After Sesshomaru's retreating figure vanished at the end of the ridge, the sky had brightened completely.
Morning light spread across the slope outside Kaede Village, rousing the insects and birds that the previous night's yokai aura had pressed into silence for hours on end.
Faint chittering and calls drifted in from every direction.
Kobe Hikaru stood on the slope, the oni mask gone from his face, yet still holding that black pearl. He turned it against the light, clicking his tongue in wonder.
The surface of the pearl refracted a deep, dark sheen, as if a small, concentrated patch of night sky were hidden within it.
Behind him, inside the barrier of Kaede Village, footsteps sounded at once.
Kikyo came walking out from the direction of the torii.
White robe, red hakama, longbow slung across her back, her jet-black hair gathered behind her head and bound with a white ribbon, a few loose strands falling by her ears.
Her steps were a little quicker than usual—the great yokai's aura had lain over everything for several hours. Though there had been no hostility in it, that pressure had kept her on the highest alert the whole time.
Only now, with that presence at last gone entirely, could she breathe easier.
She took the longbow down from her shoulder, and even her grip on it eased.
She walked over to Kobe Hikaru, her gaze sweeping across the empty slope.
The dog-yokai brothers were both gone.
"Left?"
"Left."
"That great yokai…"
"Sesshomaru, Toga's eldest son. He didn't come to fight—he needed my help with something, and once it was done, he left."
Kikyo glanced at him, no needless questions in her jet-black eyes.
She trusted him.
But her gaze soon settled on the pitch-black pearl in his hand.
"What is that?"
"A good thing."
Kobe Hikaru rolled the black pearl once between his fingers, and across that pale face rose an expression Kikyo had already seen many times.
The delight of getting something new.
It was always like this.
Whether it was the Nekomata's Claw, Sakasagami no Yura, Dokuko's reverse scale, or the Muramasa—every time some new implement came into his hands, he wore this look, like a child who had just been handed a sweet.
Watching him this way, the corner of Kikyo's mouth twitched faintly.
She wanted to smile.
Yet she held it back.
Just seeing Kobe Hikaru happy, Kikyo still found happiness rising in her all the same.
"Another one that can 'talk' to you?"
"Mm."
"You keep collecting more and more of them."
She had said this before.
More than once.
Her tone was still that habitual cool flatness, betraying nothing.
But Kobe Hikaru was by now well acquainted with what lay hidden beneath that coolness—something like exasperation, amusement, and a certain awkwardness he couldn't quite name.
A whole spread of feelings, as it were.
He offered no long explanation, only closing the black pearl in his palm and shutting his eyes.
Feeling for it.
Inside this pearl, power still lingered.
Though Sesshomaru had used it to open, once, a rift leading to the border-crevice of the underworld, that single use had not exhausted the power within it entirely—it had only closed.
Like a door that had been locked.
The key turned once, the door opened and shut again, but the lock's core remained.
So long as there was a way to turn that key once more—the door could still open.
Sesshomaru could not do it.
Because this black pearl had been made by Hosenki, and reactivating it required the maker's power, or else something of equal value—something able to resonate with the power still lingering within the pearl.
The former went without saying; if he could truly find Hosenki, it would be more direct to have him simply make another on the spot.
The latter was hard as well.
To Sesshomaru, this thing was junk.
Or rather, to any being without the ability to commune with non-living things, this was junk.
But Kobe Hikaru was not any other person.
He had a cheat, a system, a favourability strategy.
[Black Pearl]
[Quality: yokai weapon]
[Description: A treasure jewel in which the great yokai Hosenki of the Western Provinces, by special means, sealed the coordinates of the border-crevice of the underworld within the pearl's body. The holder may activate its power to open a passage into the realm-crevice between life and death—at the far end of that passage lies the grave of the great yokai Toga.]
[But having now been used once, the power within lies dormant. Ordinary means cannot activate it again.]
[Current favourability: 0 (Indifferent)]
[Note: It does not know you. It knows only the one who made it. But if you can make it know you, accept you—its power can be roused again, and can aid or even grant you the realm-power to open the passage to the underworld.]
Zero.
The same starting point as every implement.
The Muramasa had started from 0, and in the end reached 100.
