懐古

Pai had never been so completely unmotivated to do anything in her entire life.

Her feet dragged. She stumbled because of it more times than she could count. Her thoughts were slow and muddy. It was hard for her to keep her eyes open despite the fact that after what happened last night she'd slept through most of the day, a strange bout of total and utter exhaustion completely overwhelming her.

And she cried.

When she got back to her room after leaving Shin, she huddled on the bed and cried like she never had before. Her whole body burned as she cried, her breath hiccuping and her chest aching worse than anything she could remember. Her world was falling apart, and no matter how many pieces she picked up and stuck together, it was like new cracks formed and splintered all around her.

Everywhere she turned there was a new problem, a new obstacle, a new trouble, and it was almost always somehow her fault. She always felt guilt for whatever it was that was the problem, even if she could take a step back and see that it wasn't her fault – even then, still, in some way, it was.

It helped. It was like the tears that rolled endlessly down her cheeks were filled with all the turbulent emotions that she was struggling to keep behind the steel walls she built around herself. She exhausted herself and fell right to sleep, but when she woke up, there was...

Nothing.

Crying helped – but what came after that? What was she supposed to do with the silence left behind by the muffled sobs that broke her to pieces? What was she supposed to do with the hole in her chest, filling up with the blood of her sorrow?

To make matters worse, Kuniumi wasn't there. She had disappeared after seeing Shin's eyes very briefly turning black before Shin had regained control over Shinigami.

For the first few hours after that, Pai hadn't even thought about Kuniumi. She was too preoccupied with worry over Shin, over the fact that he was suffering – and trying to hide it – because Shinigami was breaking through. Her mind was filled with the images of Shinigami's red eyes smirking wickedly down at her as he gleefully told her that she was dying.

But then she noticed; Kuniumi hadn't said anything, hadn't appeared, for almost a whole day.

Kuniumi was never gone that long – at most, five hours. Pai knew this, she'd timed it. She had wanted to question Kuniumi, to somehow force her to tell Pai who it was she'd seen overtaken both Shin and Shinigami, and if he was doing the same thing to Shin that Kuniumi was to Pai – inhabiting the space of her mind.

She could still sense her presence deep inside her, but Kuniumi wasn't here.

She didn't understand how or why she found that a bad thing, considering all she'd been wanting from Kuniumi was for her to leave. Now that Kuniumi was gone though, she felt...lonely.

Without the voice perpetually chattering non-stop in her head about oft nonsensical things, flitting from one topic to the other on flighty whim, she felt hollow. Like a part of her was missing, a part she hadn't realized she needed until it was gone, and she was forced to continue on her own without it.

Pai was surrounded by people – Hengen, but still people. They were everywhere, all around her, at her sides, in front of her, at her back. They talked, they laughed, they looped their arms together and cheered and hugged and sang and drank and ate to their heart's content, celebrating the peace and (relative) unity of the Ayakashi.

She was surrounded by people, yet she didn't think she had ever been so alone before. All the people around her were shaded in the colours of the wind, bright and sparkling with energy and life, but she was a dark grey spot in the middle, the odd one out.

As she sluggishly trudged past stall after stall selling wares, advertising carnival games, offering food and drink, she thought, There are so many people around me, so why...why am I so lonely?

Even Sato winding round and round her ankles, rubbing his soft fur-clad body on her legs, didn't help to alleviate the miasmal cloud hanging over her. The cat easily sensed the low spirits filling her to the brim – or perhaps it could just see how bad she felt from the pallor of her face, the shuffle of her steps. She wasn't sure how much the cat understood of the words that bounced back on forth over his head, but she guessed it was quite a bit.

It was well into the evening by the time she stopped aimlessly walking around, standing in the middle of the wide path with numerous stalls lining the street on either side of her. She finally had to come to terms with the fact that she had absolutely no idea how to get back to the Palace. Her sense of direction was usually reliable because she remembered everything in vivid details, mentally taking pictures and storing them in her mind. But now she was completely clueless, cast adrift in a crowd of Ayakashi who showed no signs of telling that she wasn't like them.

Shiori was somewhere in the festival, enjoying its splendour more than Pai was capable of. She left Shiori with Kouta, the two having dared each other to shoot the rings off the glass bottles at a carnival game stall with air rifles and win a big stuffed animal as a reward. She'd cited fatigue as the reason why she wanted to leave early.

To avoid the concern Shiori had been ready to voice, she quickly added that she would join her and Kouta later on, before the festival ended with fireworks at midnight. She just needed a little time to rest. She even went as far as to say that she was so tired because of the 'experiment' she'd done with Shin.

It was true, in a way. She was tired from it, but really it was just an excuse. She was guilty that the true reason why she'd left early was because she didn't want to force herself by pretending to enjoy herself when all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and forget to exist. Try as hard as she might, she simply couldn't enjoy the festival like everyone else was.

Even Shiori noticed how distracted and weary she was. Pai made no move to say why she couldn't focus on enjoying the festival because she knew that what happened last night with Shin wasn't something she could just talk out with Shiori. She hadn't told Shiori what exactly happened in the Torimaku, only vaguely saying that she'd simply spoken Shin's true name and his Makashi hadn't stood a chance.

Shiori took her wispy words in stride surprisingly quickly, and she had a feeling that Shiori only did so because she already knew more had happened, but she wasn't going to push Pai to say anything she wasn't willing to.

