Eva felt she was just about to reach a major breakthrough with figuring out her fire powers. She had managed to conjure a seemingly autonomous little firefox that was playing around in the bowl she had prepared before.

But when the front door was slammed closed loud enough to utterly shatter her concentration, the light blue flames forming its body dispersed into tiny embers that were extinguished before they even reached the bowl.

Looking up from her practice at Hanako, Eva saw a slightly shocked expression on her students face. The lack of illusions around meant she to had her concentration disturbed.

“I’ll go check it out, you just keep practicing.” Eva reassured her as she got up to check who had just come. “You’ve been making great progress tonight already.” The Kitsune continued, giving her friend a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

Carefully sliding the door to the main room open, she took a look around to see who had just stormed in. Once she spotted Youya’s shoes flung haphazardly around in the genkan, Eva began to look for the young Tanuki.

Her first instinct of checking his room turned out to be a miss, as it was empty. And even giving it a closer look, she found no signs that anyone had been here in the last few hours.

She next thought about checking the kitchen, but that too was empty. Eva was about to step out, when she noticed a bit of a plastic bag peeking out from the fridge’s door. Sighing deeply, she went over to check, and was a tad surprised to find the bag of groceries just thrown in there with seemingly no care at all. Taking a moment to make sure nothing in there was broken, she was relieved the carton of eggs had survived fully intact. But the package of pocky had crumbled in a way that left no doubt about how intact its contents were. Letting out a sigh, she picked it up, and decided some chocolate covered snacks, even if smashed to bits, couldn’t hurt when she finally found Touya.

Deciding she’d better give it to him, Eva remembered the fact she could just see where she’d need to go to get to him magically. Checking this way, she immediately headed to the back door towards the garden, where she found him sitting on the veranda with his back towards the door.

While he looked alright, Eva knew that didn’t need to mean much. He was a natural at transforming himself to look however he wanted to after all. Returning to her more foxy form, she slowly approached him, carefully making sure her claws made audible noise on the wooden floor without damaging it.

Sitting down next to him, she quietly rests a tail on the shoulder next to her. Dropping the pocky in his lap she looks out across the garden, and after a while settled on watching the water feature near the edge going klunk, klunk, klunk every few seconds as the bamboo pipe fills up.

After a few cycles of this, she broke the silence. “Just take the pocky, I kinda got careless with it.” she lied, poking the crumbled cardboard box with a tail.

Another few klunks later, he slowly opened the package, and took out one of the chocolate covered snacks. As he began to nibble on it, she continued.

“You do know I am happy to listen if there’s anything troubling you, right?” She looked down, her ears folding back while fiddling with her two remaining tails. “I can’t promise I’ll necessarily understand what’s going on. I don’t even know what's going on with myself. But I’ll be happy to listen if you want to talk.”

The two fell back into silence, with Eva waiting for Touya to give any sign he had listened, ears flicking back and forth slowly with every noise that echoed across the garden.

When he finally gave a quick nod, Eva gave his shoulder a, hopefully reassuring, pat with her tail and slowly left, to give him a chance to protest if he wanted her to stay.

When he hadn’t moved except to continue nibbling on pocky by the time she reached the door, Eva slipped back in, turning back into a human.

When the Kitsune returned to the tatami room and her practicing student, she was surprised to see she had managed to make a little black line appear floating in the air already.

“Everything seems to be alright.” She reassured Hanako as she sat down before her again.

“That’s good.” Hanako replied with an annoyed pout on her lips, as her line had just vanished again.