冷たい青い目

The road they took to get back home led up to a local, small shrine based at the foot of a large hill. It took them twenty minutes to get there. The higher they went, the steeper and less paved the path became, until they walked on a well-worn track off short, flattened grass, with trees growing on either side.

It got colder, too. The trees grew over the path and their branches entangled right above their heads, forming a canopy of leafy shade that filtered out the sun. It was dark in the forest, though when Pai looked up, she could some of the sky, now pink tinged with a faint dusting of purple and brilliant orange.

This hill, almost a small mountain, wasn't very tall – but it was big, covering a lot of land. Ayashi House stood on a plateau along the middle run of the hill, and few people knew it was there. The entire hill and a large expanse of the land around it is owned by one man; Akiyama Kouta.

After having her brain delete three years of memory and seeing all the multitudes of new buildings sprang up in places where there were none, Pai thought Kouta was doing a damn good job of keeping this land and the forest on it free of any human interference.

Sitting on the branches of the trees were crows. They didn't caw or flutter in eternal search of food. They were all eerily silent. They simply watched the two girls make their way up the path, with red eyes that seemed to glow in the gloom. The two girls hardly noticed them though; they were already so used to the crows that at this point, it would be unusual not to see them.

Shiori glanced up at them soon enough, and sent a cheerful wave to the three crows perched on the branch closest to the ground and the tracked they walked on. In the middle of the tree sat one much larger than the others, almost the size of an eagle. It sat with its wings folded neatly at its sides and its head held proud in the air as it looked down on them with those disconcerting red eyes.

The jarring thing about this crow, besides the abnormally large frame, was the line of teeth that looked like small, thin claws lining the undersides of the crows wings.

She was used to it, but she still couldn't help the little shudder that went through her when she saw the crow's wings, every time.

Shiori smirked up at it. She raised a hand in a wildly cheerful wave and called out, "Yo, Karasatengu-kun! What's up!"

The crow angled his head and turned his eyes on her to give her a withering glare. In response, he merely ruffled his feathers irritably, raised his wings, and leaped into the air, flying in the direction they were heading in.

"He hates it when you greet him like that." Pai noted, mildly amused.

Shiori winked, grinning widely. "That's why I do it."

It took them another ten minutes of steady walking to reach a large wooden gate. Walls of concrete stretched above their heads and further on either side than their eyes could make out in the midst, the boundary standing tall and unbreakable before them. Kanji inscribed in black on a simple wooden lacquered plaque hung above a little panel that hid a button that allowed anyone outside to speak with someone on the inside, proclaiming this place to be Ayashi House.

怪し家

Shiori pressed the button and stepped back. It crackled momentarily before a voice came through.

"Shii-chan, that you?"

The voice was decidedly child-like, and belonged to a young boy. Pai expected to hear the gruff tones of Karasatengu. He was the security chief, and he tended to go out at different times of the day to check if anyone was approaching the main gate. Since he saw the two girls coming, Pai thought he would be the one answering.

Shiori frowned. "Why are you at the intercom, Ryu?"

"Why shouldn't I be?" he answered back haughtily.

"Because it's in the security building. Where. You. Are. Not. Allowed." She enunciated each word so slowly and carefully, as if her little brother was retarded and couldn't understand Japanese well. From the mean light in her eyes, Pai knew she was doing it on purpose.

"I can go where I want."

"No, you can't. Karasatengu-kun literally chased Kouta out yesterday. Kouta. He chased Kouta away from there. You think he won't do that with you? You're a kid, idiot. The security building is not for little kids to play in."

"I'm not ten years old, Shii-chan. And I'm not an idiot!"

Pai sighed. "No, you are eleven, Ryu-kun, and that still makes you a child."

There was a crackling pause from the intercom. "Pai-chan? You're there?"

"You dimwit, of course she's here. She came to school with me, remember?" Shiori cut in.

"Can you please let us in?" Pai asked, as if Shiori didn't say anything. "It has been a very long day." She ignored the look she sees Shiori give her from her periphery at that.

"Only if Shiori says she's sorry she called me a kid and a dimwit."

"I'm sorry, did you say you're not a kid? Because you are acting like a spoiled brat." Shiori deadpanned.

Pai checked Shiori on the shoulder and shook her head, an entirely unimpressed expression on her face.

Gritting her teeth, Shiori just managed to grind out, "I'm sorry for calling you a kid."

There was an expectant pause. "...And...?"

Shiori smiled. "And every time Yukiji makes onigiri, or tonkatsu, or literally anything tasty, I will make sure you never get any. Now open the gates."

"Yuki-chan wouldn't let you keep any from me." Ryu retorted confidently. He was not wrong, either.

"She can't make me give them back when they're already in my stomach, can she?" Shiori shot back. She glanced at Pai, who shrugged.

"Sorry, Ryu-kun, that point goes to her." She said, trying to sound more apologetic than amused at the sibling's squabble. Shiori obviously still bore a considerable grudge at Ryu for tracking mud into her room last night.

Silence. A second later, the gate buzzed as it swung open with a quiet creak. Shiori glared at the intercom before stomping toward the gate.

"I am going to kill him."

"Your hit list is growing."

"A lot of people are pissing me off."

"He's just teasing you. You know he wouldn't keep us locked out."

Shiori gave Pai a look over her shoulder. "That's because he loves you. He'd actually keep me out if you weren't here."

Pai smiled, because she knows it would irritate Shiori.

Shiori huffed. "This is what I get for introducing my annoying little brother to my best friend . He's trying to steal you away with cuteness. Remember when he used that cute face of his to get candy from the aunties at the bakery?"

"No one is stealing me away from anyone, so calm down, Shii-chan." Pai said as they walked past the gate. Once they were through, it automatically closed behind them.

When she glanced back at the security outhouse and found the door closed, she guessed that Ryu either decided to stay inside until Shiori left, or he had already bolted. When Shiori got mad, it was best to avoid being in her direct line of sight.

Unless you were Yukiji or Mizutani. No one could get mad at them.

A traditional Japanese-style loomed before them. It was a large building built with two floors and sprawled across the flat plain on the side of the hill it stood on. The house was built right next to the rock face that led up to the peak, with all the doors close to ward off the cold. There were no trees overhanging the wood-and-clay tiled roof of the mansion and around the grounds itself, so some of the weak sunlight was able to come through and warm up the house's many inhabitants.

This was Ayashi House. It was big, warm, and home.

Maybe it hadn't been so for Pai in the beginning, and there was still a part of her that often hesitated to call it such, feeling like – like it was some kind of betrayal to her lost home, her forgotten home, where her family always greeted her when she called out 'I'm back!' – but whenever she tried to think of an alternative name for this place, she couldn't think of any other way but to refer to it as home, now.

There was a rustle of leaves from the trees whose branches hung over the wall and extending into the villa. Excited, halted whispers.

"Paaaiii-taan!"

She only had enough time to drop her school bag on the ground before a body flew straight at her from the trees. Another small body catapulted at Shiori from the same tree.

"Shiii-taan!"

Shiori didn't even have the chance to let go of her bag before the body collided with her with the utter surety that she would catch it, and she fell back on the ground with a thump.

She laughed as she cuddled the little child to her that squealed and giggled in delight as Shiori tickled her in revenge for startling her like that. The girl had a head of short blondish-brown hair full of curls that had somehow been tamed into an almost respectable bun at the top of her head.

