The Fox's Wedding

I never imagined that the day would come when I would walk beneath this cherry tree, which has stood here since before I was born, dressed in these white robes.

Amidst the indescribable emotions welling up from within my chest,
I found myself remembering a story my grandmother once told me.

When I was still very small,
while I was playing in the fields before they were plowed, under the shining sun,
raindrops would often come pouring down on me.

That day, it was a particularly heavy sunshower with large drops, but for some reason, they felt different—warm and comforting.

When I returned home and told my grandmother about it,
she told me the story of the fox's wedding.

"That is called a fox's wedding, where the foxes hold their marriage ceremony."

"A fox's wedding?"

To my question, my grandmother began to speak, bit by bit.


When foxes are still young, they sometimes transform into human form and come down to the village to play.
There was once a female fox.
That young female fox went down to the village one day.
Of course, she had transformed into a human.
As she was aimlessly picking wildflowers blooming along the village path, someone called out to her.
"Those flowers are beautiful, aren't they?"
It was love at first sight for her.
The person she met was a human man.
The fox, having fallen in love with that man, suffered from the pain of an unrequited love, yet she continued to transform into a human almost every day to visit the village and see him, holding onto her feelings.
Since they could only meet when she was in human form, their trysts were never meant to last long,
and before long, the man passed away.
The fox, heartbroken by this, could never heal the wound in her heart as time went on.


"Then that means they couldn't get married?"

To me, who couldn't help but interrupt, my grandmother smiled gently and said this.

"This is a story that teaches us that loving someone doesn't just mean getting married and living with them."


Even after she grew up, the fox continued to transform into a human and go down to the village to visit the man's grave.

One day,
carrying a single yellow flower called 'greater celandine' that he used to love, just as she always did,
she headed to his grave, which had been built beneath a magnificent cherry tree between the village and the mountains, when she found a stranger there, offering the same greater celandine at the grave.

The man, noticing her standing there in surprise, let out an involuntary "Ah!"
Startled by his voice, she immediately ran away.
Once she reached the forest, she returned to her fox form to shake him off and ran as fast as she could deeper into the mountains.
However, the sound of someone running through the grass behind her did not stop.
Feeling a sense of unease at the presence that followed her no matter how much she ran,
she thought, "I can't believe there's a human this fast," and when she turned around, there was a male fox chasing her, breathing hard and looking happy.

"I knew it! ...You're a fox too, aren't you! ...There wasn't a single person in the village who would bring those flowers to my brother's grave... so I thought, 'Could it be!'..."

"Your brother??"

The fox, feeling suspicious, stopped running but did not let her guard down against the male fox.

But ignoring her wariness, the male fox caught his breath and continued.

"When I was nursing my brother, I heard all about you.
And about the flowers you love so much.
"If I die, she will surely be heartbroken and spend her time unable to forget me."
He said that, and I thought, 'Why are you being so sentimental at a time like this?' but I couldn't forget the sad look in my brother's eyes when he said it... So, every year when this season comes, I've been coming to pay my respects with those flowers."
As the fox listened to the story of the male fox, who was apparently his younger brother, everything finally made sense.

And she realized.

It was the fox herself who loved those flowers,
and she realized her own naive childhood, where she would present those yellow flowers at every opportunity just to see his happy face without ever looking back at herself, and his kindness in continuing to smile and say he loved those flowers.
It seems he had known from birth that his life would not be long.
So, he thought, if that were the case,

he wanted to experience the human life he had always longed for, and that was when he met her while he was transformed into a human and blending into village life.

He loved the fox from the bottom of his heart.
That was why he couldn't reveal that he wasn't human.

He had seen through her personality completely.
The flower language of the greater celandine is
"Look at me."

"When I was young, I could only think about myself..."
The fox looked back on her younger self,

and felt a slight, sharp pain in her chest.

But she did not blame herself for it.
"My brother said,

'I was happy. I was able to live as a human, and although we couldn't live together, I was able to meet the person I loved. And since I was able to spend a wonderful, albeit short, time with her in the human form I had always longed for.' That's what he said.

Hearing that made me feel happy too. The fact that my brother was going to be gone soon just seemed to drift away somewhere."
He said this with an innocent smile.
The fox remembered.
The similar sadness that had resided in the eyes of the younger brother as he looked at the yellow flower and the grave that day.

The younger brother, too, had loved him dearly.

The two, who had met someone who loved the same person they loved, were inevitably drawn together,
and they say that their wedding ceremony was grand, warm, and filled with heart.

One last thing.


The greater celandine has two meanings in flower language,
and one of them is "memories."