.

Fay are... well, I'm just calling them that, but Fay are just a collection of sentient races that are just "not human".

I considered calling them demons or magic races, but "demon" is too dark, and "magic races" is too long.

I arbitrarily chose "Fay", because of the history of the word in my old world.

The Azurian language has a singular word for the majority of non-human races, and just generally tack on a descriptive word for certain groups. Such as "Dark Fay", representing the groups that humans were most scared of, and rarely had a good relationship with. Or Civil Fay, who humans consider to be near equals to themselves, and Wild Fay, who are very nomadic wanderers that rarely care to interact with humans.

You would think that Kitsune fall into the "Wild Fay" category, but you would be wrong.

My race falls into a classification humans call "Spirits". Unearthly beings that many consider to be divine or close to divine. They are often the object of worship or even great hysteria.

I've been calling my race "Kitsune" for convenience, but in Azurian, the literal translation is "Fox Spirit".

There are a number of other Spirit races, but ultimately they don't seem to quite be the same kinds of "spirits" that I think of. They all seem to have physical bodies, and don't quite dematerialize into some astral plane or anything.

The only real similarities is that individuals of these races often possess overwhelming power over nature.

Kind of vague, but I guess humans just want to shove things into neat categories, huh?

"Com'on Toya!" I hear a shout behind me, pulling me out of my thoughts just as my tail is grabbed by a monstrous grip! A shock of pain shoots up my spine as it's tugged behind me.

"Ow ow ow!" I end up dropping the book I was reading up till now, as my sister Yenna begins dragging me out of the "library". Unfortunately, my ability is useless once my sister already has a grip on me. "What is it?" I yell back at her with teary eyes.

"We're going to play of course," She said with her ear-to-ear grin.

"Please let me go," I plead,

"No way. You'll just run away if I do," She said with a smirk.

Yenna is peculiar.

There are two forms of magic a normal human may use.

The first, is through the use of magic items. I don't know the details about this, but it seems to vary.

Second, seems to be more of a physical enhancement magic. I only learned about this type of magic after reading through more than half of the books the village "library" had.

In many ways, it reminded me of "Chi" or "Ki" from the various folklore in my old world. The people in this world believe that with a powerful will, they can bring out their life-force to enforce their will on the world. Either to enhance the power of an attack, or defend themselves from harm.

Objectively speaking—isn't this a form of magic?

Something like telekinesis, right? It seems to still take up mana, so it makes sense. It's quite subtle, so it looks like society doesn't really consider this magic.

The issue is that this is generally an instinctive ability in humans, and only those humans with strong wills and great experiences can really use these abilities.

However, what I've noticed is that Yenna seems to always be emitting this sort of force-field around her body like a thin armor, and her punches always hit before her fists do.

I have to wonder—is it really that easy to control this force?

I've tried it myself, and at most I can make a flimsy film around my palm, that barely has enough force to push paper.

On the one hand, I discovered I also have this ability.

On the other hand, I discovered just how damn hard it is to control.

Is Yenna a genius, or are Kitsune just weak with this ability?

If it's the former, then it normally wouldn't make a difference.

Arranged marriages are common in this village. Normally it's only rich families who do this sort of practice, but it seems this village commonly practices it anyways. There's no real harm in it from their perspective, and it's worked so far. I wonder why the custom trickled down to these commoner families, but it is what it is.

Under normal circumstances, Yenna would have a fiance picked for her in just a couple years, and she would marry. Her combat potential would end up meaning nothing, and she'd end up a simple house-wife.

Maybe if she could convince her parents to let her join the military, she could become quite an amazing person. However, she doesn't seem like the sort to follow authority very well, so acting under a Kingdom would be impossible.

Then there's me, seemingly the only male Kitsune.

With the custom to have parents discuss marriageable partners, there are sometimes a couple candidates, when it comes to families that are well off. It's not as extreme with noble families, where a prince or princess has dozens of marriage candidates, there are still some occurrences of that here, although rare.

Mr. Aliuen, the village blacksmith, is well off in this remote village. Being a Blacksmith, he always has the possibility for work in this society. Even if business is sour here, he can always move to a larger city—not that he needs to, with him being the only smith in town. His son is in a similar position, and I recall there were at least two families trying to get their daughter with him. It was an amusing situation, and they're lucky it happened before I snapped, or I would have just thrown in more girls.

However, I have no suitors.

No family has come to my mother to propose a union with one of their sons or daughters.

And I'm sure my mother is grateful for that, considering my current circumstance.

However, the reason is quite simple.

What does marriage to a Spirit entail? There are no fairy tales on the subject, so is it even possible to find a suitable partner?

I've forgotten because these people have become quite familiar with me—but I am still part of a race regarded as a divine being. They don't quite worship me, but they still ask for blessings—whatever that means—and occasionally ask for some sort of guidance. Even if I look like a child, people still recognize that I have a wisdom beyond my apparent years.

So back to Yenna.

Normally, she might have a suitor, and if not, mother and her father would ask around the village so see who might be a good partner.

Yet she is somehow in the same position as I—for slightly different reasons.

The most important reason is probably because she's too violent. All of the boys in our age group are scared of her. Wouldn't you be scared of a monster that can pound you into the dirt even as five other boys—that are all clearly much heavier than her—struggle with all their might to remove her? Even if you weren't on the receiving end of that beating, and just saw it, you might be scared of the prospect of being matched with her.

In the end, she probably won't marry, and I feel I may be responsible for various reasons.

For that reason, it seems my adoptive parents have been trying to have another child. But it seems they haven't had much luck. It's not like my "blessings" have any real effect.

Still. What about my life?

I'm not quite sure what I want to do.

Part of me wants to find my mother, and learn why I was abandoned.

The rest of me doesn't feel motivated enough to care.

So for now, I'll continue to play with these children.

"So what are we playing?" I hear one of the boys ask as Yenna pulls me over to them.

Curling my lips as an idea popped into my head, I spoke up.

"I have an idea~"

Author Notes:

So timeskip. This chapter ended up longer than usual, but whatever. It's pretty much an info-dump chapter, with just some stuff going on in the background.

I realized I'm working on this story more than my NPC one, but eh. I'll have a chapter for that story out soon enough. I've just been wanting to push through this story a bit.

Toyaru is probably acting a bit creepy in this chapter, considering his age, but that's more-or-less intentional.

As always, Suggestions and Feedback are appreciated and encouraged.