Pai laughed, too – genuinely, as one only could when confronted with an adorable child – as she raised her arms and held onto the little boy who was hugging her around her middle. He was a beautiful child, six years old, hair dark and lush and full, brown eyes ringed with long dark lashes. Sprouting from between his shoulder blades was a pair of black wings, like that of a crow, flapping about with near-tangible excitement in the air.

"Pai-tan, you're home!" he jabbered happily, a big grin on his face.

"Shii-tan too!" the girl added. She was a year younger than the boy, and just as beautiful. Her eyes were big and dark over her rosy cheeks.

"Yes, we are back," Pai said, giving Naoko one last squeeze before she set him down on the ground. She put her hands on her hips and tried putting on a stern face. It was hard to with Naoko staring up at her with his adoring eyes. "And what were you doing this close to the wall?"

"We were waiting for you." Chizuru informed her primly as Shiori stood with the child on her hip. Clearly, she thought that was reason enough to be where she was.

She gave them a look. "You are not allowed near the wall." Pai reminded them, squatting so that she was at eye-level with Naoko. If Ryu wasn't allowed in the security building, then the other kids weren't allowed anywhere near the wall. None of them were.

They were Hengen, true, but they were also still children, and vulnerable. It was safe for them inside Ayashi House, within the walls, and they were only allowed outside if they were accompanied by one of the men, or Mizutani and Yukiji. Even Karasatengu entertained them every once in a while by watching over them when they wanted to play outside the walls.

Because they were still so young, they lacked the size and experience to deal with the Yori Chiisai that roamed the forest surrounding their home – Yori Chiisai that were far more introverted and territorial than those that stuck closer to the city. Anything could happen to the kids on the outside. The walls served as a physical as well as magical barrier that protected everyone inside from other aggressive Hengen and Yori Chiisai.

This place, this house – it wasn't an ordinary house that Pai, Shiori, and Ryu lived in with the latter two's grandmother. Though all four were undeniably human, various circumstances led to them living together with a small group of Tengu who lived in the human world, away from the rest of their Clan that lived on Mount Kurama in Kyoto.

Without a doubt, almost every single resident of Ayashi House was Hengen. Still – Pai couldn't think of anywhere she felt safer than here. Maybe it was even because they were all Hengen that she felt safer here than outside, most of the time.

"But today was Pai-tan's first day of school." Naoko said with an adorable pout.

"We wanted to meet you first when you came back home." Chizuru added helpfully. "Yuki-tan, Yuki-tan said that it's nice to greet someone when they come back home."

Shiori grinned at Pai over Chizuru's head. She had already melted for their charms. "Look at them. They're so cute – let them off the hook for once?"

As if I don't let them off the hook every time, Pai thought drily. She tilted her head to the side and put a finger to her mouth, making a show of it anyway.

After a moment, with a small smile, she nodded solemnly. "Very well. You may be forgiven," she said, in as lofty a tone as she could muster. "As long as you promise not to do it again."

"We promise!" the two chorus, beaming like little suns.

Someone standing behind them chuckled fondly. Pai ruffled Naoko's hair as she stood and turned around.

Behind them stood a young man, in his middle twenties, with long dark blond hair held back in a loose ponytail at the nape of his neck. He was tall, and wore a dark green yukata and black overcoat edged with white stripes along the hems. Tied securely around his left wrist is a pale yellow sash. Startling golden-yellow eyes over high cheekbones and a straight nose crinkled as he smiled at the sight of the four.

This was Akiyama Kouta, the Heir of the Tengu. His father was Kurama, the Sojobo – King – of all Tengu in Japan. While his father ruled the Tengu south of Aomori from Kyoto, as Heir and the sole inheritor of his father's throne and everything that came with it, Kouta governed those who lived on Japan's largest island, Hokkaido.

"Seems like the little ones beat me in greeting you," he commented, eyes sparkling with mirth.

"Of course they did, you're slow." Shiori teased, smiling.

"We beat you, we beat you, we beat you!" Naoko and Chizuru sang gleefully, laughing in that cheerful way only children could.

Shiori set Chizuru down before skipping over to Kouta. As she reached him, Pai knew exactly what to expect put her arms around the two children and said, "Kids, look at the pretty bird up there. You see it?"

The two obediently looked up, but there was no bird. Pai ruffled their hair while they continued to look, and she looked up at the sky with them. She could see, just from the corner of her eye, Shiori sending her a grateful smile as she ran up the steps to Kouta, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. Kouta held her close, arms around her waist as he returned the kiss.

Pai only let the kids look down again when Kouta and Shiori were done with their greeting. The two ran back into the house, Naoko taunting Chizuru that he could get to the nursery quarters before she could.

"No fair!" Chizuru yelled after him. "You started before me!"

"Too bad!" Naoko shouted as he turned the corner, and they disappeared.

Pai turned to Kouta and bowed slightly. "Good evening, Kouta-sama."

Kouta nodded at her with a grin. Shiori was still beside him, and he has his arm wrapped around her waist. "How was school?" he asked them.

"Nothing special." Shiori shrugged nonchalantly.

Pai said in the next breath, "She got into the girls' basketball team."

Kouta raised an eyebrow as he looked at Shiori with an expectant air.

She looked away and pretended like there was a large dragon in the sky above her, stoically ignoring them both.

Kouta reached over and pulled lightly at her nose with his free hand. "Mm, that's nothing special, is it?"

"Hey! That's not –"

With a private smile they didn't see, Pai left Shiori and Kouta to their little squabble. Shiori hated it when Kouta teased her like that, and he loved it. It was a never-ending cycle neither one ever seemed to get tired of. In fact, Pai was relatively certain that Shiori just acted like she didn't like the way Kouta teased her, just so he'd continue doing so.

Pai retrieved Shiori's school bag from the ground and walked around them into the house. She left her shoes in the entrance hallway and slipped on her indoor slippers, sliding her school shoes into her designated slot in the shoe rack on the wall to her left.

She went to Shiori's bedroom first – right opposite her own – and slid the door back and dropped Shiori's bag next to the short table in the centre of her room. Shiori's room was large, and certainly looked like a teenage girl's room rather than just a space to sleep in. The walls were painted a pleasant rose-gold colour that made Pai think instantly of Shiori. In the middle of the room was the table where Shiori did her homework and clicked through the internet. On the wall were posters, some of basketball players, others of Shiori's favourite anime characters, and a few movie posters of her favourite films, TV shows, and dramas. One of the posters was of Terrace House. Pai smirked a little when she saw the devil horns Shiori had drawn on Yui's face.

There was a twinkling pink and purple chandelier hanging on a small hook stuck on the frame of Shiori's window, which looked out across the courtyard of Ayashi House. Her bed was situated in the top right corner of the room, and a dressing table sat on the opposite side from it. It had a vanity mirror, and the table of it itself had various items on it; hair ties and colourful hair clips, nail polish, a bright pink blow-drier, different coloured eyeliner and mascara with a little pouch for the rest of her make-up off to the side, two picture frames, and a notepad with messy scrawl all over it.

Stuck on the edges of the mirror was picture frame from a photo booth that she knew Shiori liked to look at. One frame had four photographs in it, of her and Kouta. The first two photos were of them laughing into the camera at some joke one or the other said. The last two photos were of Kouta and Shiori kissing.

One the table was a photo of Shiori's family – her mother, father, Ryu, her grandmother, and Shiori herself. It was taken several years ago, because Shiori was a lot shorter in it, and she looked like a kid. Her brother was still a baby in their mother's arms.

