後期の王女

It was only through sheer force of will that Pai managed to keep her thoughts from meandering back to what Shouta had revealed to her. It was as he'd said – what was done was done. It was in the past, and no matter how she felt about it, none of it would change the fact that it had happened. Agonizing over it would only make her feel worse.

She had enough of that with how anxious and hollow she felt whenever she tried to force herself to remember whatever it was her stupid brain had blocked out.

Like Shiori wanted, the four separated by the time they reached the foot of the mountain and stepped into busier streets. Pai and Shiori went on ahead to the train station, with the Daitengu further behind but always in sight. They were quite a bit taller than most of the people milling about on the streets (evolution unfairly favouring Hengen again), so whenever she really tried and looked for them, it wasn't hard to find them. It was easier to spot them in the crowd than it was to ignore all the people she caught looking at her hair as she walked.

She had almost forgotten that she looked different from everybody else because her hair was white. Being at Ayashi House, where everyone was used to her hair, made her forget that white hair wasn't normal on an eighteen-year-old. Sure, it could be, but Sapporo wasn't Harajuku or even Shibuya.

She wondered what it would be like if she was in Tokyo instead, where people dyed their hair all sorts of colours and received no odd-looks (unless it was something truly insane) like she did here. Would she fit in better there?

She stared at her feet as she walked. Looking at them would not only catch the way they stared at her for being different than them, but would also mean seeing the Goryo shrieking at them soundlessly, Yosei pulling at their hair and clothes, and the nameless blobs of gooey colour that traipsed along the power lines between the electric poles lining the street.

Some unnamed Yori Chiisai rode atop the hoods of the cars that zipped up and down the street. At the train station she ignored Yori Chiisai who attempted to push humans onto the tracks. All they succeeded in doing was making those humans stumble, and cause a fight between a harried-looking office worker who snapped at a middle-school boy, thinking he'd been the one to try push him.

Despite their cruel and dangerous pranks, as long as the humans couldn't see Yori Chiisai, most of what they did to them would be have no effect.

She wasn't sure why, but the only reason Yori Chiisai were able to do so much damage to humans in the old times was because, even if they couldn't see them, belief in their existence prevailed among humans. Modernity had dampened that belief to intense scepticism.

Now Yori Chiisai didn't have as much power over humans as they once did. It was also why she and Shiori were so susceptible to harm by them. They both could see Yori Chiisai, and so they both believed in their existence. That belief was a fuel, adding strength to whatever actions Yori Chiisai took to the two.

She hadn't seen Yori Chiisai in a while, but it was impossible to forget about them when she could watch them as they played in the snow and tried to shove unsuspecting humans down to their knees on the streets. She and Shiori sometimes sidestepped out of the way to avoid stepping on some vagrant little Yosei rolling in the snow.

She could only imagine what those on the street thought when they saw the two girls doing that. Maybe they thought they were enacting some weird sort of dance.

As they walked, Shiori told her what she'd missed in school besides the work, warned her that Natsume was likely to knock her down with a hug from having not seen her in over a month because Natsume got attached to people frighteningly quickly, and informed her in a grumble that Shuusei was likely to fall asleep on his feet when they were all together. Shiori wondered aloud if his tendency to fall asleep almost anywhere, in any position, was because he was haafu, or something of the like.

"Our class probably has the most number of haafu in the school," Shiori commented idly as they passed under the gates of Odori High.

Almost immediately, Pai felt the cold that had been squeezing her insides lessen. Then she remembered that there would be no Yori Chiisai inside here thanks to the low-level barrier surrounding the school. At the same time, she recalled Yamajijii, convinced that she was 'Kagetora-dono's mistress', to the point that Yamajijii had appeared before her twice in a single day, as if he'd sought her out.

A strange – and incredibly reckless and foolish – thought occurred to her then. If she met Yamajijii again...could she somehow find out more about Kagetora? He was King of the Kitsune. Surely he would know something about what had happened to her, why the Onihitokuchi took her to a warehouse that belonged to his Clan. He couldn't be an enemy if he was the one to stop the whole-scale slaughter of the Tengu nine years ago.

