A Fox's Love (American Kitsune Book 1)

Part I of the American Kitsune series

A Fox's Love

By Brandon Blake Varnell

Copyright © 2014 Brandon Blake Varnell

All rights reserved.

ISBN:

ISBN-13: 978-1494976729

ISBN-10: 1494976722

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would first like to thank my parents for supporting me in everything I do, and all the fans who read my stories on fanfiction.net that bought this book. Without them, none of this would have been possible.

I would also like to thank Daneel Rush, whose fanfic,
Naruto Genkyouien,
inspired me to write this original novel.

And finally, I would like to thank tvtropes and those guys who created The 100 Laws and Rules of anime, for without them, I wouldn't have so much material to make fun of.

Chapter 1: Paper Route

The Swift residence was one of the many apartments inside the Le Monte apartment complex located in Phoenix, Arizona. More specifically, it was located on the crossroads of 16
th
Street and McDonald Road.

Just why anyone would name a street after a fast food restaurant shall remain forever unknown. Someone probably just thought it would be funny.

Le Monte apartment complex was a very nice place to live, all things considered. The grass around the various apartment blocks was well maintained. There were two swimming pools, among other amenities, and all of the apartment buildings were clean, modern-looking structures with red roofing and white stucco walls. There were definitely worse places to live.

The apartment belonging to the Swifts was a modest sized two bedroom, two bathroom apartment, with a moderately sized kitchen connected to a living room, and possessing an office near the master bedroom. Despite not being very large, the apartment had all the comforts one would expect to find in a well-loved home.

Lining the walls were pictures within various sized and styled frames. The images were of a very pretty young woman who didn't look a day over twenty and a boy who grew throughout various pictures. In one, he was a small baby that looked like a tiny ball of fat and pudge, as all babies do. In another, he was a young boy no older than one with a head full of peach fuzz hair, taking his first steps. In another, he was a preteen with short spiky hair and a large grin as he held a soccer ball in his hands. All of the pictures showed the boy as he grew up, and the young-looking woman, who could easily be presumed to be the boy's mother.

The apartment was mostly empty of its inhabitants at the moment, save for one bedroom where the boy in the pictures was currently sleeping peacefully―

BEEP!

BEEP!

BEEP!

BE- CRUNCH!

―
Or at least, he was sleeping, until the alarm clock went off, ruining a wonderful dream. Couldn't it have beeped just ten seconds later? He had been just about to share a romantic kiss with his crush!

Sometimes, he really hated that infernal piece of racket making machinery.

Blearily sitting up in his bed as he pulled his hand off the now somewhat abused alarm clock, Kevin Swift blinked his weary blue eyes, striving to come to terms with the fact that he was now awake thanks to that dang alarm.

Sitting up in his bed, Kevin ran a hand through his tousled, medium-length, light blond hair, brushing several stray bangs out of his eyes. As his mind became more alert, the young teen found himself absently staring around his room.

It was about what you might expect from the room of a fifteen year old boy. Lining the walls were posters of all his favorite bands, and his favorite sports teams, along with a number of posters showcasing his favorite movies,
anime
and
manga
.

Surprisingly, there were no pictures of bikini models, hot actresses or half naked women. Why was this a surprise? Because Kevin was a fifteen year old boy. Large posters of half-naked super models were something people simply expect to see in the bedroom of a young man going through puberty.

That they weren't sharing Kevin's bedroom may have had something to do with his innate shyness when it came to dealing with women.

To put it simply, he could not talk to girls to save his life. Any time a girl came up to him, he would freeze, his mouth unable to move and his mind unable to think. It was an affliction that affected him in more ways than one, and was the main reason he still couldn't ask Lindsay Diane on even a simple date despite the years they had known each other.

Yeah, he was pretty pathetic like that. Laugh it up. Have a joke at his expense. Not like he'll ever know.

Another key factor of Kevin's room that most would likely notice upon entering was the large book shelf. It didn't have any books. At least, not reading books. Filling the shelf from top to bottom was a large collection of all his favorite Japanese Pop Culture items. Like a good number of boys his age, Kevin had a thing for it, or at least, he had a thing for Japanese animation and manga.

And now that his room has been aptly described, why don't we move this along? We're wasting word count!

Grumbling a bit irritably about having to get up so early in the morning (the sun hadn't even come up yet!), Kevin Swift proceeded to complete his daily ritual for waking up and getting ready.

In other words, he spent a long time in the shower, staring blankly at the wall as steam rose all around him, made a breakfast of eggs, toast and a glass of milk after getting dressed, and brushed his teeth. Once all this was finished, he was awake and raring to go.

Not really. He was actually only marginally more alert than before he got ready, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice in the matter. There were things that needed to get done, things that unfortunately couldn't wait.

Stepping out of the apartment he shared with his mother (who in case you didn't realize was not home)(and who, just in case you didn't realize, really was the other person in the pictures), Kevin locked the door and walked over to the bike that was padlocked to the railing. He undid the lock, grabbed the bike, rolled it down the set of stairs a few feet from his apartment, and took off, pedaling his way out of Le Monte apartment complex and onto the main street.

As he rode in the bike lane on the left side of the road, Kevin mused that even in the wee hours of the morning, it was still hot as hell in this state. Seriously, Arizona had to be the hottest fricken' state in the United States, especially during the summer.

Well, technically summer was nearing its end. Just a little less than two weeks and it would be September, but Kevin had never been one to bother with such semantics.

