After Myoga's words fell, the air at the foot of the volcano froze solid.
Totosai hung in midair, held up by the back of his collar in Kobe Hikaru's grip. His stubby legs had stopped kicking.
Those bulging eyeballs were fixed on the flea-sized yokai perched on his shoulder, and every wrinkle in his face had bunched into a knot.
"You're certain?"
"Absolutely certain!"
Myoga gave two hops on his shoulder, his six thin legs trembling harder than before, his flat little body straining out toward Kobe Hikaru as he sniffed with all his might.
"Young Master Inuyasha's scent — there's no mistaking it. This old flea followed Young Master Inuyasha for years. I could pick out every smell on him with my eyes shut!"
Fleas have keen noses to begin with, and Myoga, being a yokai, could smell the emotions left clinging to a person as well.
Myoga's voice dropped, puzzled. "And that really is gratitude. Young Master Inuyasha is grateful to this yokai!"
Totosai's face changed.
Terror gave way to suspicion.
He stopped struggling. Instead he tilted his head and took a fresh measure, with those bulging eyeballs, of the oni warrior dangling him by the collar.
Crimson oni mask. Long white hair. Purple veining drifting through scarlet oni eyes.
The yokai aura was thick — no weaker than his own, and he was an old yokai himself. Thicker, even. And clearly of the warrior type: varied abilities, built to fight.
Inuyasha's scent was on him — and Myoga would never lie about a thing like that. That flea might be a coward, but his nose had never once been wrong.
But at the same time — "Hold on."
Totosai's own nose was nothing to sneeze at either.
He gave two hard sniffs, and his wrinkles crowded together again.
"Why do you have Young Master Sesshomaru's yokai aura on you too?"
Kobe Hikaru was silent for a heartbeat.
He did, in fact.
That bargain with Sesshomaru a few days ago had involved only brief contact, but the yokai aura of a great yokai of the dog clan worked like that — concentrated enough that a moment's proximity was all it took to leave a mark, and slow to fade.
It was the effect a great yokai's mere existence had on the world around it, a Phenomenalized residue of yokai aura.
Not so different from carrying the smell of someone's perfume.
Except that this particular bottle of "perfume" was potent enough to alter the composition of the air across an entire region.
…And of course, more than that, what Kobe Hikaru really wanted to say was: truly, dog yokai. When it comes to leaving their scent wherever they go, they are the undisputed authorities.
"Sesshomaru asked me for a favor," Kobe Hikaru said, keeping it short.
Totosai's face collapsed on the spot.
So that brat Sesshomaru did send him! I knew it, I knew it —
"He didn't send me." Kobe Hikaru cut off the fresh surge of flight instinct before it could break loose, a little exasperated. "Sesshomaru and I made a bargain. The terms have nothing to do with you. But in the course of that bargain — I met Inuyasha."
Totosai went still.
Myoga went still too.
Both yokai stared at him at once.
Kobe Hikaru went on. "I'm the one who dragged Inuyasha back out of a heap of corpses."
He did not give many details.
He told them three things.
First: Inuyasha had died once, in the chaos of the warring armies in Kanto, a little over two months ago.
Second: he had used his own ability to call back the remnants of Inuyasha's soul, and Sesshomaru had severed the chains of death with Tenseiga, completing the resurrection.
Third — after his resurrection, Inuyasha had come back as a pure human.
When that last sentence was spoken, the foot of the volcano stayed quiet for a long while.
Totosai's bulging eyeballs bulged wider still.
Myoga fell straight off his shoulder, six thin legs pointing skyward, and had to turn a somersault before he could scramble upright.
"He… he became human?"
"Mm. Too much of the yokai soul had dispersed. Even if it were called back, what returned would be raving mad — so all that came back in the end was the human half. At least that half is still lucid."
Kobe Hikaru's tone was perfectly natural.
So natural that neither Totosai nor Myoga caught anything amiss.
After all, what he said was not exactly a lie. A yokai soul really does disperse faster than a human soul; a recalled one really does come back raving, with nothing left but instinct; and forcing it back together with the human soul really would only produce a split mind. Those were facts.
"So he's now…"
Myoga's voice had gone complicated, and his flat little face worked itself into an expression that resisted naming — grief and relief at once.
"Black hair, brown eyes, none of the dog ears or claws you two describe. Just like any ordinary human boy — apart from having a bit too much energy, everything about him is normal. By now he's settled into an ordinary life in one of the prosperous market towns under Sagami Province," Kobe Hikaru added.
He had taken a look while passing through Sagami Province earlier. Inuyasha's situation was genuinely decent… much as Kobe Hikaru had calculated from the start: strong, easygoing to the point of carelessness, childish in places, but with real ability behind it, that sort of temperament actually went over well in an age of war.
In a world where survival demanded cunning from everyone, people still wanted one straightforward soul beside them who had none.
As a half-yokai, Inuyasha had been weak and ill-suited. But as either a human or a yokai — so long as he wasn't stranded halfway between — he would do far from badly.
He had even gathered a circle of friends around himself already.
It was still a long way off, but Kobe Hikaru had a feeling: someday Inuyasha might step onto the stage of history on the human side, wearing a face very different from the one he had worn before.
Not as a yokai, but as… a hero belonging to human history.
Though that would surely be a very long time from now.
Silence.
A long silence.
Totosai was an old retainer who had followed Toga from the very beginning. He had witnessed Toga's meeting with Izayoi, Inuyasha's human mother. He had naturally also witnessed how, after Inuyasha's birth, the dog yokai of the Western Provinces refused to accept a half-yokai among them — had witnessed everything that boy endured, from childhood on, for being neither human nor yokai.
Feared by humans. Despised by yokai.
Suspended between, with nowhere to belong.
And now — he had landed.
On the human side, yes, but landed all the same.
"That boy…"
For an instant Totosai's voice softened into a sigh.
Something flickered in those bulging eyeballs, but the slab-like folds of his face swallowed it almost at once.
He coughed, and his voice came back to normal. "All right, all right. This old man understands."
He glared up at Kobe Hikaru, though most of the wariness had drained out of his tone. "You're not Sesshomaru's man, and Inuyasha really does owe you a life. That flea's nose doesn't lie."
"You can put this old man down now."
Kobe Hikaru let go. It hadn't gone the way he expected, but if all the extra arguments he'd prepared went unused, so much the better.
The squat old yokai dropped to the ground, stubby legs planting on the scalding lava crust, and slapped the soot off his short jacket before looking up at the oni warrior towering over him.
"Speak, then."
He picked up the iron hammer that had fallen at some point and shouldered it, and at last there was no panic left in those bulging eyes.
Only the shrewdness of an old craftsman sizing up a customer.
"What is it you came looking for this old man to do, exactly?"
"If it's a demon blade you want forged, let's be clear up front — you supply your own materials. This old man handles the forging, not the sourcing."
Kobe Hikaru reached to his waist and drew Muramasa.
The blade gave off a faint dark-red glimmer in the orange light of the crater, and the hairline crack along its edge showed plainly.
Yokai aura seeped out of the fissure, carrying a stifled, dammed-up heat.
The sword was humming.
As though calling out.
Kobe Hikaru laid Muramasa flat across his palms and held it out to Totosai.
"Recasting," he said.
"This sword's blade soul is waking — but the body of the blade can't hold it anymore."
"I need you to help me recast this sword."
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