Could he?

Kouta hadn't wanted to tell her anything so that she wouldn't worry more than she already was, but she knew that her abduction at the hands of the Onihitokuchi had something to do with the Kitsune, even if Kagetora wasn't an enemy. Shimo Oni were daft, but not stupid enough to encroach on Hengen territory in such a blatant manner. Okina Oni dealt out severe punishments to any Oni whenever they clashed with Ayakashi and it was found to be the Oni's fault. The same happened vice versa. Daichi said that that was how peace between Ayakashi and Oni was preserved.

Hokkaido was one of the two large territories of the Tengu, the other being the area made up by Kyoto, Osaka, and Himeji. Hengen usually stuck to whichever territory belonged to their Clan, but still, the Territory Treaties ensured that Hengen could pursue life ventures in other territories. Some Hengen could even lead peaceful lives in other Territories, so long as they caused no trouble.

Controlling a port constituted as a profitable business, and the Kitsune – being the foxes they were – took full advantage of it. Their scent would be all over the port, and the Shimo Oni would have caught it. There was no way the warehouse had been the Onihitokuchi's lair. There was no way the Kitsune would simply allow something as vile as a Shimo Oni to use their property as a place to feast on human beings, not with how Ayakashi and Oni detested to even be near each other.

That sometimes made her wonder where Oni actually lived, considering most of Japan was controlled by Ayakashi. She'd have to try and remember to ask Daichi about it, if only so she'd know what places to avoid in the future.

Kouta didn't want to tell her anything, but she could guess that their investigation into what happened was going nowhere. The Kitsune would never admit that they were somehow involved in it, not to the Heir Sojobo. Talking to Okina Oni was out of the question, too. They had no obligation to answer Kouta's questions, since she hadn't died and there was no blood debt to be paid.

There was also the risk of alerting the Oni to her existence, perhaps even giving them the temptation of trying to get to Shiori through her. So far, the Oni had ignored Shiori, acting as if she didn't exist, but Kouta couldn't risk making them interested in her by asking around as to why the Shimo Oni had staked out a Kitsune port as its lair.

Maybe, if Pai could somehow get Yamajijii to talk, she'd find out on her own.

Pai shook her head, her lips twitching in annoyance. She could try, but surely fail as well. The Yamajijii might have been human once, a human who somehow knew of the Kitsune, but that was no longer what he was. He was Yori Chiisai now, an aimless spirit that could only cause harm. If she approached him, there was no way she would get rid of him again without an Onmyoji. There was no certainty that he would even remember any useful information. She didn't know what Yamajijii could remember of their human lives, if it was anything at all.

Besides, she couldn't let other Clans know of her connection to Shiori. They knew what Shiori was, and would do anything to get to her – only they couldn't, because of Kouta, and because Shiori and her family were under the protection of the Tengu. Directly attacking or trying to take her would be paramount to declaring war.

However, if they knew that she was Shiori's friend, they could try to manipulate Kouta through Shiori by using her, in whatever way they could. Obaasan and Ryu were protected by familial association to Shiori, but Pai had thought about it, and realized that whatever Hengen thought to try and use her as a pawn against Kouta and Shiori could use the excuse that she wasn't family.

She was just a friend, and sometimes bad things happened to friends. Maybe not to family, but friends were fair game.

She had brought enough trouble on herself and those she cared about.

"There's you," Shiori continued, oblivious to Pai's inner turmoil. "Natsume-chan and Shuu-kun are half French, this other kid called Seiran-san, he transferred here sometime in the middle of last year from Aomori. I think he's half British, like Kouta. And I think two other girls in Aoi-chan's class."

"Kouta-sama is quarter British. And I am not really a haafu, either." Pai automatically corrected, bending down to fit in her indoor slippers over her feet with one hand while she closed the door of her locker with her outdoor shoes inside. Haru and Shouta had gone on ahead to the staff room.

"Yeah, but your grandmother was Russian. So that makes you a quarter Russian."

