Lady Yashodoa’sComment on Rin de Kyuunintai Kitsune- May 6, 2006

I had a severe writer’s block for a while and I wanted to try to write a short story. I thought, dreamed and tried to write several stories since I couldn’t get back to Road to Damascus. I started with Fire and Water, which I was inspired by Memoir of Geisha. But I didn’t finish it and my writer block showed up again. So, I tried to write another story, which will never be finished, The Concubine, which is a Kag/Sess pairing as well.

I then started trying to write, “The Child of West”… There is a possibility that I would finish this story someday, then again, it is tossed aside with many other fan fiction stories that I never finished.

Suddenly, yesterday, yes, on May 5, 2006. An idea struck me, a Snow White tale. I don’t remember how it happened but it just came to me, so I set in working this story and thus, it was born. I started out with Rin and the Seven Kitsune, then, I decided to write with nine kitsune and I figured, why not have a romanji title as well, I went on searching for Japanese words and all that, I think I spent more time on researching Japanese language and words than I wrote this story in the last two days. I found a short story of Snow White, by Brother Grimms and decided to base it off from the tale.

You may notice there are exact similarities because it was based straight from the original tale. The Obi replaced bodice lace and the hairpin replaced the comb. The apple stayed the same here; however the approach of the witch to Snow White differs.

I fell in love with this story as much I did with Rin’s Waiting and realized, I was obliging my Rin’s Waiting reader’s wish in writing another story of Rin and SesshoMaru. I am proud and happy to present you this story and hope you all would love it as much you love Rin’s Waiting. If you have not read Rin’s Waiting, please go and read it, I promise you, you would love it as well.

This story happened to be one of the shortest stories I’ve ever written in a long time. I fell in habit writing a very long winded fan fiction and had not been able to write a short one until this one. Yay for me!

I wanted to tell you this and give you the definition of the characters’ name and how they came to be for this story. Yes, it may be mind boggling that I came up with all of this in two days.

Name Meaning:

I learned, after studying and reading so many fan fictions of Japanese Manga and Anime, I found that Japanese names had special meaning to them, fitting the character’s personality. For this story, there were a lot of original characters of mine and I researched to the extent to find the right name for them to fit their personality. Some came by luck.

Rumiko Takahashi’s Characters:

SesshoMaru – Killing Perfection, as you all know this. Sessho mean killing while maru is the common suffix to surname or boy’s name, meaning Circle, which in loose term mean complete or perfection.

Jaken – I have no idea but I found somewhere his name mean ‘cruel’.

Rin – Alternate spelling would be Lin or Lynn, the hiragana of the name mean ‘cold’. Which is kind of odd to me, but then again, it fits, Rin did die, therefore she went cold. I suppose.

InuYasha – Dog Demon

Kagome – Woven bamboo pattern

Shippo – Seven Treasure or Tail

Naraku - Hell

Kanna - Godless world

Original Characters:

Hiromaru – This is one name that I came up on the spot and later I researched and discovered, Hiro meant generous, thus, with maru, for completion or perfection, hence his name meant complete generous, which he is in character, a kind man who took Rin in and loved her like his own daughter, he is a very generous man.

Manami – ‘love beauty’ which I accidentally found and thought it was perfect for her because she was so vain that she loved to be beautiful and it was her main goal in her life to be beautiful.

Huntsman – I have no name for him but he is the same character from the original Snow White story written by the Brother Grimms.

Kagami - In fact, this is an object, the mirror and it is also a name, meaning Mirror as well.

Kyuunintai Kitsune –

I first came up with seven kitsune, as in Seven Dwarves, but then, I thought that kitsune is pretty famous for Nine Tails and decided to go for nine. I then had to figure out their personality, did a quick reference search on the Seven Dwarves and ditched the idea; it was a bit too complicated to pull together nine different personality and different looks. So I decided, knowing that foxes have litters, ranging from one to few pups at a time. Thus, the twins and the triplets were born. Then the idea came to me, the leader, the lone pup would have personality like Peter Pan, taking care of the Lost Boys. It just fit right. The twins, I decided right there that they would be mischievous and two characters came to mind, they are Fred and George Weasely in the body of kitsune boys. The first sets of triplets are sweet and kind, very close bonded together despite their difference in their hair colors. The second and last set of brothers, they are very much like Shippo in personality and size. There, I have the Nine Kitsune Brother, or the Kyuunintai Kitsune.