Her father was a tall and regal man, with dark hair and half-moon glasses perched on the end of his nose. Her mother was beautiful and kind, her smile bright enough to light up anyone's dark mood. She had the red hair that Shiori and Ryu inherited. Obaasan looked the same in the picture then as she did now, although her face was a little less lined with wrinkles, her eyes a little less clouded.

The second picture frame was a photo of Pai and Shiori – from before Pai's disappearance. They were looking at the camera with big open-mouthed grins on their faces as the sun reflected the ocean's water behind them. Their faces were younger, more gentle and soft as to how they were now. Pai thought she was thirteen or fourteen years old when the picture was taken.

Shiori's vibrant hair was cut remarkably close to her head. The short hair and sun at their backs accentuated the sharp angles of Shiori's high cheekbones. In the picture, Pai's hair was as long as she had always kept it, pulled back into a high ponytail with a pink and white dotted scrunchie. A long fringe bobbed over her forehead, half-hiding her dark brows.

Her hair was black as tar, in the picture.

Pai's hair was white, now, and it was real, not dyed. She told Shuusei and Aoi that it was because of Waardenburg Syndrome that her hair was white. Waardenburg was an illness that was made evident from birth – but she hadn't always had white hair. She didn't actually have Waardenburg Syndrome.

That she said she did was a complete lie.

She reached up to her hair and loosened a bit of it, bringing a strand up to her face. The hair was fine and silvery-white, the individual strands almost disappearing from how pale they were.

Her eyes refocused on the picture of her with black hair. She dropped her hand, turned, and left Shiori's bedroom, sliding the door shut quietly behind her.

Before going to find Obaasan, she stopped by her own bedroom. It was a stark contrast to Shiori's. The walls were a neutral beige. She didn't have the same kind of table Shiori did, though she did have a simple dressing table next to the closet. Her bed was instead on the top left corner of the room, set right under the window, neatly made and with no creases in it. She didn't have any pictures on the walls. Her wooden closet was on her left from the door, but it was not as large as Shiori's.

The only personal thing about Pai's bedroom was a small bookcase directly opposite the closet. There weren't many books in it, not as many as she would like. Only a dozen or so. There were more empty spaces on the shelves than there were books.

She walked further into her room, closing the door behind her, and left her bag by the closet. She opened the closet doors. The row of shelves on the left door was empty but for one thing – a picture frame. The photo in it was of Pai's family.

As she pulled out the clothes she usually wore at home, she carefully avoided looking at the picture. She didn't know why she kept it in so obvious a place. She didn't like looking at it, at the reminder of what it was; a picture of her family all together, an image that would be forever burned in her memory.

Still, she couldn't bring herself to put the picture elsewhere, somewhere less visible, somewhere where she might even forget it was there at all. This picture was one of the few things she had left of her old life.

She glanced down, breath hissing out between her teeth when she felt a sting in her hands. The scratches she'd gotten – and subsequently entirely forgotten about – when she fell earlier felt raw, now, and looked an angry, neglected red that she winced to look at. She had only washed them in the girls' bathroom, so at least they were clean and not leaking blood. Still, she needed to treat them better.

I'll just deal with it later, she thinks. Or, maybe, she could just ignore them entirely and let them heal on their own and push away every wince of bee-stinging pain for a day or two. It wasn't like this would be the first time.

She paused, blinking. This wouldn't be the first time, but...she didn't really remember when was the last time she left some random cut or bruise alone.

She shook her head. It was fine. It didn't matter.

Ignoring the sting, she let her hair down, combing through it quickly with her fingers, then pulled it all back and quickly plaited it so that it hung down her back in a long white braid. She picked up the blue silk ribbon that had been holding it all together and tied it securely in a neat little bow at the end of the braid to keep it together. She tucked any loose hair behind her ears as she left her room and closed the door behind her.

Pai headed to the back of the house where the kitchen was. Obaasan had a powerful and loud voice, and even from all the way in her room she could hear Obaasan shouting about something. Pai was just turning the corner when someone rammed into her so hard that she lost balance and almost fell back. She would have, if the person who ran into her didn't reach out quickly to grab her by the shoulders, preventing the fall.

"Wait – whoa, sorry!"

Haru's glasses were knocked askew by their collision, revealing his dark eyes, so dark that his pupil was indiscernible from the iris. His stylishly cut brown hair was thrown in disarray, as if he just stepped out of a hurricane. The lip ring he wore – in addition to the four earrings in his left ear and five in his right – flashed as it caught a stray glint of light from the setting sun.

He wore a yukata, like most of the men did at home, although his was a little fancier. His yukata was a deep red with black flame designs licking at the edges, glittering faintly with every move. A red sash was tied around his left wrist. In that same hand he held a steaming bun of freshly baked bread. His other was behind his back.

"Oh, you're back from school Pai-chan," Haru greeted, smiling at her as he tried to hide the bun behind his back like she hadn't already seen it, along with whatever else he was hiding there too.

She gave him an unimpressed look. "Did you steal that from the kitchen?"

"It's technically not stealing since I live here."

"Is that why Obaasan is yelling?"

Haru sighed, raising his shoulders in a hopeless shrug. "What was I supposed to do?" he complained. "She's been keeping us starved like dogs for hours!"

"Dinner is in an hour."

"We train a lot!"

Pai cocked her head to the side and looked at him suspiciously. "I would understand if this is the first one. So would Obaasan." The men did indeed train a lot, and Obaasan wasn't actually that heartless. Most of the time. "But how many have you already taken?"

Haru shook his head with an innocent smile. "Just this one."

"And how many have the others taken?"

His smile turned sheepish as he kept silent and looked down at the ground like a child being scolded. She could see that smile turn to a wicked grin, not at all sorry.

She heard the thump-thump-thump-thump of someone rapidly heading their way. It sounds like a cane hitting the wooden floorboards.

Pai sighed heavily. "If you go now, Obaasan might not see you. Maybe."

Haru's head lifted as he gave her a sunny grin. "Thanks Pai-chan. How was school?"

Did you not hear what I just said? "It was fine. Now hurry up before someone else catches you stealing that sweet bun one hour before dinner. I will deny any and all requests for help."

He nodded with another quick smile, turned, and hurried away.

Shaking her head at Haru's antics, she walked on. She was about to slide the kitchen door open when it slammed open on its own, and Obaasan hobbled out, looking ready to unleash hellfire from the strength of her glare alone.

She was an old woman, nearing her ninth decade, with heavily wrinkled skin around cloudy dark brown eyes, and a mop of thinning grey hair. She was dressed in a light purple hanbok Kouta had specially made from Korea when he found out she liked such garments, and held a cane in one hand and a smoking pipe in the other. Though her eyes looked like they were losing their sight, she was really not anywhere near short-sighted. She could see just as well as she did three decades ago, she liked to say – especially when one of the men try to sneaked around her.

It was a little funny, to see how utterly terrified they were of this little old woman.

"Oh, Pai-chan? You're home already, are you?" her voice was gravelly and sounded like the ripping of old duct tape, her thick Tsugaru accent unhindered.

It reminded Pai of her childhood. It reminded her of all the times Obaasan would sneak her candy whenever her own parents weren't looking – or sometimes when they were, using her age to her advantage to make them let her indulge a young child. Even though it was more Midori who had an incurable sweet tooth than Pai.

Pai nodded, and inclined her head respectfully. "Yes, Obaasan. Shii-chan and I got back a few minutes ago."

"Hmph. Still don't understand why you've gotta go with her. She's tough enough to handle a couple of pesky Yori Chiisai on her own," the old woman muttered.