The Nekomata's Claw had started from 0, and in the end fused into his body.
Sakasagami no Yura, the reverse scale, the prayer beads—all had started from 0, some even from negative numbers.
This black pearl was no exception.
Kobe Hikaru closed it in his palm and began pouring in yokai power.
The master's own yokai power—pure yokai power carrying the attribute of thunder, refined through the Qualitative Transformation and the Nine Mutations.
The pearl gave no response.
Not a ripple across its cold surface.
As expected.
At 0 favourability, an implement was utterly indifferent to its holder, like a stone by the roadside—you could speak to it, and it would not answer.
But so what?
From 0 to 1, from nothing to something—this was a road he had walked far too many times.
Months ago, he could sit day after day beneath an ash-gray waning moon, pouring yokai power into a single Hiraikotsu.
On those silent nights, he could speak to a withered, dead Nekomata's Claw, speaking until one day at last that claw gave him a response.
Patience was the one thing he had in abundance.
The yokai power kept pouring in.
One breath, two breaths, three breaths.
Ten breaths.
Thirty breaths.
A hundred breaths.
Still the pearl gave no response.
But Kobe Hikaru knew—it was listening.
Implements were unlike living beings—they had no subjective awareness, no joys or sorrows, but they had a 'spirit.'
All things possessed spirit, and an implement's spirit determined how it received outside power.
The Muramasa's nature was greedy, needing constant feeding to raise the bond.
The Nekomata's Claw's nature was cold, needing steady companionship to thaw.
Sakasagami no Yura's nature was restless, needing attention and stimulation to be won over.
So what was the black pearl's nature?
It had been made by Hosenki—a piece of craftsmanship, a tool designed to carry out a specific function.
The nature of such an implement was usually this: stable.
Stable, reliable, not easily accepting the intrusion of outside power.
To make it accept, one could not rush, could not force—one had to seep in, bit by bit, like water wearing through stone.
Kobe Hikaru had quite the knack for this.
He was a veteran player, after all.
[Black Pearl: favourability +1]
[Current favourability: 1 (Aware)]
And so, just like that.
Quickly.
The panel flickered.
Only a single point.
A negligible little point.
But that one point meant—through the crack in the door, a thread of light had leaked out.
It had noticed him.
Kobe Hikaru held the black pearl, the corner of his mouth curving up.
Kikyo stood beside him, watching him wear such an expression over a pitch-black pearl.
"…Very happy?"
"Mm."
"It's just a pearl."
"It is a pearl."
Kobe Hikaru tucked the black pearl against his chest and patted the spot. "But it's also you and me. It's our future."
Kikyo's brows shifted faintly.
Kobe Hikaru, for his part, made no great effort to hide it; after a simple explanation, he added, "But there's no hurry."
He looked toward the eastern sky, brightening bit by bit.
"Let's settle the matter of the Muramasa first."
Whatever else, his most pressing task, his first goal for now, was still perfectly clear.
The Muramasa needed Recasting—he had to find Totosai.
The Sun Blade needed to be touched, which likewise meant following the trail to Totosai.
Tessaiga needed to be obtained, relying on the black pearl to reopen the passage.
Three threads, two directions.
All of it only needed to be taken one step at a time.
Kikyo watched him.
Morning light fell across her face, tracing the delicate line of her jaw and the straight bridge of her nose.
Her jet-black hair hung behind her shoulders under the binding of the white ribbon, set against the collar of her white shrine maiden robes, making her neck look all the paler.
"Then let's go back," she said.
"Kaede hasn't had breakfast yet."
"Mm."
Side by side, the two of them walked back down the slope toward Kaede Village.
Morning light spilled over the torii, gilding that old wooden frame with a layer of warm gold.
The barrier's spiritual glow grew gentler in the sunlight.
As Kobe Hikaru passed beneath the torii, he touched the black pearl against his chest without thinking.
Its temperature was cold as ever.
But in his perception, deep within that pearl—the underworld lying in the crevice between life and death, that place of profound and immeasurable distance—something seemed to slumber.
The day it woke.
The door to the underworld would open once more.
And this, truly, was a future that belonged to them.
Step by step, growing stronger—only then could he better guard the village before him, guard their home, and live the life he wanted.
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