"Bulgarian," she clarified. "My grandmother was Bulgarian."

"Isn't Bulgaria part of Russia?"

Pai gave her a look. "No."

Shiori was surprised. "Bulgaria isn't one of the countries that dissolved from the Soviet Union?"

"No, Shii-chan, Bulgaria is not."

"What's the difference?" she asked as she fitted in her own shoes. "I suck at history. Like, really. D'you know, I had to take three make-up tests because of it?"

Pai did know that, and she pitied Shiori's seemingly complete inability to remember dates and names from history. The only ones she remembered where anything to do with the Shinsengumi, thanks to watching too many anime about them.

"The last Soviet Union president survived an attempted takeover, but he lost all his power outside Moscow. When the Belavezha Agreement was called to dissolve the USSR Gorbachev-san had no choice but to accept." She answered, reciting every word from memory. "The countries that separated from the Soviet Union are," she raised both her hands to list the countries by lowering one finger for every country she listed off. "Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and..." she closed one eye and tilted her head back as she thought of the name for the last country. "And Uzbekistan."

For every country she named, Shiori's eyebrows lifted inch by inch until they practically met her hairline. "Thank you, Momozono-sensei, for the history lesson I did not need this early in the morning."

She shrugged. "You are the one who asked."

"I've learned from my mistake. You like history. A lot." Shiori lifted her hand defensively.

"Not that much." She said quietly.

"You certainly like it enough to remember all that. Like, how even." Shiori cocked her head curiously. "I don't remember you liking it so much."

Pai opened her mouth to argue that she didn't actually like history very much, but she closed it again as she ran over what she'd just said. She sounded like she was reciting something that had been drilled into her. She'd never even spent that much time with her textbooks, as far as she could remember, preferring to hang out with Shiori, or with her sister.

She couldn't actually remember learning about the Soviet Union or its dissolution before she'd gone missing. What she did remember was that her only year taking History in middle school had been with a syllabus that went over World War II, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, and perhaps one or two lessons about different shoguns from Japanese history.

How did she know, not only about the exact year the Soviet Union broke apart, but who the last president of it was, and the names of all the countries that dissolved from it?

"Yeah," she mumbled, her brow furrowed. "Neither do I."

Shiori continued to look at her for a moment longer before she shut her locker door and fitted her thumb through the straps of her bag. "Pai, are you okay?"

Pai glanced at Shiori as she stepped up to her side and the two walked up the stairs to the second floor, where their classroom was. "I am fine."

"Lie."

"Not."

"Lie again."

"Why do you say so?"

"Don't know." Shiori shrugged nonchalantly. "You just seem out of it. You're here and walking and talking, but your head is somewhere else."

"Yes, that is it," she deadpanned. "I cut off my head and decided to leave it at home today. It is too heavy to walk around with all day."

Shiori gave her a flat look at the blunt sarcasm. "You know what I mean."

Her lips twitched in irritation that she hadn't been able to hide her dampened mood from Shiori. It was hard to hide things from Shiori, especially when you didn't put in all their attention to avoiding giving away little details that told her something was wrong. Shiori was exceedingly good at reading people.

They headed straight for Shiori's desk, and Pai could already hear the whispering of the other students noticing her.

"Hey, look, that's Momozono-san. How come she only came for a week of school before the break?"

"I heard that she got in a really bad car accident."

Where did you even hear that.

"What? I heard that she got really sick and couldn't come or something."

Not unlikely.

"She probably got sick, right? Mei-chan overheard her telling Shuusei-kun and Aoi-chan that she had some syndrome, or something like that."

More likely. And why was she listening in on someone else's conversation.

"But for a whole month?"

Good point.

"Do you think whatever illness she has is infectious? What if we catch it!"

Do you think I'd be here if it was? Not wearing a mask, even?

"Don't be stupid, she wouldn't be coming to school if it was."

Thank you for not being a gossiping dunce.

"But why'd she miss so much school then?"

You wouldn't believe me if I told you.