In Pai's mind, the memory of Shiori hurling a wooden bucket at Ryu with pinpoint accuracy flashed by. Obaasan...wasn't wrong. Then again, she rarely was.

Obaasan peered at her with narrowed eyes. "Your body aint up to it, if you ask me."

To be fair, I didn't ask.

At the way Obaasan's eyes sharpened on her – as if she'd heard the thought, which Pai wasn't ruling out – she hastily said, "I go with Shii-chan because she is seventeen now, Obaasan. Even with Kouta-sama's charm it is risky, and at least I can warn him or one of the others if something happens to her. I can handle it."

"You mean you'll make yourself handle it, eh?" Obaasan corrected, looking entirely unimpressed. Pai wished she wasn't quite so perceptive.

It was true that she was tired, dead tired, actually, and she would really like nothing more than to go sleep for the next century, but she had things to do, and she could handle it. She wanted to hold off resting until all her chores are done because then she could sleep like the actual dead without an ounce of guilt, or wake up abruptly thinking, Wait, did I close the back door?

She kept her hands clasped together in front of her, so that Obaasan wouldn't notice the scratches. One extended all the way to her wrist, and it was easily visible to anyone standing in front of her if they paid attention. It only looked worse than it actually was. Really.

"It will be better by tomorrow, when I am used to it," she answered Obaasan, trying to mollify her.

For a few moments, Obaasan merely watched her in silence. Then, "What're you doing now?" she asked. She puffed at her pipe as Pai straightened.

Pai's nose twitched as the tobacco hit her nose, though she didn't particularly hate the smell. "I was going to help Mizutani-san and Yukiji-san with preparing dinner."

"Were you?" Obaasan hummed. She waved her hand a moment later, as if waving away Pai's words, sending another waft of smoke her way. "Never mind that. There are some clothes Yuki-chan finished laundering today hanging out the back. They should be dry by now. You go get them sorted out before it starts raining or somethin' of the like."

"Yes, Obaasan."

"Then after that, I want you to march on over to your bedroom and have a rest until dinner is ready. That'll be in an hour, maybe two depending. You still got that reporting thing to do with Daichi-kun, don't you?"

Pai glanced at her under her lashes and saw the corner of Obaasan's lip tilted up in a small smile. "Um, yes."

"Hm. So you do what I tell you, no questions asked. You hear?"

Pai nodded. "Thank you, Obaasan."

The old woman merely harrumphed again. She took her pipe from between her thin, papery lips, turned her head to the side, and blew out a stream of smoke as if she hadn't already sent waft after waft billowing at Pai. "You ain't seen that thieving Haru-kun by any chance, have you?"

Pai couldn't help smiling at that. "He ran to the back of the house. He might have flown into the trees, I think."

"If that boy thinks flying is going to stop him getting a whooping, he's got another thing coming." Obaasan grumbled as she stuck her pipe back between her lips. "All right then. You go on ahead. And heed my words, Pai-chan – you go and get some rest after you're done with the clothes. I don't want to hear from Mizutani-chan or Yukiji-chan that you still went and helped them with what they can handle perfectly well on their own. Understand?"

Pai nodded as seriously as she could. "I understand."

With another satisfactory hum, Obaasan hobbled away, grumbling all the while about 'thieving Tengu' and 'that foolish man-child' as she turned the corner. Pai remembered the last time Obaasan caught Haru taking food from the kitchen before it was ready, and how he ran out of the house after having his head knocked on by her cane multiple times. She was pretty sure that Haru was genuinely more terrified of Obaasan on a warpath than of anything else.

Pai followed Obaasan's orders – the cane was not reserved for Haru alone –and went to the back of the house, where the wire laundry lines with clean clothes fluttered in the gentle wind. She got a wicker basket, wincing at the sting as the hard edges of it brushed against her palms, from just inside the door that opened out to the little area cordoned off from the rest of the house exclusively for laundry purposes.

The sun had set, but she was able to move around easily because of the lights lining the top of the boundary wall, illuminating her way. The branches of the many trees surrounding the wall hung over it and into the compound; they looked eerie, like shadowy arms and twisting bodies reaching down past the wall. It was easy to imagine anything sitting in the trees, watching her.

For a moment, she stood still and looked out at the dark twisting forms of the trees. She stared until she felt like she was going cross-eyed, but she didn't see anything staring back. She once did, a little Yosei looking right back at her – it was a rather unpleasant shock that had her heart twinging in memory of it even now. The memory of it sat like a cold stone in the pit of her stomach, heavy and chilling her insides.

It was completely silent this far back from the commotion of the house. She felt like she was in a setting for some scary haunted house movie, except she was far safer behind these walls and in this house than she was on the outside.

Sometimes she liked to come back here, when she had time to herself to do absolutely anything she wanted. Usually she came with a book and a cup of tea, because she got bored easily and quickly, and hated it. She liked to lean back against the wall and read, feeling the low thrum of energy she couldn't explain echoing through her from the wall.

But that was only during the day – like with Yori Chiisai during the night, dark on the mountain was when creatures kept hidden from the light came out. She didn't like coming out here when it got dark, even with the lights on the walls. It made her ill at ease to imagine something watching her from the trees when she couldn't look back.

It was while she was picking up the basket full of clothes – a colourful variety just like their owners – that the shaking started.

She didn't notice it at first, not really. She was too busy hurriedly undoing the clothes from the pegs on the lines. It was only when she hoisted up the basket, cocking her hip out to help carry the weight, when she noticed that her hands were trembling.

As soon as she saw it, she dimly registered that she could feel it, in the weakness of her hands, the way she felt like she had to try and grip the basket with extra strength just to hold on to it.

Gritting her teeth, she set the basket down and looked at her hands, shivering with fine tremors. Her bones felt like they were shaking as well, and her hands throbbed with pain that buzzed at her wrists. The scratches on her palms from her earlier fall looked like tiny claw marks.

She blew over her hands, but it didn't stop the tremors. Nothing would. They weren't shaking from the cold.

She clasped them tight and lowered herself to sit on her heels, curling her body around her hands as she let her forehead rest on her knees with a heavy sigh. She closed her eyes and waited for the shaking to subside; her breath was so loud to her own ears.

Ever since she had returned, her body had...changed. She had become physically weaker, and not just because she was small – no, this was abnormal, and how much so was quickly made evident when she started living here. She ate well, she slept enough, she didn't strain herself too much with chores – and yet, she was...this.

Weak.

She got tired quickly, dizzy when she pushed herself too hard when, before she disappeared, she had been able to do the same things and be perfectly fine if only tired. Not drained, like she did now.

Everyone had chores that they did, but once her 'ailment' was discovered, hers were delegated to simple, general tasks; helping in the kitchen when needed, help with the laundry when needed. Simple things. When needed.

Even then it wasn't entirely necessary. Kouta employed something of a small army of Tsukumogami to do most of the manual chores in the house. They were harmless Yori Chiisai, once ordinary household items before becoming animated life forms as Ayakashi on their one hundredth anniversary.

She still refused when Kouta offered to let her chores be taken care of by them, and others. She didn't want to feel like a burden to him, or anyone in Ayashi House, and she knew that if she didn't do even these few simple things, she'd only feel like deadweight unwillingly saddled onto them.

Even if she was.

Pai looked up when she heard a light thump on the ground, as if someone had just jumped down from a tree. It was true – someone just did.

