"An abnormal yokai aura reading."
Imagawa Yoshimoto repeated those words once. Her voice was not loud, yet in the great hall it came through as clearly as if it had been carved into the air.
Then, just as easily, she asked, as though it were nothing at all:
"Which part of the Kanto are you talking about?"
Tsuchimikado Miyu's fingers tightened around the bamboo scroll on her lap, her wide amber eyes fixed on the tatami in front of her.
"The whole of Suruga Province… and parts of the neighboring provinces of Musashi and Sagami. A month ago the Onmyoryo's star-watching platform detected an abnormal rise in the concentration of yokai aura in the direction of the Kanto. There are signs of yokai gathering and settling in many places, and what's more—"
She hesitated.
"And what's more, I saw them. There are shrines."
"Shrines built specifically to make offerings to yokai."
Her voice grew smaller and smaller as she spoke, but her meaning was perfectly clear.
The Onmyoryo knew.
It knew that yokai shrines were being raised on a massive scale within Suruga and Sagami. It knew someone was using official power to push humans into worshipping yokai. It knew that dread was being harvested, systematically.
Imagawa Yoshimoto's expression did not change.
The folding fan opened again, hiding everything below her nose, leaving only those delicate, lively eyes exposed.
"Miyu — may I call you that?"
"Y-yes. You may."
"Miyu, how long did the journey from Kyoto to Suruga take you?"
"Twelve days."
"Hard traveling, I imagine?"
"It — it wasn't so bad…"
"And food, lodging? How were the Imagawa clan's post stations?"
"Very good… there were rice balls and grilled fish at every meal, and on the third day they even gave me a hot spring—"
Halfway through, Tsuchimikado Miyu realized something was wrong and shut her mouth.
She had been led off course.
Yoshimoto's manner did not shift in the slightest. "Twelve days. From Kyoto to Suruga, twelve days. In those twelve days, how many provinces did you pass through?"
"…Five provinces."
"And of those five, how many had yokai causing trouble?"
"All of them."
"Yes. All of them."
Yoshimoto's voice was neither hurried nor slow.
"In Totomi there were mountain spiders occupying a village; I sent troops and wiped them out. In Mikawa kappa were plaguing the waterways; the local lord drove them off. Owari — Owari isn't mine to govern, it belongs to the Oda clan, but by all accounts it isn't peaceful there either."
"Yokai are everywhere, and nowhere more than the Kanto. When the Uesugi clan came south under the banner of exterminating yokai, where was the Onmyoryo?"
Tsuchimikado Miyu's lips parted, then closed again.
"The area around Kyoto isn't exactly peaceful either, is it?"
Yoshimoto went on, and behind the fan her gaze softened — the kind of softness that is far harder to withstand than any genuinely sharp look.
"Your esteemed bureau can't even keep up with what's happening on its own doorstep, and yet it wants to come manage Suruga's affairs?"
"That's not how it is—"
"Then how is it?"
"Lord Onmyo no Kami's intention is…"
"Your father's intention."
Yoshimoto corrected her. "There's no need for official phrasing. Your father sent you here — what for, exactly?"
The question stopped Tsuchimikado Miyu cold.
She kept her head down, lamplight reflected in her amber eyes.
A moment of silence.
At last, with difficulty, she spoke.
"…The Shikon Jewel."
She had said it.
Her voice was very light, as if she feared being overheard.
"My father says the presence of the Shikon Jewel has surfaced in the Kanto. The Onmyoryo needs to confirm its location and its condition."
"And if at all possible—"
"It needs to be taken into the Onmyoryo's keeping."
The hall went quiet.
Imagawa Yoshimoto's fan folded shut, slowly.
The delicate fan came to rest on her knee, revealing her whole face — the face of a girl of sixteen or seventeen, fine as porcelain, a smile at the corner of her mouth.
"Miyu, do you know where the Shikon Jewel is?"
"…Not for certain. That's why I came to investigate."
"Then let me tell you."
Yoshimoto's voice turned suddenly, utterly frank.
"The Shikon Jewel is indeed in the Kanto. In Kaede Village, in Musashi Province, guarded by a shrine maiden. And that shrine maiden's spiritual power — I say this without exaggeration — is the greatest in the world today."
This came from her own investigations.
Tsuchimikado Miyu's eyes went wide.
"She guards the Shikon Jewel very well. There won't be the slightest problem with it for ten years, or even a hundred."
"The Onmyoryo wants to take it over?"
Yoshimoto tilted her head, a thread of genuine curiosity in her tone.
"Do you have the strength to hold it?"
Silence.