×

She tapped Shiori's shoulder, just as the other girl squeezed her finger around the air rifle in her hands. She jerked back from the kick of the fake gun and groaned in despair when her aim proved unworthy and failed to knock down the bottle. Standing beside her, Kouta lifted his air rifle, closed one eye, and pulled the trigger. His aim was better, and he knocked the bottle in the stall off its stand.

Pai wondered if she had jerked back when she fired at Shin with the gun she dug out from the earth at the foot of the elm tree outside Ayashi House.

She tried very hard not to picture the blossoming red pools of blood spreading around the heads of Mizushima and Kichi, their daughter sitting and getting her clothes stained with the blood of her dead parents. But the sight of the air rifles clasped in Kouta and Shiori's hands, so innocently, had her stomach coiling tight with dread. She felt ill and ready to heave.

Shaking her head as Shiori turned to her she said quickly, "Shii-chan, I am going back."

"Huh?" Shiori frowned quizzically. "Already? But it's only been..."

She glanced down at her wristwatch. "Two hours and twenty-eight minutes." She provided as Shiori started to lift up the sleeve of her yukata to look at her own watch.

Shiori blinked at her. "How do you even know the time to the minute."

Pai shrugged. She didn't want to say it was because she'd always timed the beginning and end of missions, to see how long it took her to take another life. "I am tired. I think I will go have a nap and join you later. The festival ends late, right?"

Shiori nodded, a concerned frown still marring her perfectly made-up face. "Uh-huh."

"Around midnight," Kouta said, joining the conversation after paying for their game. "Though people usually stay longer than that."

He slung his arm around Shiori's shoulders, clasping his right hand around his left wrist in front of her as he nodded at Pai. She could see it was a very obviously territorial move. She knew he did it to warn away all the men – and the occasional woman – she could see inconspicuously eyeing Shiori.

Shiori, in turn, didn't shrug him off the way she was prone to do because of the way she blushed insanely whenever he displayed any affection in public. She wondered when Shiori would realize he did it because he loved her so much that he wanted the whole world to know it.

He nodded at Pai. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I am fine," she tried to smile at him reassuringly even though her heart was black tar. "I am just tired. I did not get much sleep last night."

"Right," he nodded knowingly. "Shin did that thingy-majig thing with his Ability."

Her stomach curled as Shiori put in, "That's what I called it. Thingy-majig thing."

Kouta smiled down at her, and something in Pai's chest twisted at the love in his eyes.

Licking her dry lips she asked, "He told you about it?"

Kouta looked back at Pai, yellow eyes fixed on hers and flickering unnaturally from the lights strung up all around them. In that moment, he looked very much the Ayakashi he was.

"Yeah. Said it went according to plan." He cocked his head to the side curiously. She got the feeling that he knew more about what happened than he was letting on. "Did it?"

"Yes." She managed stiffly, wondering if he knew about Shinigami. From the way he looked at her, the corner of his lips tucking up in a deliberate smile, she thought he probably did. He was Shin's best friend. Shin was his most loyal retainer – of course he'd know. She quickly bowed respectfully to him, then turned around and waved to Shiori. "I will see you later, Shii-chan."

"Okay," Shiori mumbled reluctantly. She lifted a hand and pointed in the general direction of the Palace. "We'll be at the stairs to the Palace for the fireworks."

"Best place to watch 'em." Kouta added, eyes straying from watching Pai to looking at something over her shoulder. His eyes darkened momentarily before he brought them back down to Shiori, who was playing with his finger by straightening and bending his thumb to see how far back it could go. "What are you doing?"

"Seeing how flexible you are."

He arched a brow. "Why?"

"I'm still trying to figure out how your finger did that bendy thing when you did the floater." She replied, keeping her eyes fixed on his thumb with a quizzical frown pulling her eyebrows down. "People's thumbs are not this flexible."

As she started walking away, leaving Kouta and Shiori to themselves, she glanced around in the direction Kouta had been looking at. There were only people around her, and she guessed he must have been looking at someone. Her eyes danced over someone idly standing about, and she halted abruptly.

A man stood there, wearing a red kimono with gorgeously elaborate designs sewn in at the hems. His back was turned to her, arms crossed. She could just spy a red thread tied around the man's pinkie finger resting on his elbow, and her stomach tightened when she hazily recalled the unclear dreams she sometimes had that were influenced by Kuniumi.

Pai didn't know how, but those dreams were the briefest glimpses Kuniumi's memories, parts of her that Pai wasn't sure Kuniumi knew were leaking out. In those dreams, the red string of fate always wound itself tight, tight around her neck, strangling her until she woke up gasping for air.

The man was watching a group of Tengu children playing with Ookami twins. The twins had half-shifted so that they had furry wolf tails behind them and fur sprouting along their forearms and along the tips of their ears. As the children played she caught sight of a little red fox running between the children's legs. Its lips were tipped up, sharp teeth flashing, but it didn't look dangerous. It looked happy, playing an innocent game of tag.

She started in surprise when the man shifted his footing lightly, still watching the children play. The way he was standing, with his legs straightened out but his hip cocked slightly to the right, the dark hair brushing over the low collar of his kimono...it was all so familiar.

"Shin?" she murmured under her breath, narrowing her eyes as she tried to see if it really was him.

She hadn't seen him the whole day, nor had she so much as caught a glimpse of him anywhere in the festival as she'd tagged behind Kouta and Shiori. She thought he hadn't come. She thought he had decided to stay away after what happened last night.

Her lips parted to call out his name, louder so he would hear her, but then the man turned around and she saw it wasn't him after all. A strange flash of heat surged through her, a particular warmth she'd felt only once before that she remembered so clearly – she'd felt it at Satozuka Cemetery. Her eyes narrowed when she saw the fox Mask covering the man's face when he looked off to the side, as if he heard someone call his name.