It was a man, tall and lean, wearing a navy blue yukata tied with a thin white woven belt wound around his trim waist, knotted at the front securely. Tucked in the belt were two slim black scabbards. They weren't just for decoration – he carried two katanas, twin blades that could cut and slice just as well as any. She knew that somewhere on his person, he also kept a tanto short-blade, something she'd never seen him without, come night or day.

The sleeves of his yukata reached a bit past his elbows, and the neckline was a long V, just barely hinting at the slightly tanned skin underneath. He had a white sash wrapped around his left wrist. Under the moonlight, his hair was the deepest black, like the wings of a raven. It was long enough to be just past his earlobes, but not yet reaching his shoulders. Some strands hung in front of piercing blue eyes that seemed to glow.

Shin.

Hayashi Shin. He was beautiful and alluring, just as any Hengen were, but his beauty was a cold and sharp one that made her wary of him more often than not. Mostly because his face was so closed off; she couldn't read his eyes and tell what he was generally thinking or feeling the way she could with others.

It was this skill that allowed her to stay away from sticky situations, to not say the wrong thing around people that could easily tick them off. With Shin, however, because she couldn't read him, she had no idea what effect anything she said ad on him.

It irked her, that poker face.

Or maybe it was just that it unnerved her, that she didn't know how to mould herself around him. That because of that, he always seemed to end up seeing more of her than others do when she fitted herself around their personalities like a small puzzle piece, rather than being comfortable in her own.

He stood where he landed, watching her silently.

"Sh – Shin-san?" she called out, surprised. Though she shouldn't be, she knew that.

Shin often popped up in the most unexpected places, at the most unexpected times. He did it so often with everyone in the house that they should all expect it, yet he still got them almost every single time. Sometimes, she wondered if it was something of a game for him to do that.

She stood as Shin walked towards her with a grace that was all lethal and fluid movement, like that of a jungle cat, a silent predator you didn't realize was there until it was too late. Her hands fell to her sides, still trembling. She curled them into loose fists in an attempt to stop it, but it only made the shaking more noticeable, so she held her hands behind her back.

Pai had managed to keep the shaking of her hands a secret from almost everyone. She didn't want anyone learning of it. She didn't want to become even more of a burden, hindered in her daily tasks because of the shaking that rendered her momentarily useless. The only one who actually knew about it, willingly told on her part, was Kanou, the healer. She made him promise not to tell anyone about it, not even Kouta.

The other who knew of it was Shin.

The shaking had started with a somewhat regular timetable, but now it had changed, become random. There was no long any particular pattern to when the shaking came and went. Pai was worried that they would keep coming earlier than usual until she would have to endure them every day instead of just every couple of days.

What would she do if it got so bad that it happened not just every day, but several times a day? One bout of the shaking could last for twenty minutes. That never changed.

What was she supposed to do if this got worse? She didn't know, and she knew she was making it worse by not pushing to find out more, but she was scared to, so she remained in this wavering, unsteady status quo of watching the situation deteriorate but entirely unwilling to jump to steady ground.

The only reason Shin knew about it was because of that uncanny ease at keeping hidden even in the most noticeable way. It was not uncommon for those living in Ayashi House to walk in an out of rooms and remain completely oblivious to the fact that Shin was there the entire time, unless he made his presence known.

That was how he'd caught her, when she was sitting alone – or so she'd thought – in the living room and the shaking had started.

Pai glanced up at the trees. He must have been sitting on the branches of one of them, as he was prone to do. He had probably been watching her the entire time she was collecting the clothes, and she hadn't felt a thing beyond the unease she always felt at being outside in the dark.

Shin stopped just short in front of her. She looked up him as she grasped her hands tighter together behind her back, silently praying for them to stop shaking.

He held out his hand. "Let me see."

His voice was low – he never raised it, and it was one of the things that sometimes threw her off about him. She couldn't tell what he was thinking or feeling from his voice, never mind the blank slate his perfect poker face could be.

Pai pursed her lips, wanting to refuse, but she knew it was futile. He had already caught her. She held her hands out to Shin, palms facing the ground in a childish effort to avert attention from the scratches on her hands. He gave her a look that she could actually read, a little, if she wasn't wrong – vague amusement.

He reached for her hands and flipped them so that her palms faced up. His hands, despite his cool exterior, were warm. She knew better, but she almost half-expected them to be cold as ice. Then again, Ayakashi didn't feel cold, and neither were they cold themselves.

"How long has it been since the last time?" he asked, inspecting the scratches that were painfully evident in the harsh light from the boundary walls.

She swallowed. "Four days."

He gave her a look, and it wasn't her imagination; his eyes were glowing, actually glowing. Not in a particularly creepy way, but just enough that the intensity of his dark blue eyes seemed magnified.

She didn't know if that was a good sign or not. When Hengen eyes glow, the way Shin's were now, it meant that what was known as their True Ayakashi forms – their instincts, desires, what made them Ayakashi and entirely inhuman – was closer to the surface than normal.

Daichi said that this was when it was that much more dangerous to be around Hengen, even as human as they looked. They had this True Ayakashi living in them that almost seemed like an unfair trump card, something they could bring closer to the surface willfully. Looking at Shin now, she didn't doubt it.

What was more was that Shin wasn't just an ordinary Tengu. He was a Daitengu, one of eight Tengu charged with protecting and counselling their King. Daitengu were traditionally the greatest Tengu of their Clan; they were faster, smarter, stronger.

Without a doubt, the Tengu here – in Ayashi House – were some of the deadliest and most powerful Hengen in the world.

With how scared she'd been of the Ayakashi world growing up, she knew that she should be terrified of being near someone so dangerous, even if it was more innate knowledge of what they could do than the way they looked. For a while, she had been scared of being around the Daitengu without Shiori there.

She knew she should be scared now, and that once she would have been, but now – she wasn't. Shin unnerved her, sometimes, but she wasn't scared of him. He was lethal, and she was wary of him and how he so easily threw her all out of sorts, but it was only because she didn't know how to tailor herself around him, or what he thought of her.

But she also felt safe around him.

It was a phenomenon she had given up trying to figure out, this weird duality in how she felt around Shin.

"That's a day earlier than usual." He noted.

"I know."

"Have you talked to Kanou-san about it?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes, but...there is not much he can do about it."

Kanou had already done just about everything he could. He had taken blood samples and done numerous tests, switched up her diet several times, given her both herbal and pharmaceutical supplements, but everything about her body remained normal except for her anaemic behaviour, and this...seemed incurable, in all honesty.

Kanou even went as far as to take her with him when he went down to the city for supplies – it was merely a pretence for Kouta and the others that she was helping him run errands. In reality, they went to a hospital and did various check-ups on her there. They thought that perhaps human methods to search out what was the problem would be more effective.

It wasn't.

The human doctors, having failed to rely on the diagnosis of machines that came back with results saying she was perfectly fine, pronounced her to be anaemic and gave her medicine to treat that. Kanou had specifically asked them not to prescribe any narcotic medicine, but beyond that, the entire thing was a pointless venture. She didn't even take the medicine for long; only two months before she gave up. They didn't make her feel better, just worse.

Shin nodded. "What are these scratches?" he asked, raising her hands a little.

He let go, and she dropped her hands to her sides. They were still shaking. She tried to curl her fingers, wanting to preserve the tactile memory of the warmth of Shin's hands, but she still couldn't move her hands properly. It was like the bones in her fingers were too stiff to move.

She paused, blinking. Wait, what was she thinking? Preserve – what?

