Chapter 8

He felt weird being in her house. Although she'd often been in the Ikaruga household and he'd often accompanied her to her mansion, he'd never been inside with her. In comparison to the Ikaruga main house this house seemed to be nearly deserted. Every family on the island had their tragedies. While the Ikaruga lineage was linked to the Guardian of Kuzunoha (1) with the ability to see through the essence of enchanted powers, burdening one of their members with a short lifespan, the Amawaka clan had their very own dark history. A past that lingered in the walls, was buried in the ground and sounded from the bells. Shimon had a hard time, placing Mayura in the picture. Her being a part of a clan that was notorious as murderers of their own was a paradox. Even years after the problem with the Jugon Monoimi (2) was solved due to the medical treatments after exorcisms, exorcists of the island would frown upon the Amawaka members. Mayura was like a colorful piece of a puzzle, too colorful to match any of the gray edges surrounding it.

While he wondered how much she knew about Ritsu and the Amawaka clan's past, she led him through the corridors of her main house, each step making the wooden floor screech. On their way she collected two large candles, taking them out of a cupboard in the main hall. Passing renovated rooms with electrical light, they soon came to a part of the house that looked as if it was hundreds of years old. The warm light of the candles let the floor before them glow in a soft orange and left corners in the dark where he could only assume to be furniture. Shimon shortly wondered about this transition between old and new when she opened a creaking door.

They came into a reading room filled with shelves full of scrolls and books. She gestured him to sit down in front of a table as she lit more candles in the room and asked him if she could bring him something to drink. After he declined she walked to a shelf and very carefully took two scrolls that had yellowed and thinned through time.

Together they worked on the scrolls and ate the candies Shimon had bought earlier. Despite of the sweet distraction they made fast progress. Mayura read the history of the past, a past that lay eight hundred years before their time, two hundred years after Abe no Seimei while Shimon answered her questions, linking the past events of one house on Tsuchikado to another. She made notes for herself and he watched the tender stroke of her pen as she wrote in her perfect and clean handwriting. As he watched he thought, 'This isn't so bad after all.' They continued to work like this for an hour. Until the ringing of her phone interrupted their learning session. The biting light of its display hurt his eyes.

Picking it up, a full blown smile arose on Mayura's face. Shimon's stomach clenched at the sight of her smile. He suppressed the joy he felt leaving him alone with the nagging thoughts in his head. He was jealous of the person on the receiving end of this smile until she said, "It's Okasan."

She accepted the call and talked to her mother with the smile never leaving her face. For a moment Shimon wondered, if she regretted her decision to leave her mother and her returned father to live on the island. While all he knew and loved was here on the island, Mayura had nobody she loved in her reach, nobody she could turn to after a hard mission or an exhausting day – well, except Rokuro.

"How is Otosan?" Her voice interrupted his musings as he watched her giggle into the phone.

"I can imagine. He's probably like," she straightened up, lifted her head and leaned a hand on her hip while making a mockingly angered face and continued "it was her decision. Don't be so annoying."

With her voice imitating that of Seigen-san she made a very precise performance eliciting a chuckle out of Shimon that he couldn't hold back.

She turned to him with an amused smile before she turned her face away. "That's Shimon. You know, the one I told you about. He's helping me learn."

She told her mother about him? He would love to know what she'd said about him. Images of her saying, he was torturing her with his strict training, that he was boring in private and him being just a colleague rose in his head. 'Yeah,' Shimon thought dryly, 'it probably had been something like that.'

"Okasan!" She lifted her head in surprise. Her face turned a full blown red that was visible even in the light of the candles, making Shimon wonder what her mother said. He imagined her to be a woman with a happy smile and a pure heart. After all Mayura seemed to have inherited most of her nature from her mother. "I-It's not like that."

More than curious, Shimon sharpened his ears so that he might hear the voice on the other end of Mayura's call. But he couldn't hear a thing.

"I have to go. Shimon's waiting." The blush on her face weakened and she smiled again her happy smile. "Bye."

Uncomfortable silence filled the room, after she put her phone down and crossed her fingers with her hands on her lap. Why? Why was it sometimes like that between them? He'd watched her with Rokuro and their relationship had this easy-going vibe. Whatever, he shouldn't sulk over this fact but do something about the mood.

Clearing his throat, he thought about a good opening. "You-", he looked at her with a crooked smile. "The imitation you did of Seigen-san was quite impressive."

An awkward chuckle left her. "He wouldn't think so."

Shimon laughed. He couldn't help himself but he liked this side of her. When she wasn't all timid and shy but showed humor. It was a rare sight of her that he loved to hold onto.

"But to be honest," Mayura looked at him from under her eyelashes. "I wouldn't have thought you would like it either."

"Hn?" Shimon leaned his head to the side and watched her closely.

"You always speak so highly of Otosan. You said it yourself. He is your idol, isn't he?"