As he turned, his hair caught stray sparks of light from the lanterns around him. She saw that there were more defined waves to his dark hair, different to the straighter, longer jet-black strands of Shin's. She watched him lift a hand in a small wave to someone she couldn't see.

Her view of him was obscured when the throng of the crowd thickened, people weaving in and out of each other as they went about their merry way. She wasn't tall enough to keep her eye on him, and though she tiptoed to try catch sight of him again, he was lost.

He wasn't Shin, but she recognized him, even without seeing his face. He wore a traditional kimono now where he had worn a white form-fitting sweater and black jeans then, but she had seen this man before. She knew he was the man from that day at the cemetery.

He was the Hengen who knelt before the headstone of someone who shared a name with the mysterious woman Kuniumi considered to be the same person as Bibari, yet different to Pai at the same time.

Touka.

×

Standing in the middle of the street, with most of the people around her drifting past giving her room and the occasional odd look, she tips her head back and expels a white cloud of air. She watches it hang in front of her before spreading out slowly, dissipating into the cool night. Her gaze flicks from the colourful lights strung up along the poles and adorning houses, coiled around the stalls and trees all around to light everything up. It makes everything around her look like a fairy village.

At her feet came a disgruntled mewl. She bent and scratched Sato under his chin, her lips twitching at the satisfied purring that started up when his eyes slid closed in pure feline bliss.

"Do you know what to do?" she mumbled. Sato slowly opened one yellow eye to stare at her curiously, as if he was asking her what she was talking about. She shook her head. "Never mind."

She stood, patting down her plain blue yukata decorated with little white birds around her legs and the hems of her sleeves. She looked down when Sato trotted on ahead of her, the bell around his neck tinkling sweetly. She frowned a little at that – she was sure the bell didn't usually make any sounds at all.

She glanced around on either side of her as she started after Sato, resigning herself to the fact that she would probably have to just keep walking until she made her way back to the Palace. She figured that as long as she was in the village she would be okay. If worst came to worse, she'd just ask someone for directions, much as she was loathe to talk to anyone.

As she wandered around, hoping that she was walking back in the general direction of the Palace, she looked up at the coloured paper lanterns and lights strung up on tree branches and around the balconies of the houses perched in the trees. They coiled around the stalls and lit the whole village up, a mysterious town lit with colour and life. She thought it made everything pretty, all bright and sparkly.

She slowed to a stop when she happened on a peculiar little organized brawl between Hengen. There were a number of events prepared in the festival that she knew with absolute certainty she would never come across in a human festival. At one stall she'd seen a girl standing by a headboard with an apple on her head, laughingly threatening the boy a few feet in front of her not to stab her as he aimed a knife at the apple.

Another was the fight she now stood at the side-lines of. She heard several people call Shiai Geiko no Ayakashi. It was as the name said; fighting matches between Hengen, with the winner choosing his next opponent from the crowd. She thought the name a little misleading since it had absolutely nothing to do with sumo wrestling, though.

There was a large mat laid out on a lowly raised platform, and the cheering or jeering crowd around the mat formed a perfect square, with two people standing in the middle. Though she was short and stood at the fringes of the crowd, the whole place was set in the dip of a low-rising slope in the land so that she was more standing above everyone in front of her, able to see the centre easily.

One of the fighters was a girl, mature, petite, with red-brown hair fixed up in a big bun secured at the top of her head with hair sticks. She was dressed in black skinny jeans and a long-sleeved pink t-shirt that featured Hello Kitty's face on it, set on a backdrop of a city painted in blacks and whites.

The man standing before her was taller, brawny, in a pair of simple pants and shirtless. The clearly defined muscles of his upper body glistened with a thin sheen of sweat. It was a sight the women around didn't bemoan. Despite herself, she couldn't help comparing him to Shin.

She preferred Shin.

The girl stood calmly on the right side of a man in a yukata who looked to be the referee of the match. The other man bounced around impatiently on the balls of his feet. The girl watched him with an unimpressed face, one eyebrow raised as if she found his jumping mildly annoying, but not enough to say anything.

The man in turn smirked confidently at her. He lifted a hand and gestured tauntingly at her as he said something to her that was lost in the shouts of the excited crowd around them. The girl rolled her eyes and replied. From the reddening of the man's face, the clenching of his jaw, and the tightening lips, she knew it wasn't anything he liked.

As her gaze flicked from the arrogantly jittery man to the apathetic girl she could already tell who was going to win. The man's arrogance was going to be his downfall. From the sweat covering his gleaming body, that confidence was probably because he'd won the previous match. Even by Ayakashi standards he would be tired from his last match, giving the girl an upper hand.

She wondered why he'd picked this girl to fight next. Had he assumed that just because she was small she would be easy to defeat?

She glanced to the right when a small weasel of a man waded his way through the crowd eagerly awaiting the match, rattling a wicker basket and calling out in a nasally voice, "Bets on Takashi, Kitsune, and Arakida, Ookami! Final bets, final bets, make your final bets before the start!"

She looked away from him before his eye could fall on her and zero in on her to try to cajole some money out of her. She didn't want to talk to anyone, and she didn't have any money on her anyway.

I'd put my bet on Takashi though, she thought, watching the small smirk playing about the girl's lips as she swept her right leg behind her, left bending slightly when the referee took a step back from the two fighters.