"I fell," she answered blandly, ignoring that train of thought. "During P.E."

Shin angled his head to the side in a way he did often, as he regarded her, but he didn't comment. Instead, after a second of looking at her shaking hands, he walked past her. Pai turned to see him bend down and easily take hold of the wicker basket piled high with clean clothes.

He glanced back at her. "What are you supposed to do with these clothes?"

"Sort them out, and leave them outside their doors." With a puzzled frown, even though she had an idea of what he was doing, she said, "Why?"

He didn't answer, which didn't surprise her. Instead, Shin waited for her to enter the house before he walked in himself, closing the door behind him with his free hand. He set the wicker basket on the table by the door, and shook the clothes out of the basket – exactly what she was going to do once she'd collected them all, before the shaking of her hands interrupted her.

"You do not need to do this," she said, watching him and not really knowing what else to say, because what she actually did want to say was, Why are you doing this?

He levelled a look at her from the corner of his eyes as he carefully folded the clothes. "Are your hands still shaking?"

Her lips twitched, but she didn't answer because it was obvious that they still were.

He sorted out the clothes in no time at all, several stacks of them on the table according to which belong to who. He put them up together into two large piles that he set back in the wicker basket.

It was a little weird, to watch him do this. Not in a bad way, just in a way that didn't seem normal in the least. Here was a Daitengu, helping her sort out the laundry. It was ludicrous.

Shin picked up the basket once that was done. "Come on."

"Um," she hurried to catch up with Shin's long-legged stride. "Thank – thank you, Shin-san."

He simply nodded and kept walking. The silence that stretched between wasn't exactly uncomfortable, but it was not a companionable sort of quiet either; it was awkward in a way she was viscerally aware of, but didn't know if the other felt the same.

At least, that was how it felt on her end. She wasn't sure why Shin was helping her, and she didn't know how to ask without it coming across as rude and ungrateful. She kept her mouth shut and walked silently beside him.

She preferred the quiet between them, anyway. Normally, she was the silent one around people, and she like it when others did the talking instead of her. She could keep a conversation perfectly fine, she was not so socially stunted that she couldn't do that, but starting it? Maintaining it once the topic of conversation reached its end? She was no good at that. Being quiet avoided that.

But around Shin,she felt like she always ended up talking way more than she wanted to, a proverbial word vomit she had no control over. He'd never said so, but Pai always felt like maybe she annoyed him by talking so much, so she tried to avoid the excessive, mindless chatter.

It didn't always work. She tried, though. That counted for something, right? For what, she didn't know.

They didn't meet anyone on their way to the corridor that housed the bedrooms on the second floor. Presumably, everyone was in the dining room, waiting for dinner. Pai wondered if Obaasan ever caught Haru, with his stolen buns. The thought of Obaasan whacking her cane on Haru's head as he tried to dodge her made Pai want to giggle, but she stifled the impulse. Shin would look at her weirdly if she laughed for no reason.

As Shin stood from setting down a small pile of alarmingly colourful clothes in front of Shiori's bedroom door – the last of them – Pai felt the shaking in her hands rapidly lessen. She took them from behind her back and held them in front of her, staring for a moment, watching her hands stop their trembling.

The throbbing was no longer there, but now it was like a hive of bees buzzed in her hands. It was always like this after the shaking stopped. It was distinctly uncomfortable, but she would take this over the immobilizing shaking any day.

It was weird, to watch the tremble fade away. Sometimes when she did, she felt like she was looking at someone else's hands. She knew they were her own, but they didn't feel it, in these moments.

She looked up at Shin to find him already watching her with an inscrutable look in his eye, hands grasping the edges of the now emptied basket as he waited. She held her hands out to him, unable to keep from smiling. She wasn't even really aware of the way her lips tipped up in the smile when she looked at him, not at all thrown by his stoic expression the way she usually was.

"It stopped," she said triumphantly.

His face remains impassive as he nodded – she blinked, thrown for a split second, because – was there something there? For just a moment, did she see him smile?

"Come with me." He said.

She frowned in confusion as he turned and walked back the way they had come. She hurried after him as he turned left, down another corridor. To their right was the living room, with all the doors on the right pushed wide open for viewing the courtyard, a large expanse of space right in the middle of Ayashi House.

There were four large, square-shaped ponds in each corner of the courtyard, the surface of the water rippling softly from the gentle gusts of the wind. In the middle of the courtyard stood a tall cherry blossom tree, already in preparation for the coming winter. It was a beautiful tree even without the soft pink blooms of its flowers, the strong wood rising high up in the sky. Around the tree's base was a miniature version of the walls surrounding the house.

Before long, the two stopped in front of Kanou's office, serving as the infirmary in Ayashi House . It was where everyone went when they felt ill or need treatment of some sort, even for something small like a headache.

"Kanou-san is not going to be here now," she said, wondering why Shin brought her here. "He will be eating dinner with everyone else."

"It's fine," Shin replied easily. He slid the door open and stepped inside. She hesitantly followed him in. "Sit over there." He motioned for her to one of the short chairs set up against the wall on the right.

Lined up on the opposite wall was a row of cabinets closed up with glass doors. Inside were containers that hold all kinds of things – herbs that looked like grass, flowers, sticks, stones, crushed dust of some kind. There were even bones. She had never asked who or what the bones belonged to. She knew that some were animal bones, for one was a large canine tooth that couldn't have belonged to a human being.

She knew that there were far strangers things in the world than the weird Yori Chiisai she had seen before, but it was a distant sort of knowing, something that was at the back of her mind that she never saw the point in seeking out confirmation for. She didn't think she wanted to know, for certain, just what kinds of things lingered in the shadows of the world, watching and maybe, sometimes, reaching out.

Kanou's desk was at the end of the room. It was a large table, a computer sitting on it, screen blacked out. Papers stuck out of the tops of folders in different colours that had been placed around the table in a semblance of order that Yukiji repeatedly tried to recreate every time the folders and papers became so strewn about that the wooden tabletop could hardly be seen.

She sat down and watched Shin open one of the cabinets to get a first aid kit out. He came back and knelt in front of her, setting the first aid kit on the chair next to her as he reached out, took her hands, and laid them on his raised knee, palm up. His own hands were bigger than hers, veins tracing up his arm shown off by the play of light from the lamp over their heads. For a moment, she marvelled at that, before paying attention to what he was doing.

He got a little bottle of antiseptic out, a large Band-Aid, some cotton wool, and a tube of cream. She looked at his bent head for a few moments, at the dark hair swept messily around, before look at what he was doing. She noticed faint markings of pink against his palm – they look like healed cuts. She wondered what they are.

Shin tilted the open end of the antiseptic out on the cotton wool, allowing some to drip on it, before he gently dabbed her palms with it. She winced at the sharp sting. He only glanced briefly up at her before continuing. She held herself still after that, feeling scolded even though Shin hadn't said anything.

"You should take better care of yourself," he said, wiping her left hand down a final time before he closed the antiseptic bottle and laid it back neatly in its place in the first aid kit.

"I know," she murmured, wilting a little, even though Shin's tone remained neutral.

He opened the tube of cream and squirted some out on the tips of his fingers before rubbing them on her palm, making sure it got on all the scratches. "Why did you fall? You're not a clumsy girl."

She didn't know if she should take that as a compliment or insult. Perhaps it was a bit of both?

"It...there was a Yamajijii." She said. Shin's hands paused in opening one of the Band-Aids before he continued, sticking it to her palm gently. "It was in school. It appeared in front of me and surprised me when we were jogging in class. I fell."