She asked Shiori, "Do you have some sort of radar that tells you when there is something wrong with someone?"

"Maybe I do. I always know when you're feeling down. So come on, tell me," she cajoled as she fell back in her seat while Pai stood over her, glancing at the clock to see how much time they had left before homeroom began. "What's wrong?"

Five minutes. Kurebayashi-sensei would be coming in to take roll-call and begin the first lesson of the day in five minutes. Pai thought it would be more than enough time.

"Shouta-san told me about what happened nine years ago."

That was all she needed to say.

Shiori's face immediately fell, and she knew in that instant that Shiori had also known about it. It was ridiculous to think that she wouldn't know, especially after she'd been living at Ayashi House for close to two years now. Pai didn't think Kouta would keep something like that from her.

Or it could be that Shiori's curiosity over why the Daitengu were so young had prompted her to ask. The latter was more likely, considering Shiori's often oblivious personality.

"You knew?" she asked.

Shiori nodded. "Yeah. Kouta told me about it."

"Why did you not tell me?" she wasn't hurt that Shiori didn't tell her, just curious as to why.

"I don't know," Shiori looked uncomfortable. "I guess...it's not really my story to tell. I don't think anyone likes to talk about it. I only found out because I went to meet Kouta's parents at Kyoto last year, and I met one of the Previous Heads there."

"You met one?" Pai asked, surprised.

"Uh-huh. Matsuoka-san. He's still pretty young, around forty or something, and I wondered why he wasn't still a Daitengu. From what I know, Daitengu don't really retire. At all, y'know." No, Pai didn't know, but she didn't say anything. "I asked Kouta, and he told me what happened, and that Matsuoka-san couldn't be a Daitengu anymore because he's suffering from really bad PTSD."

"Matsuoko-san...he was not able to break through the barriers," she mumbled, recalling Shouta's words, heart weighed heavy by them despite Shouta telling her not to think too much on it.

"Yeah, barriers the Kitsune put up to stop anyone from escaping. He was stuck on the outside, with the Kitsune and Tengu inside, and he had to watch people he knew die right in front of him without being able to do anything to stop it. I'm not surprised that he stepped back from being Daitengu."

There was no way Pai could ignore the lump in her throat or the heaviness in her eyes. She knew that she got so easily affected by things like this because she too often put herself in the shoes of those affected by it directly, and that just made knowing about it that much harder.

"How do they do it, Shii-chan?" she asked quietly after a pause, monotone as she sat on the edge of the chair of the desk behind Shiori's. "They are always laughing, always in a good mood. It is as if something like that never happened."

"They haven't forgotten," Shiori said, eyes sad as she looked down at her fingers. "That's not something they'll ever forget. But they're always training, with their Abilities and their bodies, so that they won't ever be so helpless as they were then. Like, you know how Haru-kun's always complaining about training, but he never skips? I think that helps them cope, kind of."

"So does your presence there," Pai added, remembering what Shiori told her of how she and Kouta met, and why the Sojobo of the Tengu was willing to allow his son, an Heir, be in a relationship with a human.

Heirs – sons and daughters of Kings, those who were expected to become the next Kings – were royalty within Clan hierarchies. And, as was in the modern world, royalty wedded only for political and economic reasons, for status and power and wealth. Humans never fell in any of those categories – only Shiori was the exception.

Pai didn't think that the Sojobo would allow his son to ever involve himself with a human if Shiori wasn't who she was. Even now, from the way Shiori sometimes talked about her future father-in-law, it seemed that the Sojobo was still reluctant to fully accept her. Pai wondered if that was because she was a human, or if it was because of Kouta's love for her – a love, Pai saw, that could make him turn a blind eye to his duties.

She logically knew that such a love could be dangerous, especially because Kouta was responsible for so many people's lives, but when she watched Kouta and Shiori together, saw how happy they were, she couldn't fault them for it. Shiori was young, but she knew what she wanted, and what she'd found with Kouta was so good and pure that no one could doubt Shiori wasn't way in over her head being involved with an Heir.