The man, Arakida, raised his fists and shifted his feet to stand in fighting stance. She noticed that Takashi certainly looked Kitsune, if only because of her pointed button nose and the way her smile turned sly, even if she mightn't mean it.

Then the match began. No one raised a hand to signal it, nor was there any bell to sound the start.

Arakida moved first. He feigned to the right, but Pai saw his torso twisting towards the left. Half an instant later, his right leg was the one to lash out in an upper head kick. Takashi, to her credit, easily ducked the kick. Pai tipped her head to the side speculatively, wondering why Takashi didn't use the clear opening in the second it took for Arakida to bring his leg down to knock him back flat on his back.

She got her answer a minute later.

The two exchanged testing blows with one another for a little bit longer, feeling each other out as they searched for weaknesses. Arakida kicked more than he punched, strong enough that they would have had anyone on their backs. Takashi simply dodged every kick and evaded every punch.

The crowd was split in two, half cheering Takashi on and the other rooting for Arakida. Pai kept to her own, silently standing apart from the crowd and simply watching the match. The only thing truly keeping her watching was her curiosity.

For all intents and purposes, the next kick Arakida aimed at Takashi was a good one. It was aimed true, strong, and he didn't stumble. If his opponent had been anyone else who'd managed to stay up until that point, they would have gotten the heel of his foot right in their face, stunning them long enough for Arakida to take them down.

But his opponent wasn't anyone else. It was Takashi, a Kitsune, who was using their light back-and-forth scrap to find the weakness in his strength, to make him use his energy while she conserved her own.

It was an upper-head cut, again. Everything seemed to slow down in time as Pai watched the girl leap up in the air and twist. Her right leg, her strong one, lashed out and knocked Arakida's leg down, hard. The move had him faltering. Takashi wasted no time. As she started to descend she was still twisting round, rotating for a second time. Her left leg kicked out and her heel struck Arakida's jaw, a move he wasn't fast enough to bring his arm up to block.

The double blows – one unbalancing him, the other stunning him – were more than enough to have Arakida crashing down to the ground. He caught himself with his palms flattened out on the mat, but he was groaning in obvious pain. The half of the crowd cheering for him was moaning in disappointment, the other half for Takashi yelling in elation that, at the moment, she looked to be the next winner.

Pai spied traces of blood splattering the yellow-brown mat Arakida lay on. A sickening feeling squeezed her innards tight. She turned away, deciding that she had seen more than enough of the fight. Even if Arakida got back up, Takashi had proven that she was smart, fast, and agile enough to keep him on his toes and beat him down again and again.

As she turned to leave she wasn't looking where she was going, her eyes turned to the ground rather than paying attention to her surroundings. For one brief second, all she was aware of was a sudden, overwhelming blast of heat that dowsed her whole being. It pooled in her stomach and dampened her palms.

She was just bringing her eyes up when she bumped into someone, hard enough that she stumbled back.

She would have fallen if not for the hand that reached out to grasp her elbow before she could. She lurched to a halt as she was yanked forward, gasping from the surprise. A faint whiff of cigarette smoke stole into her lungs. She threw her hand out as her sense of balance skewed, then righted itself.

"Sorry!" she yelped. "I am so sorry, I was not looking where I was go – "

She blinked several times before the brightness of the lights around her returned to normal, and found herself standing in front of the man in the red kimono and fox Mask concealing his face.

Her mouth popped open in unexpected shock, her words fading away as he slowly reached up and pushed the fox Mask up to nestle in the curls of his dark hair. Up close and under the lights, she could see that his hair was more dark brown than Shin's black. He had high cheekbones, a single dimple forming in his left cheek as his lips curved up in a sensual smile while his crimson eyes flashed brilliantly as he looked down at her.

She knew that nature and evolution – and maybe a little of something more – had made it so that Hengen were born physically attractive, to easier lure humans in for whatever nefarious reason or otherwise. That wasn't enough to prepare her to be confronted by the almost unearthly beauty of the Hengen who stood before her, smirking with a strangely knowing glint in his eye.

She wasn't rendered speechless only because of his extraordinary looks, though. A powerful tug, deep in some unknown place in her chest was trying to force her to remember something, but she couldn't recall exactly what it was. She felt like she knew him, or that she should. But she was certain that she did not know him at all – though she had seen him before. That much she knew.

In the memory when she killed the Mizushima's, as she'd moved the scope of the gun around, she'd seen him in the crowd. Now that she had her memories back from the day of the Torimaku, she remembered thinking that she'd seen a man watching her from the treetops, but at the time she'd dismissed it as paranoia and adrenaline fuelling her overactive imagination.

Not to mentioned she was running to stop Shinigami from murdering the other Daitengu for caging him in the Torimaku to begin with. She hadn't had time to stop and check whether or not she was seeing things in the trees around her.

She had a feeling that she had seen him there, though.

But that was not all. Even if this man wasn't who she saw on the rooftop, on the observation deck of JR Tower, and even if she'd just been imaging things when she'd been so frantic to get to the Torimaku, she knew, she knew he'd been at the cemetery the day she and Shiori had gone to pay their respects to Shiharu. He'd knelt before Nakajima Touka's grave.

She wondered if her exhausted mind was running on fumes of paranoia, or if there was some sort of connection between all the dots that led back in a meandering line to the man standing before her.

"I – " she swallowed nervously, cursing her stupid stammering. "I was not looking where I was going. I apologize."

She gave a small, polite bow. She blinked when she heard a light tinkle, and realized that Sato was no longer at her feet. She wondered where he went. When she came back up the man, Kitsune, was watching her with his head tilted to the side in a way that was strangely, disturbingly, akin to Shin's own habit of doing the same.