Shin made no comment, but she could just see his dark brows pull lower in a small frown.

Speaking about the Yamajijii reminded her of the presence of the Hengen she and Shiori had felt in the school. Should she mention that to Shin? But then, why would she? It was true that within their small group, he was considered something of a second-in-command to Kouta, but he was not really the one she was supposed to report to.

That was Daichi. He was the one who took responsibility for her, and if she had proven a traitor, or danger to them all, he would have been the one to take the punishment for her. He was liable to anything she did.

Those at Ayashi House – save for Shiori, Ryu, and Obaasan – were reluctant to allow Pai to remain at the house with them. There was the fear that she wasn't who she claimed to be and who Shiori remembered. They thought she was a spy sent by another Clan to watch them and report on what they did. It was especially suspicious – understandably so – that Pai lost three entire years' worth of memories.

Their suspicions were only assuaged when she proved that she was not a spy by nearly dying for Shiori not long after being found. It...hadn't been expected, certainly not anything she'd planned, but it still happened. Afterwards, Kouta agreed to allow her to live with them at Ayashi House, seeing as she had nowhere else to go, but only if one of the Daitengu agreed to act as her handler. It was the only way to let her, an unknown, stay.

Daichi, without a moment's hesitation that Pai still found baffling, offered himself up to the task. She didn't know why he did it, but she would be forever grateful to him for it. She didn't know what she would have done, what she would have had to become just to survive, if she wasn't permitted stay at Ayashi House.

Pitiful as it was, she really didn't have anywhere else to go, no one else to turn to. Her family was gone. No one remembered them, or her. She didn't even know where she was for the three years. What could she have done if she was on her own?

Pai decided to keep the Hengen's appearance in school to herself for now, until she could first report to Daichi about it. She didn't know if there was some intricacies in the way the Daitengu related to each other; they acted like brothers, in all honesty, but she was an outsider, and she didn't know if there was an added layer to that because of their being Daitengu. She didn't want to make a slip-up by saying something to Shin even though he was the second-in-command, when her 'handler' was Daichi.

It was all very confusing.

But since she'd already told Shin about the Yamajijii...there was no harm in asking more about it, was there?

Shin finished up with the last Band-Aid on her hand. He stood, zipping up the first aid kit and returning it back in the cabinet it was usually in.

"Thank you for helping me," she said as she stood too, touching the Band-Aid with her finger. She could feel the coolness of the cream he applied right beneath the bandage. "With everything."

He simply nodded wordlessly.

"Shin-san," she went on quietly, scrubbing her thumbnail over her index finger's cuticle. "Can I ask you something? About the Yamajijii."

"Go ahead," he answered, standing by Kanou's desk and watching her awkwardly fidget. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned his hip against the edge of Kanou's desk, waiting for her to speak.

"Yamajijii...they are humans who died violently, and when they become Yori Chiisai, they look for something they lost when they were alive, right?" he nodded. "Can – can they talk? Can they speak of what it is they lost when they became Ayakashi?"

Shin frowned slightly, his head tilting to the side slightly as he regarded her. "They're normally silent, but it's not unheard of for them to speak. Usually, those they try to speak to can't hear them. Those who theoretically can would have to be very sensitive to hear them."

So it was not that this Yamajijii could talk that so unnerved her. If it wasn't uncommon for them, then it probably meant that they all could talk, and she had always been more sensitive to the supernatural world than Shiori. She had seen other Yamajijii before but...she hadn't been quite as unsettled by them as she was by this one.

It couldn't be one small deviation from the norm that scared her so.

"What did this one say to you?" Shin asked.

"He –" Pai cringed at the memory. "He asked me if I was his mistress. If I was Kagetora-dono's mistress. I do not know what he meant by it."

Shin's frown turned into a glower the instant that name left her lips. He looked – he looked angry, just at hearing a name. Pai blinked at the look on his face, chills dripping down her spine. It was not this name she didn't know that unnerved her so much as it was Shin's reaction to it.

She had never seen anyone look so angry.

"D – do you know who that is?" she asked, unable to keep the slight stammer out.

The look on Shin's face softened at her voice, as if he knew he was making her uncomfortable by looking so angry – but not by much. "He's not anyone you need to concern yourself with," he answered brusquely.

Pai blinked rapidly. This man was alive, and Shin knew who he was? But the Yamajijii looked like he was human hundreds of years ago, if she guessed by his clothes. If his master, in whatever capacity that meant, was alive two hundred years ago, why did Shin speak of him as if he was still alive?

Was he Hengen, this Kagetora?

"You should go to dinner, and get some sleep after that. Tell Daichi-kun what you've told me." He said, pushing off the desk and walking to the door. He slid it open, but looked back at her before leaving. "If this Yamajijii approaches you again and says the same thing, tell Kouta-kun directly."

Pai nodded, but she didn't know if he saw it because he had already turned away and was out the door almost faster than she could blink. She frowned as she walked to the open door, only briefly glancing back to make sure that everything was in place. She flicked the lights switch off and closed the door behind her.

Had she said something wrong? Did she make him angry in some way, and was it her fault? Or – no, she knew it wasn't her fault that Shin had suddenly flipped to being ice cold again, when she'd felt like maybe he was warming up to her (he'd smiled, she was sure that was a smile she'd seen earlier). This Kagetora person was the reason Shin had rushed off like that, had looked so angry, like she had never seen from Shin before.

But why?

In the corridor, there was no sign of which direction Shin went. She wondered if he would be at dinner with everyone else. He didn't always have dinner with them, she had long noticed. It was a gamble, trying to guess if today would be like yesterday and Shin wouldn't appear at the dinner table, or if he would. It was a private game of hers, one she'd told no one else of.

Pai went to the dining room, where everyone was already eating dinner. She was late, but it was fine, as she went practically unnoticed thanks to the ever-present rabble that was life with a bunch of rowdy people in one room.

She slunk to her seat beside Shiori, who gave her a beaming smile before returning to ribbing her brother, who looked ready to chuck another bucket of mud and worms at her. Some of the other Daitengu laughed at the siblings' quarrel, Haru and Kaede joining in the teasing every once a while, or attempting to keep the little Tengu children from vaulting into the air with their little wings.

One would never have guessed that these men – Haru with his flashy personality, Daichi with that small, amused smile of his at everyone's open happiness, the others; Ryosuke, Shouta, Yuu, Jirou, and Kaede laughing while Ryu scowled at them like a grumpy rabbit – were some of the most powerful Ayakashi in Japan. They just didn't seem like it. All together with everyone in the dining room, Shiori and Kouta at the head, Obaasan nearby them, and the two Tengu girls Yukiji and Mizutani – they were like one big family.

The only one missing is the moody older brother, she thought of Shin as she quietly made her way through her dinner. Was he back in the trees, she wondered, watching the forest and thinking? What would he be thinking about?

About the man, Kagetora, that brief mention of him that seemed to anger Shin so? Or something else entirely that she couldn't guess at because she just...didn't really know Shin well enough to.

For some reason, that thought made her sad.

When the time came to report the day's passing, a while after dinner was over and everyone was off doing their own thing and she had finished her homework, she told Daichi everything that happened in the day. Like the other Daitengu, Daichi was tall, but more so than the others. She thought he might be a good couple of inches over six feet, at the very least. Often, Daichi needed to bend down when entering a room because the frame was shorter than he is, even though all the doors in the house already were quite tall. She felt like a tiny mouse next to him more often than not.