"Even if you do not believe it, Shii-chan," Pai continued. "The Tengu – and all Hengen – believe that story. You being there, together with Kouta-sama, gives them strength."

"Yeah," Shiori maundered noncommittally. "The story."

The 'story' was one reason why Shiori was engaged to be married to Kouta. Shiori had told her that, at first, she'd doubted if Kouta's feelings for her was genuine, or if he was just manipulating her for the benefit of his Clan. But those doubts had been swept away when Kouta made it clear to her that even if she wasn't who she was, even if she was somebody else, he would love her all the same, despite it going against his father's wishes. Now Shiori thought of her status as being a bonus, so that the Sojobo had one less argument against her loving his son.

It was amazing, how quickly Shiori could flip a disheartening situation into a hopeful one by picking at one single fact until it shone like a beacon of light.

For Shiori, despite being very human, was not an ordinary mortal. She was a mortal vessel, a Chimei Yoki to Konohana-no-Mikoto, the very same Kamigami who told Pai how she was to save Shin.

While it was true that being Chimei Yoki could be thought of as tsukimono, being a mortal vessel wasn't exactly the same as getting possessed by Ayakashi. It was more like kamigakari, divine possession, more of the Kamigami borrowing a mortal body to use as their own for a limited span of time. Shiori herself was a reincarnation of the Koki Sakura Hime, the Late Cherry Tree Princess, whom Konohana had used as her first Chimei Yoki.

For humans, the legend went that five thousand years ago there lived a princess, in the lands that soon became Kyoto, the thousand-year capital of Japan. Her name was Hiyori. She was a beautiful princess, with an innocent disposition and a graceful countenance. Nobles from all over the country and princes from the neighbouring giant China would travel across the lands to pay homage to her farther, the Emperor, as well as hoping to glimpse the famed beauty of Hiyori-hime.

She was so beautiful, so ideal and lovely a person, that even Kamigami turned their heads to attention once they heard of her. One in particular coveted Hiyori and wanted to make her his wife. However, once approached by him, she rejected him. She had already fallen in love with the son of a shogun whom she had met in her father's court, and she was set to marry him the coming spring, under the beautiful rose-pink petals of the sakura tree in the forest just outside the palace she lived in.

The Kamigami was enraged at being scorned by the princess. He vowed to make sure that her beauty would become a poison to those she loved, turning those she cared for away from her. Nothing happened, however, for five years after the incident. She thought that she had escaped his wrath, when it was indeed the opposite. He let the years fly by to lull her into a false state of security.

Kamigami cannot truly die, so it was a simple matter for him to wait for the right moment.

One night, Hiyori caught her beloved husband in bed with another woman, despite her husband's promise to never take another. In the argument that ensued her husband faulted her for developing a cold attitude to him, saying she acted so because she thought her beauty made her invulnerable, somehow better than him, as if it put her on a pedestal to look down upon everyone else. Hurt at the false accusation, she fled from the palace, blinded by tears, and ran straight to the forest.

Eventually, she came to rest beneath the blossoming sakura tree she'd been wedded under just five years before. She was tired, lonely, heartbroken at her husband's betrayal, and hungry. When she lay back against the tree and looked up to the stars, she saw a cherry fruit hanging by the stem of the sakura tree. She picked the fruit and ate it without a thought. Under ordinary circumstances, the cherry fruit from a sakura tree wasn't harmful in any conceivable way. It was edible, and it filled her belly somewhat, and that was all that mattered to Hiyori that night.

But the sakura tree Hiyori had taken the fruit from was not an ordinary tree – it was a sacred sakura, one of few that stood tall and proud in Japan. These sacred trees differed from ordinary ones in that they were blessed by the kiss of a Kigen, a Greater God. The fragrance of purity of the sakura and its fruit repelled supernatural creatures from it, providing sanctuary to those who sought shelter under its branches.

The properties of the sakura changed, however, once ingested in the body of a human being. It served to act in opposite to what the sakura tree did – it drew supernatural creatures to the human, the sweet scent almost impossible for both Ayakashi and Oni to ignore. Hiyori had lain to rest for a while when an Oni suddenly appeared before her.