"You must be the princess' handmaiden." He said contemplatively, not bothering to mask his Ayakashi voice as he gazed at her with those red eyes that so reminded her of Shinigami, yet were indescribably different.

They were the same inhuman shade of vermilion that Ayakashi had, but this felt different. Shinigami's and Karasatengu's eyes were the only comparisons she had to go on, but both were still inexorably different to how this man's eyes looked to her.

His were older, dark with knowledge, bright with a hunger for something she couldn't name. It was like the eyes looking at her had seen so many things in the world, and there was nothing left to surprise him. It was dizzying to look into them. She managed to hold her ground and not look away, but the strange effect he had on her almost had her missing his words.

"Yes...I am." She shifted uneasily, her mind slowly gearing into overdrive as she glanced around herself, unconsciously seeking anything outside of herself as an excuse to turn his attention away. A quizzical frown pulled her brow low. "How did you know?"

The smirk on his face grew. "Word spreads quickly, especially where it concerns the wildly famed Koki Sakura Hime." His tone was strangely belittling, considering that most Hengen viewed Shiori in an almost divine light. He sounded like he thought all that was complete bullshit – much like Shiori did. "Word also claims you're an orphaned Tengu." He added, watching her.

She nodded hesitatingly, hoping she wouldn't accidentally slip up and say something she wasn't supposed to. She decided to keep her responses to single words, if she could help it. "Yes."

"First time?"

She was treading on shaky ground here. One wrong word, and he might figure out that she was not all she claimed to be. The pendant lying against her chest felt cold as her skin flushed. "Yes."

He chuckled at her answer. She wondered what could have so amused him about it.

"Enjoying the festival?"

She nodded, trying to force a smile on her face to show that she was enjoying the festival. She thought the spasm-like twitch of her lips contorted her face to look more like a groaning monkey than a smiling girl.

Dropping the fake smile, she turned away from him to look at the fairy-lights and the laughing people all around her, wondering why she couldn't just be like them. Why did she have to be different? Why was it her shoulders burdened with so many troubles that she couldn't walk straight from the weight of it all?

"Yes." She answered blandly. "It is a wonderful festival."

At least that wasn't a lie. Not much of one, anyway. If she didn't have such a heavy cloud hanging over her head, she might really have enjoyed the festival with everything she had.

"Who are your bets on?"

"My what?" she glanced at him, for a second not understanding him. Then she realized he was asking who she'd placed her bets on for this match taking place before them. "Takashi-san."

The man gave her a knowing smirk as he lifted his eyes back to the match. Was it because both he and Takashi were Kitsune? Did he know the other personally?

She glanced back when she heard the distinctive crackle of fire. The crowd roared. A ball of purple-tinged fire hurtled towards Arakida, borne from the blackened fingers of Takashi's outstretched arm. He barely managed to duck the flaming ball as it soared over his head.

Takashi was using her kitsunebi to fight.

Takashi dashed forward, close to the ground as she skidded and swung her left leg out, twisting her body as she went. Arakida fell on his back, a sharp groan punching out of him. He didn't even have a moment to catch his breath before Takashi was on him, gripping his wrist and pulling it back as she twisted it behind him. Arakida yelled out in pain.

As Pai watched she saw that in the time she talked to the Kitsune by her side, Arakida had half-shifted. His teeth were sharp, canines like that of a wolf, fur sprouting over his face and melding in with his hair to become one. Her mouth fell open as she saw Takashi in a half-shifted form as well. Her ears were pointed,like an elf's, her teeth elongated in a similar manner to Arakida's. At the base of her spine, four tails shifted almost lazily, a bright red-brown to match her hair.

She looked around herself in shock, noting how not a single person around her was stunned at the physical transformations taking place in the fighters before them. If anything, the crowd was more riled up than before, eager to see what would happen next.

Kitsune...and Ookami...

She shouldn't have been surprised. She was surrounded by Ayakashi. This was an Ayakashi festival, commemorating another year of peace after a bloody Ayakashi war that claimed millions of their kind. Takashi and Arakida were both Hengen. It wasn't human rules that applied to this match – it was Ayakashi rules. She was the only odd one out here, the only human being around.

She swallowed thickly at the heavy realization. What could happen if they realized she wasn't like them? If they realized that she was a helpless human in their midst?

Her attention shot back to the fighters when Arakida, in a sudden burst of strength, threw Takashi off, yanking his arm out of her tight grasp too quick for her to react. She flipped backwards in the air and landed lightly on her feet, her lips pulled back in a snarl as she crouched low, ready to spring in any attack she had room for. Arakida spun around before she could move again, and from the tips of his hands grew four-inch claws, his face twisted in a sneer.

Takashi raised her chin mockingly and called out to him, taunting, lifting her own hand and curling a finger at him. Her nails were sharpened to alarming points that could cut and slice through skin like so much paper. Her words were lost amidst the cheering and jeering of the crowd, but whatever she said clearly had an effect on Arakida.

With an enraged yell he dashed forward, claws at the ready to swipe at her. Pai almost yelped aloud, stunned at the incredible speed Arakida moved with, her heart thundering in her chest. She could almost see his claws slicing into skin and tearing at muscle as he approached Takashi, who remained right where she was.

And then she moved.

One second she was standing, knees bent slightly, arms outstretched on either side of her, fingers curling in anticipation. The next, she leaped up before Arakida would have rammed right into her. Her feet were on his head, and then she was kicking off him like he was a springboard. She used the momentum of his run to push him back even as she soared through the air, performing another perfect flip.

