Frayed Beef Tongue Stew, Weekly Short-Short Note, 440 Characters

The nine-tailed fox loved to transform into a beautiful woman and walk through the city at night. Tonight, too, she had a beef tongue stew wrapped up at a small Western-style restaurant.

When she got home and reheated the stew, a small tear appeared on the surface of the tongue, and steam rose from it.

An image of looking around restlessly in a wide pasture.

The fox suddenly remembers. In the fox village, they would light fox-fire to collect and burn people's memories. The foxes would quietly eat only the small memories that faded away in the course of daily life, so that only the important things would remain in people's hearts.

Perhaps it was the work of those demon foxes that a tear formed in this stew and the cow's memories overflowed. Thinking this, the fox headed toward the village.

"I only collect the memories of living things," the demon fox laughed.
"If a memory remained on the tongue, it must have been something it desperately wanted to say but couldn't."

When the nine-tailed fox brought out the pot, the words 'thank you' leaked out from the tear in the tongue. The foxes did not know who that was for, or what it was for.