This didn't stop him from complaining, despite there being no one around to hear it, or the fact that no one would hear his complaints anyways since they were being done in his head. And so, mentally complaining about the heat, the teenager continued to ride his bike along the side of the road all the way to his job.

Yeah, he had a job. Kevin wasn't like other kids who had things handed to him on a silver-platter. He was responsible!

Well, that, and the fact that Kevin didn't really like relying on his mom for money or anything else. This may have had something to do with how she was rarely ever home, but again, semantics, he didn't bother himself with them.

Kevin's job was delivering the morning newspapers on bike to people's houses. He had started doing this two summers ago when he was in 8th grade and decided to continue doing so after he had started going to high school to earn more cash.

Since it almost wasn't summer anymore, he would only be delivering the Sunday morning newspaper. He just didn't have time on weekdays now that he had school, homework, and after school activities. It would mean he made less money, but at least he was still making something, so he couldn't complain too much.

He actually enjoyed his job. Sure, the pay wasn't great, but it was enough spending money to go out on weekends and still have a bit saved up. As long as he finished delivering papers by 5:00 am, he was pretty much free to do as he pleased.

Of course, he hated the fact that his job required him to get up at 2:00 am in the morning. That sucked. It wasn't like people were actually awake at 2:30 am to read the newspapers when he started delivering them. Why would they be? How many people actually had to wake up and go to their job that early in the morning?

Not many, Kevin would wager.

After somewhere around fifteen minutes, a hot and sweaty Kevin arrived at the Newspaper Distribution Center, which was really just a fancy name for the place that received the newspapers he delivered.

The newspaper building wasn't much to look at. Really, it was just a moderately sized, one story rectangular building made out of drab gray bricks and possessing a flat roof. It looked boring, and the manager there wasn't much better than the building. Actually, Kevin preferred looking at the building as opposed to the manager.

Thankfully, the manager would not be there this early in the morning. Kevin supposed there was some kind of silver lining to that, but he couldn't really see it in the early morning darkness.

Kevin didn't bother locking up his bike as he set it against next to the front door, which he then unlocked with the key he had been given.

When Kevin first started this job, the manager had actually woken up every morning to unlock the door. He would then proceed to watch Kevin like a hawk while the young man loaded the newspapers onto his bike. That had actually been pretty creepy, being watched like that. It had only been after six months when he had proven himself trustworthy, or something like that, that the manager had decided he didn't need to show up every morning and gave him a key to get in.

Kevin found his papers ready as usual. The box was pretty heavy, but Kevin was able to take it to his bike in a single haul, which was much better than what he used to be capable of. He had grown pretty strong since the first year he had started. Back then, he'd been forced to make six trips.

Which, by the way, totally sucked.

Once he had gotten all of the rolled up newspapers in the carrier on his bike, it was off to do his newspaper run.

The paper route he took had him traveling through two different neighborhoods near his apartment complex. All the houses there were large and nice and pretty imposing. They were mostly two story homes with off-white plaster walls and red tiled roofs. The front lawns were all manicured to perfection with neatly trimmed hedges, perfectly cut trees and a large variety of cacti. From time to time Kevin would see expensive cars parked in front of the garages.

Kevin had to shake his head at the wasteful use of money. Who needs to buy a $145,000.00 convertible Gran Turismo when a $19,975.00 Honda CR-Z worked just as well, had better gas mileage and didn't look too bad either? Maybe it was his mom's influence, but he just couldn't see the point in buying such extravagant vehicles. They might look nice, but they cost more than they were worth, especially considering how most of them were likely custom models that required constant maintenance in order to keep them at peak performance.

On that note, it should be stated that Kevin was not a car maniac, but he did know a few people on his track team who talked about cars a lot. When you're forced to listen to people who are so obsessive over something that they can yammer on without any end in sight, you tend to pick up a thing or two, whether you want to or not. Thus, he knew a lot about high performance sports cars like the ones in these driveways, such as the fact that they all cost far more than they were worth.

And that's not even getting into the cost of those houses. Those probably had a price range of at least several hundred thousand dollars, if not somewhere around a couple million. Why would anyone want to buy such a large, expensive house when something a little smaller and more affordable would be perfectly acceptable and could probably fit their entire family comfortably without all that excess space?

What would they even do with all that extra space anyways? Make their own bowling alley? Dedicate a large room of the house to store various paraphernalia?

Actually, that last one sounded kind of cool. Maybe he should think of getting an entire room to dedicate one or more of his favorite hobbies? A room for just video games and anime would be awesome.

Thinking of all the people who lived in those houses, Kevin was sure they were just trying to show off how rich they were by living in large, expensive looking houses and driving their fancy cars so everyone could see it. That wouldn't surprise him in the least. While he didn't know everyone in this neighborhood personally, he knew that a good few of the children he went to school with lived in these houses. If they were reflective in any way of their parents, he could imagine them being some of the most obnoxious and snobbish people around.

Maybe he was just being biased. He and his mom were pretty well off, even if as a single mom she was always away on business. They could probably afford to live in a nice house like these, but when he once commented on it, she had simply told him there was no point in spending so much money on something as unimportant as a large house that had more rooms then they would ever use. It was even less important because not only was it just the two of them, but when he graduated from high school and moved away to college, she would have that “large ass house” (her words, not his) to herself, with no clue of what to do with all that excess space.