"He is – but to be honest, he wasn't what you would call a gentle teacher." He remembered all the times he'd come home with bruises. Once he'd even finished training with a mayor concussion. "I wouldn't dare to try copying him but I think it's funny someone would, especially if that someone cares a lot about him and harbors no dark feelings towards him."

"I'm glad." She smiled and shifted a little turning her body more into his direction. "Shimon, earlier you said, you aren't protective about me because of Otosan, what did you mean?"

His heart sunk to his feet. It had been an immediate reaction to her when she'd looked sad thinking he would only care about her well-being because of Seigen-san. Afterwards he'd been glad the wind had disrupted their talk. Now he didn't know what to say and how to say it without revealing his feelings. "It's because you're – you're important."

"Not only to Rokuro," she slowly said, almost quietly as in a whisper.

A small bubble of jealousy formed in his chest. It burst as quick as it came when he understood what she said. Not only to Rokuro. That's what he'd said in her hospital room after he'd saved her all those weeks ago.

They looked at each other.

"Shimon, you-"

Out of nowhere a candle stick fell over. Wax spluttered onto the table and scrolls between them.

Mayura quickly reached to clear up the mess but Shimon stopped her by grabbing her arm. He immediately recognized the sign. Carefully he picked up the fallen candle without moving anything else on the table. On one of the scrolls the characters 鳳 and 凰 were sprinkled with wax. The rest of it miraculously landed on the table in a fleeing form. But this wasn't a miracle.

Next to him Mayura gasped as she seemed to have caught on what lay before them. This hadn't been caused by physic. It was a message.

He knew those characters, he just couldn't recall where he'd seen them. "Did something like this ever happen before?"

"No. Nothing like that..." She seemed to ponder on something.

"But-?"

"I had this strange dream a few nights ago." Her gaze met his again, fear crossed her eyes.

Dreams were a big deal in the world of exorcism. Sometimes they were prophecies, sometimes the message of a Guardian, sometimes they were haunted by spirits, sometimes they were just dreams. Shimon couldn't be sure until she told him what had happened her dream. "What was it about?"

Mayura folded her hands in her lap. She probably needed a moment to evoke the pictures of her dream. "I- I was at this cold, dark place. Corpses and body parts surrounded me."

Shimon knew these kind of dreams. He had them for so long. Every now and then he would still wake up with the smell of death in his nose or the picture of him holding the ripped off arms of his father and brother. No matter how strong your mind, there were things you couldn't cut off that easily. To call those dreams normal felt too surreal but it was something bound to the job description of an exorcist. Surviving also meant enduring.

"And then-" Mayura stopped. Tears appeared in the corner of her eyes. "Then a face emerged out of the pile of corpses. It was my face but I looked as if-" She paused rubbing her tears away. "As if I was dead. And then I heard myself laugh but it didn't sound like my laugh or even human."

If he would regard the rest of her dream rationally, he wouldn't say it was much more creepier than the beginning or highly uncommon for a dream haunting an exorcist. But knowing about the fact that she'd been a Kegari ochi once and that Arima-sama brought for some reason a lot of attention to that fact, made his ears ring. This would be too much for a coincidence.

Mayura having calmed down, was bowing her head a little bit. "What does this all mean, Shimon?"

"I don't know. But this," he nodded his head to the scrolls, "is some kind of sign. Do you have a copy of the Senji Ryakketsu here?" (3)

"Abe no Seimei's book?"

He nodded.

"It must be around here somewhere." She rose and with the light of a candle she searched the spines of the books at one of the shelves. After a while she pulled one out of the shelf and handed it to Shimon.

"Thank you." He quickly flicked through the pages to get to the part where he remembered having seen the characters before. Finally he found them. Of course, now he knew, together they meant the Chinese phoenix.

Skipping through the passage he understood another thing. The characters, they weren't in Kanji like he first believed. They were traditional Chinese characters. One meaning Feng and the other Huang. Together they formed the Fenghuang (4) which was known as Chinese phoenix in Japan.

"What does it say?"

"They are Chinese characters. Feng," he pointed a finger to the 鳳, "symbolizes the male phoenix which stands for yang. The other," he shifted his finger slightly to point to the 凰, "means Huang and symbolizes the female phoenix which stands for yin."

"Isn't it just the Kanji for the Chinese phoenix?"

"I had the same notion but listen: If the divination of Feng and Huang comes to thee it calls out for discord or harmony. Whether they collide as mortal foes in an ancient war or as blissful lovers sets the fate of us all. But behold! Solely their wedlock will cast light on a new era. The other one will bring fall."

When he lifted his head he met the sight of Mayura's strained, thoughtful face. "So, it's not about the Fenghuang but about the meeting of Feng and Huang? These sentences – if Feng and Huang merge as lovers they somehow mark the beginning of a peaceful era, is what they mean?"

"Makes sense since Feng stands for Yang and Huang for Yin. Therefore Fenghuang means the absolute balance of Yin and Yang, the ultimate peace. I just don't know what this refers to. Is it pointing to the conflict between exorcists and impurities? And if so does it mean all exorcists and Kegare or only-" Pictures of Rokuro's and Benio's guardians appeared before his inner eye.