Pai watched in amazement as Takashi stretched her arm out whilst still hanging upside mid-air, dramatically closing an eye and shaping her fingers like a gun. An instant later three small balls of purple fire shot out from the tip of her fingers, slamming into Arakida's back.

She landed smoothly on her feet as she turned to watch her kitsunebi as they burned. Fire spread from where they landed, eagerly licking up the flammable cloth of his clothes. Pai's sensitive nose caught the faint whiff of burned skin, and she winced as she unwillingly imagined the Ookami's pain. Arakida howled as the fire reached his skin, dropping to his knees and rolling on the ground disperse of the fire before it could consume him.

"Mariko."

Pai looked to the man standing next to her when she heard the low whisper from him. She watched him tilt his head to the side slightly, eyes hooded in disapproval.

She looked back to Takashi, who was staring in surprise at him. A look of bright elation lit her eyes, as if she was looking upon someone very dear to her whom she hadn't seen in a long time. Then Takashi saw the little frown crinkling the man's face. Her smile wobbled and melted a second later. A scowl twisted her pretty features, darkening her as she looked down at the rolling, howling Ookami.

She wore utter disdain like a perfectly fit mask. A second later, the fire was extinguished, the only hint of its existence being the smoke curling in wispy tendrils over Arakida's body as he finally came to a stop, lying on his back and breathing hard as he stared up at the night sky, trying to get his bearings. Takashi crossed her arms over her chest and glared down at her opponent.

Her voice, where it was obscured by the excitement of the crowd all around her, now carried well over everyone as it rode the wind to reach them. "D'ya give up, Arakida-san? You know you can't beat me."

With a groan, Arakida twisted to the side and pushed himself to his feet, shaking his head as if clearing it of cobwebs. He only gave his charred clothing a cursory glance as he roughly patted his arms down, making sure that all the fire had been put out.

When he looked up at Takashi, his eyes glowed red with fury. "Who's giving up?"

The man beside her clicked his tongue, and Pai looked back at him as Takashi and Arakida began to circle one another again – much to this man's obvious displeasure, and the crowd's eagerness for the fight to continue. His red eyes flicked down to hers as a mocking smile kicked his lips up, at odds with the annoyance in his voice.

"Stubborn pride." He noted with some of the same contempt in his voice that decorated Takashi's face. "Some people just don't know when to stop before they go down, wouldn't you say?"

Why does it feel like he's talking about me? She thought, looking into those strange eyes before she turned away to watch the two fighters exchange furious blows with one another. There was more going on there than just strangers fighting – those two knew each other.

"Maybe."

He lifted a brow. "You don't think so?"

"It is not always a bad thing to be stubborn." She mumbled, unconsciously lifting her hand to bite at her thumb's cuticle.

"Even when there's no point?"

She winced when her teeth pulled at her skin too hard. She glanced down and watched a single bead of blood well from the cut opened up on her finger. "Even then."

"Even when the whole world is against you?"

"Even then," she insisted, wondering why she was so driven by the unexpected need to show this perfect stranger why giving up wasn't an option. She pressed her forefinger against her thumb, squeezing the blood out, before she hastily wiped her other hand across her thumb and fisted it at her side as she looked up. "Giving up is allowing everyone who thought you would not make it the chance to laugh at you, to ridicule you."

"Pride," he mumbled speculatively. "That is what drives you, is it?"

"Not pride," she frowned as she tried to think of a better way to get her thoughts across. "It is more of the need to prove that what you are standing up for is not something that does not matter. That you were not wrong to go with it in the first place. That your side of the story is not wrong."

"What about," he asked curiously, turning to face her. She turned in kind, looking up at his inhumanly handsome face and wondering at the strange tug of nostalgia in her stomach that had her wanting to prolong any conversation with him. "When you are the antagonist of your own story? The villain," his voice was rich, low, dark, running over her like molten fire. "What then?"

Here she was, knowing that the tension thrumming in her muscles was because she was afraid of all the Ayakashi around her, yet she wanted to remain with this one. She wondered if there was something very wrong with her addled brain.

She scowled at the track her thoughts were running in. "In their perspective, villains are not wrong. They believe they are right and that everyone else is wrong. If they did not then they...they would not be villains in the first place."

What if So Fu is like that?

Horror at the very idea of her understanding their motives curled in her stomach. She thought she was going to be sick.

What if So Fu think they are the protagonists of their own story? But then...if they are the heroes, who are the ones they're fighting against? Who are their villains?

He chuckled lowly. "There's hardly any difference between the hero and the villain then, is there? Now what kind of story would that be. How boring."

She didn't have an answer to that. Indeed, what kind of story would it be, if all the characters were grey instead of black and white, their roles clear-cut? Maybe in fiction it worked, she mused, if the character's goals and motives were simply laid out. But reality wasn't like that. It wasn't boring. Reality wasn't that neat. It was messy, and colourful, and painful.

And sometimes, it was impossible to bear the guilt of living where others had died.

She startled when a steel grip clamped around her wrist. Yanked back, she didn't even manage to stumble before she was steadied on her feet as Shin pulled her to his side, away from the man – the Ayakashi, the Kitsune – she was talking to. He moved so that instead of being by her side, he was protectively in front of her, shielding her. Her eyes shot up to his and she choked on a gasp when she saw that his eyes were a glowing red as he glared at the other man.

Exactly like Shinigami's.

