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in Hokkaido Most of the lions cheat because their lives are boring and they crave excite te Auspicious Snow Lion is the best dice-player He comes all the way from Taipei to play and drink and hunt rabbits in the forest He does not speak Japanese, but he pretends to hu streaks
25 Sometimes they play Go The lions are terrible at it Fortuitous Brass Lion likes to eat the black pieces Nales his whiskers Typhoons spin up off the coast of Okinawa
26 Everyone on the unhuman side of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian is curious about Ko Has he ever been in love? Fought in a war? What are his thoughts on astrology? Are there any good scandals in his past? How old is he? Does he have any children? Where did he learn calligraphy? Why is he here? How did he find the house and get stuck there? Was part of hi the thousand eyes in the screen, they spy on him, but cannot discover the answers to any of these questions
27 They have learned the following: Ko is left-handed Ko likes fish skin better than fish flesh Ko cheats when he otten along Ko has a sweet tooth When Ko talks to the peach trees and the bears, he has an Osaka accent
28 The Noble and Serene Electric Master refused to let Yuu copy anything out on its Jar The Noble and Serene Electric Master does not approve of graffiti Even when Yuu re the Aosaginohi Herons who glow in the night like blue lanterns The Jar of Lightning snapped its cap and crackled disagreeably Yuu let it rest; when you share a house you h the rooms
29 The Heron-verse went: Autuain and caw for you, flying south to Nagoya The night has no answer for me, but many small fish
30 Who stretched the plu upon it down the very narrow line separating the halves of the house? For that matter, who built the House of Second-Hand Carnelian? Sazae-Onna knows, but she doesn’t talk to anyone
31 Yuki-Onna ca They had been coo With every step of her srove and the Nothingness River froze into intricate patterns of eddies and frost She wore a white ki black hair was scented with red bittersweet Everyone grew very silent, for Yuki-Onna was a Kary Kirin Yuu treer-bristles He longed to write upon the perfect white silk covering her shoulders Hone-Onna brought tea and black sugar to the Snow-and-Death Kami Snow fell even inside the house The Noble and Serene Electric Master left its Jar and circled its blue sparkling jagged body around the waist of Yuki-Onna, who laughed gently One of the bears on the other side of the peach grove collapsed and coughed his last black blood onto the ice Yuu noticed that the Snow-and-Death Kami wore a necklace Its beads were silver teeth, hundreds upon thousands of them, the teeth of all of winter’s dead Unable to contain hiotten my own name
32 Yuki-Onna looks up Her eyes are darker than death She closes them; Yuu’s words appear on the back of her neck
33 Yuu is unhappy He wants Sazae-Onna to love him He wants Yuki-Onna to come back to visit him and not the Noble and Serene Electric Master He wants to be the prerapher in the unhuman half of Japan He wants to be asked to join Naames He wants to leave the House of Second-Hand Carnelian and visit the Emperor’s island or the crystal whale who lives off the coast of Shikoku But if Yuu tries to leave his ink dries up and his wood cracks until he returns
34 Soood path between the human and the unhuman Japans That much is clear
35 Sazae-Onna does not like visitors one little bit They splash in her pond They poke her and try to get her to cos more folk to the House of Second-Hand Carnelian First the Guardian Lions didn’t leave Then Datsue-Ba came back with even more splendid clothes for them all, robes the color of maple leaves and jewels the color of snow and masks painted with liquid silver Then the Kirin returned and asked Sazae-Onna toand pulled her shell down tighter and tighter until he went away Nine-Tailed Kitsune and big-balled Tanuki are eating up all the peaches Long-nosed Tengu overfish the river No one goes hooes down When the Blue Jade Cicadas arrive from Kamakura Sazae-Onna locks her kitchen and tells them all the shut up
36 Yuu knocks after everyone has gone to sleep Sazae-Onna lets him in On the floor of her kitchen he writes a Kappa proverb: Dark clouds bring rain, the night brings stars, and everyone will try to spill the water out of your skull
37 At the end of summer, the unhuman side of the house is crammed full, but Ko can only hear the occasional rustle When Kawa-Uso the Otter Demon threw an ivory saddle onto the back of one of the bears and rode her around the peach grove like a horse, Ko only saw a poor she-bear having soh he is not really sleeping He is being Yuu on the other side of the plum-colored screen He never writes poetry in the tatami anymore
38 The Night Parade occurs once every hundred years at the end of suo to the door between the worlds the way a brown goose knows to go north in the spring