He had a head of tussled chestnut brown hair and tawny orange-brown eyes behind a pair of slim dark-brown framed glasses. His yukata was dark green, much like Kouta's, though a bit plainer. He had an orange sash tied around his wrist that matched his eyes. Despite their unsettling colour, his eyes were kind under his thickset dark brows.

She told him about the Yamajijii and the presence she felt of another Hengen in her and Shiori's classroom. Daichi frowned at that, more concerned about the Hengen than the Yamajijii.

"Could you tell what they are?" he asked.

Pai just barely managed to stifle another yawn of absolute exhaustion. She had no idea how some people went to school and work until late at night, never mind doing homework and studying. She shook her head and said, "No, I could only tell that whoever it is, they are Hengen."

"No one approached you?"

"No."

Daichi nodded slowly, still frowning. "Perhaps it won't be an issue, so long as they don't bother you or Shiori-hime. It's not unusual for other Hengen to integrate themselves with human society."

"So it is okay, then?"

"For now."

"Do you think they can tell what Shii-chan is?" she asked, worried.

He shook his head. "It's doubtful. Kouta's feather masks her aura, as well as prevents Yori Chiisai from bother her. Unless he's looking for her specifically, not just randomly, and he has something of hers to get her scent from, he shouldn't be able to detect her."

That assuaged her a bit. As long as Shiori was safe, nothing else mattered

Daichi chuckled when she had to put her hand up to cover her mouth from yet another yawn. She had lost count of how many times she had done it already. Her eyes were blearing, too, and her limbs weighed heavy, like lead appendages attached to her body.

"You should go to sleep," he said. "I've kept you up long enough. Today must have been a tiring day, what with the Yamajijii and everything. There's still school tomorrow."

Oh shit, she groaned mentally. I forgot about that.

Instead of saying that – because she knew that would only make Daichi concerned and ask if she was still okay to actually continue going to school, and she didn't want to worry anyone – she nodded gratefully, sleepily.

"Thank you." She stood and walked to the door. She slid it open, but paused on the threshold. "Um. Daichi-san?"

He looked up at her. There was a table set in front of him, and he had already gone back to reading something written on a single sheet of paper in front of him. "Yes?"

"Is there – forgive me if it is not my place to ask," she said hastily. "But – is there someone called Kagetora that you know of?"

Daichi hesitated for a moment before replying. "I don't know why the Yamajijii kept mentioning him or imagining some association between you and him, but yet, there is someone named Kagetora that is around."

She frowned. So...Shin's reaction... "Do you know him?"

He nodded. "Yes. I am not quite personally acquainted with him, but I have seen him speaking with the Sojobo whenever it's time to sign the Territories Treaty." He said, naming a peace accord that was regularly signed by the heads of the Hengen Clans on a yearly basis.

The Territory Wars were a series of bloody battles that took place a year before WWI, and reached its height in the middle of WWII. They were wars between the greater Ayakashi, all bidding for larger territories. The battles reflected the bloodshed of the World Wars that claimed so many human lives.

"One could say," Daichi had told her, once. "That because of living in the same world, the fate of Ayakashi and humans is tied. If one world has a war, it's mirrored in the other, one way or another."

The battles eventually got so devastating that the Kings at the time finally called a truce. If they hadn't, it was likely that all Ayakashi could have been wiped out in the Wars, and perhaps humans with them.

A peace treaty came out of the truce, signed every year since then to ensure that no one Clan tried to reignite the horrors of the Territory Wars all over again. If one attacked another, all Clans will band together to persecute the traitorous Clans.

Now, she watched a funny look – something like the look that passed before Shin's eyes, but not nearly as angry – crossed his face.

"Kagetora-san," he continued. "Is a very powerful Ayakashi. He...he is the King of the Kitsune."

Pai stared blankly at him for a solid ten seconds before the words registered.

"He is a King?" she repeated, stunned.

Daichi nodded.

She frowns. So this man, Kagetora, is Ayakashi. That did nothing to explain the Yamajijii's insistence in calling her 'his mistress'. Pai had nothing to do with the Kitsune. She had never even met one before – the only Hengen she had been in contact with was the Tengu, and before her disappearance, she stayed the hell away from any Ayakashi she happened to come across.

Pai doubted she'd know a Kitsune if they stood right in front of her with a fox mask on their face.

Neither did it explain why the Yamajijii knew about Kagetora in the first place. The Yamajijii were Yori Chiisai, yes, but they were left to wander about on their own, generally separated from anything that happened on the Hengen side of things. What was more, Yamajijii were born human, and only those who had died violent deaths – often murdered – and lost a limb in the process actually become Yamajijii in their afterlife.

How would this one know about Kagetora? Why did he keep referring to him as 'Master Kagetora'?

"Go on, Pai," Daichi said, interrupting her swirling thoughts with a small smile on his face. "As long as it doesn't come to bother you again, it should be all right. Go get some sleep."

As long as? She echoed, not quite as settled as Daichi probably tried to make her with those words. And what happens if he does come back?

She nodded anyway, bowed, and left his quarters.

She took a quick bath, putting the matter of Yamajijii and Kagetora from her mind as she went through her evening routine and headed to her room. She dried her hair and braided it again – the nightmare her hair became when left open for sleep didn't bare thinking about – and laid down on her futon, forgetting to close her window and only barely remembering it when her mind was on the cusp of total unconsciousness.

She was so tired that she fell asleep almost instantly.

×

Sitting on a sturdy branch of a tree outside the wall, close to Pai's room, was Shin. He gazed up at the harsh, lonely beauty of the night sky dotted with stars through the canopy of leaves above his head, brooding over Pai's earlier words, wondering.

He found his attention often straying to her sleeping form, bundled under heavy blankets to ward off the cold he had long since noticed she always seemed to be perpetually haunted by.

He wondered why the Yamajijii called her 'Kagetora's mistress'. By now, they all knew that Pai wasn't affiliated with any Hengen except them, so it was pointless to imagine she was spying on them for Kagetora. That didn't change the odd nature of the Yamajijii's behaviour to her, and what it said to her.

Those thoughts scattered to the wind when he glanced at her again at some point late into the quiet night, his lips twitching in a wry smile when he noticed that she had kicked off her blankets entirely, but hadn't woken up to pull them back on.

After a short while, she ended up more curled around one of the lighter, pale blue blankets, cuddling to it in an endearing move. He wondered if she had had a stuffed animal that she slept with, before she went missing. Even as he wondered why she hadn't asked for one now, why she hadn't gotten herself one yet in the year she'd been here, he thought he knew; Pai didn't seem the type easily ready to do things for herself.

Or maybe it had something to do with how sparsely decorated her room was, almost more of a temporary bunker than a bedroom.

He watched shivers creep over her as she laid exposed to the cold, lips parted and breath puffing out as her eyes flickered in her dreams. She didn't look like she would wake up on her own anytime soon.

Shin nimbly jumped down from the tree, silently padding over to her window.

A frown lighted his face as blazing crimson eyes and a wild, insane Kitsune smirk wreathed in black smoke flashes past his mind's eye, a memory he didn't wish to relive rising up when he looked at the sleeping girl. He remembered how they found her, almost a year ago, covered in blood that wasn't her own.

Without a word, he reached in and closed her window so that she could sleep without freezing.

He walked away and tried to shake off the unease crawling over his skin whenever he thought about the King of the Kitsune, and the reminder that there were still years left unaccounted for in Pai's memories.