She dropped her gaze down to the hand he had fastened around hers. His Mask was tied securely around his wrist. She looked back up at the white lines bracketing his mouth, no longer finding solace in the Mask as she used to. His lips were pulled back in a scowl that marred his handsome face. His canines weren't as sharp as they were when Shin was no longer himself, but Shinigami.

She swallowed as she rotated her wrist in his hold, and he tightened his hand around hers. Her breath caught in her chest. She looked up at him again, only to find his whole attention focused on the Kitsune. She started to ask Shin what he was doing, but she cut herself off abruptly at the low growl coming right from Shin's chest. Standing so close to him like this, she could almost feel it reverberating through the small pocket of air between them.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked.

The Kitsune smirked as he took a step back – a precautionary step, she thought, considering the look of apocalyptic rage burning in Shin's eyes – and spread his hands out.

"Why, 'tis a festival, dear Shin." He cocked his head to the side. "Am I not allowed to attend festivals because you happen to be around as well? That's rather arrogant of you."

"Your people said you'd left."

"Clearly I didn't." The grin widened. "They see me rarely enough. I thought I might as well hang around, for all it matters."

"Why are you still here?" Shin repeated, his voice hardened to brittle ice.

"Like I said," the smirk turned condescending. "I'm enjoying the festival."

Shin's only response was to curl his lip as he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You lied to your own people about when you're leaving."

'Your own people'? she thought to herself. What does he mean...?

Her mind was thrown into disarray as she struggled to comprehend Shin's hostility to this complete stranger. He was always quiet, preferring to stay in the shadows and leave the limelight to everyone else but him. She had never seen him like this, so angry.

She knew that the Kitsune's attack nine years ago resulted in Shin and Ryosuke losing both their parents, but Shin didn't indiscriminately hate people. It was something that had surprised her, that he didn't hate all Kitsune for what happened, but at the same time she thought it was just how it was. But this – this was different. It couldn't be that he was acting like this simply because the man was Kitsune.

Said Kitsune raised a brow. "Who said I lied?" then he threw his head back and let out a sharp, barking laugh that had her jumping in surprise. A few people walking around glanced their way in curiosity, but none lingered. "Calm down, Shin. It's not like I'm going to eat her."

"I wouldn't put even that past you, Kagetora." Shin shot back acidly.

Ho-ly fuck.

Her head jerked up to stare at Shin, who kept his eyes on the man before him as if he didn't trust him enough to look away for even one second. She looked back at the man, her mouth opening and closing in stunned silence.

This was the man who Yamajijii mistakenly thought her to be the mistress of. This was the man who owned the shipping company where the Onihitokuchi had kidnapped and taken her to with all the intention of devouring her. This was the man who killed the Ueno's, mad Kings of the Kitsune, when they attacked the Tengu nine years ago.

He, he was the man Kuniumi spoke so sadly about, as if she had done something wrong to him and had no idea how she could ever be forgiven for it.

This isn't happening. This is not actually happening. I'm delusional. You're making me see things again, aren't you, Kuniumi?

But Kuniumi wasn't there. How could she make her see things if she wasn't there to do it?

"Now why would I ever do such an abhorrent thing to so lovely a young lady," Kagetora's red eyes flicked down to her, where she safely decided to remain standing behind Shin as she stared, agape, at the King of the Kitsune. She lifted her free hand and curled her fingers around the back of Shin's t-shirt, trying to centre herself in his sure presence as the wave of shock tugged and pulled at her, threatening to overwhelm. Shin's hand tightened around her wrist, almost as if he was silently reassuring her. Kagetora grinned wickedly at her. "With such interesting views on life, hmm?"

"Who knows what goes on in your head." Shin retorted bluntly.

Kagetora shook his head with a low chuckle to himself. He tucked his hand in the loose front of his kimono and stepped forward, leaning in close. Shin responded by moving completely in front of Pai, blocking Kagetora's way and view to her. She heard the rolling laugh breeze past Kagetora's smiling lips. She couldn't see him any longer as she shuffled an inch closer to Shin's side, but she heard every word.

"I can sense it, Shin." Kagetora whispered, his voice low and dark. It sent a shiver of unease traipsing down her spine like electricity crackling in water. "Your crumbling control."

Shin stiffened, his hand tightening around her wrist. It was painful, but she made no move to stop him. Her own grasp on his shirt tightened, then she splayed her fingers, palm pressed flat to his back to offer what solace she could. The tension radiating off him was hard enough to cut through diamond.

She could hear the wicked grin in Kagetora's voice, as easily as if she was looking right at him. She kept her gaze fixed on her hand spread on Shin's back as Kagetora continued, "Help is what you need, but you're too stubborn to seek it. Aren't you? Can you still protect her like the dark knight you are when your demons want her dead at their feet?"

Her hand twitched, fisting again, tighter around the back of Shin's t-shirt, eyes widening at Kagetora's words.

Pictures whizzed past her eyes; Shinigami, eyes a fiery crimson as he lifted her up against the Torimaku wall, strangling her. Shinigami, kneeling on his haunches in front of her as he traced a path of fire from her neck, down her shoulder, her leg, taunting her with how pathetically weak she was. Shinigami, fighting through Shin, one eye a deep ocean's blue and the other a blood-stained red.

Shinigami, wanting her dead for putting him back in the cage he was condemned to live in for the nature of what he was born as.

Kagetora stepped back, brushing past Shin as he started to walk away. She was frozen where she stood, her neck creaking as she looked up at Kagetora when he passed by.

Time seemed to slow, in a moment oddly reminiscent of Konohana freezing the flow of time. Their eyes met for a split second. She caught his knowing smirk before Kagetora's gaze moved away. She was left to stare woodenly at a group of children at the stall on the other side of the street, watching them but not really seeing them.