The Oni originally wanted to eat her because of the scent that permeated from her body, but upon seeing her beauty, he compromised and instead made Hiyori his bride. Even when eaten, the sakura preserved its holiness, and because Hiyori was wedded to the Oni, the prosperity endowed upon her by the sakura extended to the Oni and his tribe. Eating the sakura gave Hiyori's a special resilience that allowed her to bear her Oni husband's children, and to let Kamigami use her body as a mortal vessel without burning out from the energies of such a powerful being as a Kamigami.

And so began an endless cycle that stretched to modern day.

Hiyori was still only mortal, and though she lived for far longer than any ordinary human could, she did die. But her spirit reincarnated as every human's does, and each time she did, Konohana claimed Hiyori's reincarnations as her Chimei Yoki. Ayakashi and Oni alike would search out the one born with the aura of a Kamigami and the scent and blessings of the sakura, choosing to either take the prosperity and graces of it by either marrying the young incarnation, or devouring her and becoming immortal.

Shiori was now the Koki Sakura Hime and Konohana's Chimei Yoki, though insofar the Kamigami had never yet tried to use her in any way. Coming with being the reincarnation of a god's vessel, Shiori was targeted by other Hengen who wanted to steal her away from Kouta with the general idea of forcefully wedding her, as well as the Oni, who everyone thought would only want to eat her for immortality's sake.

Neither could ever get to her, though, because the spirit of Konohana's aura protected her in small but effective ways, something it was obligated to do until Shiori reached her seventeenth birthday. Once she came of age, the spirit withdrew, and Shiori became vulnerable to attack from the supernatural.

In the beginning, Kouta had been one of the Hengen who only wanted Shiori because she was the Koki Sakura Hime. From what Pai knew, the Tengu had been clashing with the bordering Nue Clan, and Kouta only wanted his people to avoid the conflict. Shiori never told her the specifics, and Pai never asked since it wasn't entirely her business to, but somewhere along the line Kouta's priorities changed, to the point that Shiori became one of those Kouta would do anything to protect.

Before their untimely deaths, Shiori's parents knew that Kouta was Hengen, having noticed long ago about their daughter's certain propensity to stare off into what they assumed to be empty space, when really she was watching Yori Chiisai. It came as a big shock to learn that Shiori was a Chimei Yoki to a goddess, but they accepted it, and Kouta. When Shiori's parents died in the car crash, he took her in, along with Ryu and Obaasan, without question.

Shiori's being the Koki Sakura Hime was part of why she always wore the necklace with Kouta's feather on it, and why first Pai, and now Shouta and Haru, came with her to school. The spirit that protected her since she was born had drawn back when she turned seventeen. Yori Chiisai hadn't been able to do anything too bad to her in all these years, but now she was unprotected. Their attacks on her would be –and had been – more aggressive.

And, as Daichi had muttered darkly, the other Clans were 'obstinate blockheads'. They didn't happily accept the no to them that was the yes to Kouta and the Tengu. It was always better to be safe than sorry.

"You might think it means nothing," Pai told her as the bell rang shrilly, Kurebayashi-sensei waddling into the room barely a second later. "But to them all, that story is real. Hiyori was real. To the Daitengu, it gives them the strength." She stood up and looked back at Shiori as she walked to her seat. "That belief is what keeps them going so that nothing bad happens to you and Kouta-sama."

As she took her seat, getting out her notebook and pencil case for the lesson of History Kurebayashi-sensei would start as soon as he was done with roll-call, she wondered what the Daitengu would be like if Kouta never met Shiori, or if the Koki Sakura Hime never existed and Shiori was just an ordinary girl who couldn't even see Yori Chiisai. Would they still be the same men she knew, or would they be different, completely different, if they had never met Shiori, their future queen?

What would Shin be like, if his family wasn't slaughtered by the Kitsune nine years ago? If he never had to become Daitengu?

If she never met him?