Yoshimoto's voice was neither loud nor heavy, and yet every word landed like a stone:
"In Kaede Village the Jewel has a shrine maiden watching over it and a Demon God protecting it. Put it in Kyoto — how many days do you think it would last?"
Tsuchimikado Miyu said nothing at all.
Imagawa Yoshimoto rose to her feet.
The hem of her junihitoe dragged across the tatami, the layered fabrics rustling faintly with each movement.
She walked over to Tsuchimikado Miyu and bent down.
Close in, almost against the young onmyoji's ear, she said in a low voice—
"Go back and tell your father: Suruga's affairs, I will handle. And the matter of the Shikon Jewel does not require the Onmyoryo's concern."
"If the Onmyoryo truly wants to help — then put that imperial decree on autonomous exorcism into effect. That's all. Suruga needs the authority it confers."
"As for investigations…"
Yoshimoto straightened, stepped back, and settled again in the seat of honor.
The fan opened, hiding half her face.
"There are indeed yokai aura readings within Suruga. But those yokai are guardian spirits who receive official offerings, not evil things sowing chaos. Take a turn through my domain and you'll see for yourself — the common people live and work in peace, merchants and travelers pass freely. Where is the yokai calamity in that?"
"And if the Onmyoryo insists on treating enshrined guardian spirits as evil things to be purged…"
Yoshimoto's voice remained gentle.
"…then it will have to ask the several hundred thousand subjects of Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa whether they agree."
That last line was not merely a threat. It was pressure — the weight of authority itself.
Command over hundreds of thousands of people; the "momentum" formed by hundreds of thousands of human qi gathered into one — a force capable of suppressing even yokai aura. Let alone one mere apprentice onmyoji.
When Tsuchimikado Miyu stood, her legs were unsteady.
She held out the bamboo scroll mechanically — the original of the imperial decree — and Yoshimoto reached out and took it, the motion elegant.
"My thanks to you, Miyu, for coming such a long way."
Yoshimoto's tone shifted back to breezy and easygoing. "Stay in the castle tonight. I'll have hot water and a change of clothes prepared for you. Tomorrow is soon enough to leave."
"N-no, there's no need! I'll go tonight—"
"No need to rush."
Yoshimoto smiled.
It was a real smile, and it seemed to be a contagious one.
The kind particular to a girl of sixteen or seventeen — carrying no threat at all, and for that very reason nearly impossible to refuse.
"The roads aren't safe. Traveling at night is dangerous. Stay one night, leave in the morning."
That smile left Tsuchimikado Miyu momentarily dazed.
By the time she came back to herself, a lady-in-waiting had already led her out of the hall, and she was clutching the change of clothes and the sweets the Imagawa clan had prepared for her.
She felt muddled.
It seemed nothing had been settled — and yet somehow something had.
The imperial decree had been delivered. The investigation had been rejected. The matter of the Shikon Jewel had been turned aside.
She had been fed, given lodging, and — gently, courteously, without a single gap to slip through — sent packing.
What Tsuchimikado Miyu failed to notice was that, in the instant she stepped through the gate of the castle keep, a faint green corpse-fire drifted behind her, then vanished into nothing.
The reason was unclear even to him, but toward anyone who came from Kyoto, Kobe Hikaru would always keep a certain measure of wariness.
Behind her, the great hall returned to silence.
Imagawa Yoshimoto leaned back against her armrest.
The folding fan snapped shut and was set aside.
Her long dark-brown hair spilled from her shoulders, a few loose strands lying across her collarbone. The collar of her junihitoe had slipped slightly open, showing a stretch of pale neck.
The lamplight cast warm shadows across her face.
"The world bustles, and all who come, come for gain."
She murmured the line under her breath.
Then she sighed.
"The world teems, and all who go, go for gain."
The Onmyoryo, the Hojo, the Uesugi and the Takeda — every faction, every single person acted out of their own position, their own reasons, their own aims.
In the end it all came down to a single word: profit.
But that was the Sengoku era.
In an age of chaos, people who cared about righteousness truly were few and far between.
Everything, in the end, was motion in pursuit of gain.
Humans, yokai, even gods and buddhas — all of them alike.
At that thought she turned her head, working the stiffness out of a neck sore from the weight of her headdress.
In the middle of the motion her gaze swept idly toward the corridor on the right side of the hall — and stopped.
There stood a thick pillar, and in the pillar's shadow—
A figure in gray robes leaned against it, pale white hair hanging over his shoulders, crimson Demon eyes watching her calmly.
No telling how long he had been standing there.
Probably from beginning to end.
Imagawa Yoshimoto's body locked up.
Her mind went blank.
For three full seconds.
"—!?"
The young provincial ruler's shriek rang out through the entire castle keep.
Two birds were startled into flight.
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