Pai and Shin remained like that when the volcanic heat that she now associated with the Kitsune King coiled, then suddenly vanished. One moment it was there, the next it was replaced with a different heat that was almost lukewarm in comparison.

She startled, realizing that this heat was Shin's. Her sluggish brain wondered if the heat was how she felt Hengen power. If that was the case, she couldn't begin to wrap her head around just how powerful Kagetora was – especially if he was King, especially if he was the strongest Kitsune around.

She looked behind her, but the tasteful red kimono was gone. Kagetora was gone.

Shin turned to face her then, letting go of her wrist. Her movements were slow and jittery as she brought her wrist up to cradle it by her chest, staring down at the ground with huge eyes. Her mind was a thousand miles away as she tried to process what just happened, who she just met, what he had said, but nothing was sinking in. It was like her brain had stopped working. Nothing of what was going on around her was clicking.

"What did he do to you?"

She blinked. She looked up at Shin. He was wearing jeans and the black V-neck sweater she'd seen him in before, on the roof at school. He stood out in the crowd, because of his striking looks as well as the odd clothing compared to everyone around them wearing kimonos and yukatas for the festival.

"Pai," he reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand. His palm was warm, rough, gentle. Her eyes drifted away from staring aimlessly at his clothes to his eyes. They weren't red anymore. They had gone back to the natural, deep blue that she was so used to. "What did he do to you?"

There was something off in his voice. It was almost like a very light, almost inaudible tremor had taken root. But that wasn't right – Shin wasn't scared of anything. She shook her head, wondering if the tremor wasn't because he'd been scared of something, but rather scared for something.

For someone.

Her?

"He was just – he just...we just talked, and I – I didn't know that that was – that was – "

His other hand came up, and he was cradling her face in his hands. They were big, and so strong. She wished she could be like that. Big and strong, and not so easy a target, not so easily startled like she was now.

"Hey, it's okay," he said, more at ease now that she'd spoken. "Calm down."

"That was Kagetora. That was the King of the Kitsune." Shaking her head, she laughed incredulously as she brought a hand up to press on her heated forehead. "He was just talking to me like a normal person."

She dropped her eyes from his to look around and realized that they were attracting far more attention than when Kagetora was with them. Why? How come no one acted any differently when they saw him? Was it that they didn't know who he was? Was it that he didn't parade himself around as a King?

Hastily, she stepped back from him. Shin dropped his hands at her move, a wall falling before his eyes. When she saw that look she started to say that she wasn't moving away from him because she was scared of him, of how easy it was for him to let himself get so close to Shinigami in an instant.

There were just too many people, too many eyes, too much staring.

But she shut her mouth when she remembered how she'd flinched from him last night, after he'd wrestled back control from Shinigami. Did she have any right to say that after the way she'd behaved?

"That's it?" he asked, watching her with a dark intensity that had her stomach twisting to knots. "He talked? He didn't try to do anything to you?"

"No," she replied, gulping nervously as she smoothed her hands down the front of her yukata. She lifted her head and turned to the right. The fight between Arakida and Takashi had ended. Takashi was battling a new opponent, another woman, taller than her. Takashi was winning, again, but barely. "I was going back to the Palace but I got lost. I was watching that and then I bumped into him when I was going to leave."

Shin's lips pressed into a tight line as his gaze shifted away from her. He looked back at the fight, eyes flickering on Takashi's lightning fast movement for only a brief second before he looked away to something behind Pai. When he looked back to her, his gaze was blue diamonds forged from white-hot fire. She was locked in place, unable to move as she stared up at him.

"Promise me," he said, words wrought in iron. "Promise me that you won't go near him."

"Shin-san? What – "

"That man is beyond dangerous." He said, hard and unflinching. "He killed his own Kings without a thought. You do not want to be anywhere near him."

"But wasn't that to save the Tengu?"

"And look where he is now." Shin laughed harshly, bouncing on the balls of his feet impatiently. She started at the sound. It wasn't like him. It sounded more like Shinigami. "He's a King, with the undying loyalty of every Kitsune in the world. He killed the Ueno's as easily as if they were random strangers, and they were Kings. He has no loyalty to anyone but himself. If he could do that to his Kings, there's no reason he wouldn't do it to you. Promise me that you'll stay as far away from him as you can."

He was right.

Not only that, but it wasn't completely impossible that everything that happened with the Onihitokuchi couldn't be traced back to Kagetora. There were too many coincidences and question marks around the Kitsune King to simply dismiss him.

But then, why did she feel like he wouldn't hurt her? Why did she have such a strange mix of sorrow and longing when she spoke to him, when he'd looked at her with inhuman eyes that held no traces of ill will to her?

Why did she feel as safe with him as she did with Shin?

Why did Kuniumi know him in a way that made her ache with grief?

She dropped her eyes to her feet and clasped her hands behind her back, heart clenching tight with guilt. She couldn't very well say that to Shin. Kagetora's words about Shin's control slipping away twirled around in a mad dance in her mind.

She nodded. "I promise."

Kuniumi's laugh echoed out hollowly, and she was so startled by the unexpected return that she jumped in surprise. She saw Shin asking her something, but she was no longer listening to him anymore. Her attention was turned inwards to the voice of the woman who haunted her thoughts endlessly.

Do you? Would you really make a promise such as that when all the answers to your questions are at the tip of your fingers, pointing at Kagetora? She questioned snidely. So close, yet so far. What to do, Bibari? What are you going to do?