“One day, the man asked for a few people from the town come to help him fix a window which had broken in a storm. As they neared the cabin, the wolf became agitated, pacing and growling, obviously frightened.”
Kouryuu nodded, as if a great mystery had been solved. “It was a human who had hurt him, wasn’t it?”
“Perhaps,” Koumyou replied. “Although it is simple to act irrationally without a reason. Either way, the man sensed his friend’s fear, and stroked the head of the wolf, whispering to it that it must not fear people. Yes, there was evil in the world, and sometimes you had to be cautious. But if you watched carefully enough, you could detect it.”
Koumyou paused, guessing his student might be ready to interrupt him again, and Kouryuu did not disappoint. “Can you?”
Koumyou simply smiled again. “Again, it is not of consequence. All that mattered is that the man thought it was true, and believed it enough to tell someone else. He went on to tell the wolf that you could tell a good person from a bad person by the way their voices worked, and the wolf took this to heart.”
Koumyou paused from his story to take a drink from the teacup at his side, and then continued. “A few years later the old man passed away, as the elderly often do. The wolf, confused, went into the village. He no longer had anyone to care for him, you see, and the old man had made him dependent on others.
“The people ran away in fear, searching out their weapons. They were afraid of the wolf, not understanding why such a large, supposedly savage beast would come from the mountains. It continued to haunt the edges of town, confused, and one day the villagers realized that the old man had not come down from his cabin for quite some time. They sent a group of men out to investigate.
“Of course, they found the corpse and, around it, the footprints of the wolf. They did not stop to examine the corpse, and simply assumed the wolf had killed the man. From that moment on, the wolf was evil. A man-killer.”
Wolf at the Door 2/3
“One day, the man asked for a few people from the town come to help him fix a window which had broken in a storm. As they neared the cabin, the wolf became agitated, pacing and growling, obviously frightened.”
Kouryuu nodded, as if a great mystery had been solved. “It was a human who had hurt him, wasn’t it?”
“Perhaps,” Koumyou replied. “Although it is simple to act irrationally without a reason. Either way, the man sensed his friend’s fear, and stroked the head of the wolf, whispering to it that it must not fear people. Yes, there was evil in the world, and sometimes you had to be cautious. But if you watched carefully enough, you could detect it.”
Koumyou paused, guessing his student might be ready to interrupt him again, and Kouryuu did not disappoint. “Can you?”
Koumyou simply smiled again. “Again, it is not of consequence. All that mattered is that the man thought it was true, and believed it enough to tell someone else. He went on to tell the wolf that you could tell a good person from a bad person by the way their voices worked, and the wolf took this to heart.”
Koumyou paused from his story to take a drink from the teacup at his side, and then continued. “A few years later the old man passed away, as the elderly often do. The wolf, confused, went into the village. He no longer had anyone to care for him, you see, and the old man had made him dependent on others.
“The people ran away in fear, searching out their weapons. They were afraid of the wolf, not understanding why such a large, supposedly savage beast would come from the mountains. It continued to haunt the edges of town, confused, and one day the villagers realized that the old man had not come down from his cabin for quite some time. They sent a group of men out to investigate.
“Of course, they found the corpse and, around it, the footprints of the wolf. They did not stop to examine the corpse, and simply assumed the wolf had killed the man. From that moment on, the wolf was evil. A man-killer.”