"Rokuro... and Adashino-san?" Mayura shook her head. "But what's the meaning of those characters on the scrolls? Will there be conflict or peace?"

Shimon scanned the text about the meeting of Feng and Huang anew. Nothing hinted on how to interpret the signs. "It does not say." He would have to talk to Arima-san about this. The Tsuchimikado clan was after all specialized in reading prophecies, especially those that would concern all exorcists and this might as well be one of those. Taking out his phone, Shimon began to take pictures of the scroll in front of them.

"Everything is so confusing." Mayura held a hand to her head. "Does this have something to do with my dream?"

"I don't know. Maybe this isn't connected to your dream." There was no visible connection between her dream and this prophecy at all. But this couldn't be just a coincidence.

Not knowing what was going on was frustrating. And it bothered him that Mayura seemed to be a shogi piece in Arima's grand scheme. That man obviously knew something but as always his motifs were hidden in the dark. The question was, was she a simple pawn, a necessary sacrifice, in Arima's game?

He looked at Mayura. She seemed to be tired and sad. The questions in her head must weigh so much more than his. He felt the need to ease her mind. "You know, sometimes dreams are simply that, dreams."

"But what about the Head Exorcist Tsuchimikado-san? He must have seen something to cast a prohibition on me. He hasn't allowed me on a real mission for weeks."

Shimon desperately wanted to know what was going on, too "I will speak to him. Maybe he will agree if I accompany you to a real mission. I need to consult him about this prophecy anyway." As he helped her clean up, Shimon hoped he would get some answers to those many questions.

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After Shimon had left Mayura felt restless. Walking up and down in her room thoughts were running through her head. There was so much going on around her that she did not understand. Was that dream really just a dream? It hadn't felt like it. When she'd told Shimon she became aware of how real the dream had felt. And the face he had made afterwards had signaled her that she shouldn't take this matter lightly. Out of kindness he told her something else but she had known he was worried about this.

As if her current situation wasn't complicated enough a new riddle appeared out of nowhere today. She had been glad that Shimon had been there when the prophecy occurred, he had made more sense of it and knew what to do and where to look. She wouldn't even have noticed the drops of wax as a prophecy in the first place.

Now she wondered why it had appeared in her new house with Shimon at her side. Was it connected to her? Or was it a message for them as Heavenly Commanders who were fated to protect the Twin Star Exorcists. But then what could the prophecy actually mean? Were Rokuro and Adashino-san fated to meet as enemies or lovers? The idea scared her but thinking about the guardians of Rokuro and Adashino-san the figures of Feng and Huang fitted. Although it made her sad to think about Rokuro and Adashino-san as a couple she had them both rather alive than having to fight each other in a lethal battle.

With a sigh she let herself drop down onto her bed. She sometimes wished she could turn back time. A time when Rokuro wasn't acting as exorcist anymore. A time when they had a normal life, had visited the middle school and graduated. They would go to school like normal pupils and learn about algebra instead of how to fight impurities most effectively.

Then again, she always had been connected to exorcism and the island, hadn't she? It only had been the protection of her father who did not want her to face the same fate, who wanted for her to have a normal childhood. Now it was about time her destiny caught up with her life.

'Otosan, what would you do?' She thought as she stared at the ceiling of her dark room. The sun had disappeared behind the horizon while she contemplated about today's events. Her father would know what was going on and what the prophecy could mean. Maybe she should talk to him. But she had yet to ask him about Ritsu and that was a conversation she feared more than the possibility of becoming impure. Yuzuru-san once told her that the things he was forced to do made him meet her mother, implying it was connected to her family's history. And Mayura feared to face the truth that was locked away with this secret.

Taking in a deep breath Mayura sat up. She had faced so many fears when she had started training as an exorcist, when she had been to Megano for the first time, when she came to the island and when she had joined her father's house. She would be able to talk to Otosan. And she would do it now.

Ignoring the lump of fear in her throat she dialed the telephone number of her home on the mainland.

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(1) Kuzunoha – The mother of Abe no Seimei and the current guardian of Ikagura Sayo.

(2) Jugon Monoimi – The name of the curse that infected some exorcists on the island who had to be eliminated by a special unit called Ritsu which was an unit that belonged to the house Amawaka.

(3) Senji Ryakketsu - The Summary to Judgements of Divinations - A book actually written by Abe no Seimei. It contains six thousand forecast and thirty-six fortune-telling techniques based on divination through use of shikigami.

(4) Fenghuang – The Fenghuang is the chinese phoenix which is closest to the European equivalent, symbolizing death and new life. It's totally different to the myth of Suzaku who stands for the Vermilion phoenix.

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A/N: That stupid candle fell over in a wrong moment... Anyway, I hope, you liked it. Did the Fenghuang scene make sense to you or was it too - I don't know - spiritual?

Like always: Don't forget to vote. Thank you!^^