I juggled the idea of having them all to be boys or some of them to be girls, but my heart was set that they were all boys. Then, I wanted them to have variation in their hair colors and eyes and some of them to be hanyou to give diverstion. That’s when I came up that they all had the same father and four different mothers. It is commonly known that kitsune is a sexy devious demon that loves to trick human into having sex with them. Go and look it up, I’m not kidding here.

The words came together to mean ‘The Nine Kitsune Brothers’, where ‘kyuu’ mean nine and the ‘nintai’ was combined since Japanese do not have word for brothers, ‘nin’ means men and ‘tai’ mean group, therefore in English, group of men would be brothers.

The nine brothers, they all got their name from numbers with the ending of sune from the form of kit’sune’. Some of the names are not directly from the numbers but the names that the Japanese would name their sons in the order of their birth. The Japanese words for numbers are: Ichi, Ni, San, Shi, Go, Roku, Shichi, Hachi, Kyuu, Juu which is, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and ten. I took form of the names for the sons; Ichiro (first son), Jiro (second son), Saburo (third son), Shiro (fourth son), Goro (fifth son), Rokuro (sixth son), Shichiro (seventh son), Hachiro (eighth son), Kuro (ninth son) and Juro (tenth son). Some of the letters do not match with the number but it meant the number such as –Jiro for second, Sabu for third, Ku for ninth and Ju is also for Juu in ten. Then I have the nine kitsune brothers’ names here. Ichisune, Jirosune, Sansune, Shirosune, Gorosune, Rokusune, Shicisune, Hachisune and Kurosune.

Complicated? It takes a while to figure this out.

To satisfy your curiosity, I even have their father and mothers name and feature pinned down. Their father, as in the story mentioned that Ichisune looked every bit like his father did indeed have red hair and green eyes, his name is Keninari, which I took form from Ken for strong and Inari, the famous kitsune goddess in Japanese folklore.

As for their mothers, they do not have names, but their appearance are what gave the boys their looks. For Ichisune, his mother was a kitsune, Keninari’s true mate; she had orange hair and green eyes. She died in childbirth with Ichisune. The twins, Jirosune and Sansune are hanyou, their mother was human, when she gave birth to the boys, and she saw they were hanyou and abandoned them, not wanting to deal with hanyou or demon children. Sansune soon became ill after he was born, causing him to be smaller than his brother. She had brown hair and brown eyes.

Shirosune, Gorosune and Rokusune, the first set of triplets are full kitsune; their mother was a stray kitsune with brown hair and blue eyes. When she learned that Keninari had other sons, she abandoned the triplet with him, not wanting to mother full litter of kits on top of her own. And lastly, the last triplet boys, Shichisune, Hachisune and Korosune had human mother, it was not mentioned in the story what happened to her. But I can say this; she died in the village during a war that destroyed the village. The brothers came and found the last triplets. Their mother was a foreigner, with blond hair and blue eyes.

As for Keninari, he was sent to war in the West, which is mentioned and indeed, it was the very war that SesshoMaru fought in for sixteen long years. Keninari was a simple solider serving under SesshoMaru’s regiment. SesshoMaru never met Keninari or vice versa, but his name was down in the list.

Thank you for taking your time in reading this story, and allowing me to write this story to break my writer’s block. I think I am able to go back to Road to Damascus soon. I’d love to hear your comments, bad or good on this story and please, if it is bad, have some manner, rude remark and brash words has no effect and in the end, you would not achieve your goal because, I’ll always keep on writing, as the saying goes, once a writer, always a writer.

Thank you,

Lady Yashodoa