The sun leaned west and the cloud cover thickened.
The doors of the physician's house in the south quarter were shut fast. A neighbour said the midwife had gone out to deliver a child for one of the town's great families and wouldn't be back until tomorrow.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi stood at the foot of the stone steps, the empty bamboo basket on his back swaying gently in the wind.
"Tomorrow, then."
He said it under his breath. No impatience showed on his face; those deep crimson eyes simply rested on the ground while he counted out the hours in silence.
His wife was due within days.
The neighbour's wife had promised to look in on her, but with no midwife there was still a danger.
"Let's go."
Kobe Hikaru stood off to one side, his sedge hat long since back on his head, hiding most of his face. "Just come early tomorrow."
Yoriichi had no other option, and nodded.
That morning he had promised his wife he'd be home before the light was gone, if he possibly could.
Even setting out now, the journey back would be a rush. He couldn't afford to wait any longer.
As for Kobe Hikaru, who had attached himself to him for no reason he cared to give, Yoriichi behaved exactly as before: he asked nothing more and thought nothing more of it. Confirming the man bore him no ill will seemed to be enough.
Kobe Hikaru had the feeling that, yokai though he was, he was in fact the more human of the two — at the very least he had ambitions of his own, and the young man named Tsugikuni Yoriichi had none.
They had exchanged names some time earlier.
After that,
the two of them started back along the dirt road out of town.
There were far fewer travellers on it now, only a few woodcutters hurrying along with firewood swinging from their shoulder poles.
The light dimmed further.
Trees crowded thick along both sides of the road, and there, beneath the last of the sun, out of the rustling of the wind came a thin, broken wailing.
It was an old man.
Clothes in rags, hair gone grey, a wooden stick clutched in one hand, his whole body curled up in the shadows beneath a tree.
His face was ashen, one hand pressed hard to his chest, his lips purple. His breath came fast and torn as a broken bellows, each gasp dragging with it a wet, clotted noise, as though his throat had been glued shut.
Yoriichi stopped.
Those transparent eyes of his, which could see through everything in the world, settled on the old man.
The heart.
It beat very faintly, the vessels silted and choked — an oil lamp guttering toward its end, ready to go out at any moment.
"Young man…"
The old man raised clouded eyes, withered fingers trembling toward the hem of Yoriichi's trousers. "Have mercy… could you… carry an old man a little way?"
Yoriichi crouched down until their eyes were level.
"Where are you headed, grandfather?"
"Over… over those three mountains ahead…"
The old man pointed to the ranges in the north, his finger shaking badly. "My son… my boy's over there… he's been hurt… he's dying… I want to see his face one last time."
As he spoke, tears ran down that deeply furrowed face and mixed with the dirt on it, a picture of misery.
Three mountains.
Twenty or thirty li of mountain road at the very least.
In the old man's condition, never mind three mountains — half a li would finish him.
Yoriichi didn't hesitate.
He turned, offered the old man his back, and bent down. "Climb on."
That was the kind of man he was.
A man who had given up silk robes and fine food without a backward glance so his elder brother wouldn't be placed in a difficult position, and come to a place like this to live as a woodcutter — good down to the marrow.
Now, with his wife at home waiting to give birth and the day nearly gone, faced with a dying man's last request, he still could not look away.
In his eyes all lives were equal, and so was all suffering.
Delight surfaced in the old man's face. The hand clamped over his chest let go, and he was just reaching for Yoriichi's back—
But.
"Wait."
A hand cut in from the side and came down on Yoriichi's shoulder.
It was pale and cold, and the red-haired young man's movement paused.
Kobe Hikaru stood beside them, his crimson oni eyes glowing faintly in the shadow of the sedge hat, fixed on the old man.
Yoriichi glanced back. "Kobe-san?"
"No need to carry him."
Kobe Hikaru's voice was as cold and level as ever. "He isn't going anywhere."
"Young man… what a thing to say…" The old man shrank his head down between his shoulders, the very picture of fright. "My boy's dying… I only want to see him once…"
"Whether your son is dying or not, I don't know."
Kobe Hikaru's fingers rested on the hilt of the Onikiri at his waist, his thumb easing the guard an inch clear of the scabbard's mouth.
"But I know that you're already dead."
Yoriichi blinked.
He looked at the old man.
In his field of vision, this was a living human being.
A heartbeat, blood in motion, bone and muscle — even the failing heart was genuine, no disguise.
If it were a Demon, no matter how flawless the mask, nothing could hide from these eyes.
"He's alive."
Yoriichi's confusion was total. "And he truly is gravely ill."
"He's human."
Kobe Hikaru nodded, granting it. "Ordinary flesh and blood, a heart on the point of stopping. He won't last a few more days."
"Then why stop me?"
"Because of the smell on him."
Kobe Hikaru bent, his pale face closing in on the old man, violet light turning through those scarlet eyes. "The smell of rot. And…"
"The smell of a Demon."
At that word, the old man's body went rigid.
The clouded, pitiful look in his eyes turned venomous and terrified in the space of a breath.
"You've never seen the kind of Demon that isn't a yokai, so you wouldn't know what a Demon smells like."
Kobe Hikaru straightened and looked at Yoriichi. "But in my homeland there's a thing called a chang."
"The chang of the old saying, 'to play the chang for the tiger' — the ghost of a man a tiger devoured, who then lures other men into its jaws."
"So if a human being — half-eaten by a Demon, or bound by a Demon through some other means — willingly plays the dog for it, to stay alive or for some other reason, and helps it trick the living into a trap, then that man is a chang-Demon of a different sort!"
"!?"
The old man froze.
So did Yoriichi.
Kobe Hikaru went on.
"He's human. But he's also the Demon's eyes. The Demon's bait."
"An old man whose heart is about to stop, and instead of lying at home waiting to die, he's out here keeping watch at a stretch of road with no village ahead and no shelter behind."
"And he wants you to carry him over three mountains."
"Three mountains there and back — even at your fastest, that's a full day and a full night."
Kobe Hikaru looked at Yoriichi, his tone as flat as if he were remarking that the weather was fine.
He remembered this stretch of the story, of course. The so-called original work had said nothing about who this old man was; there, it had genuinely seemed to be nothing more than bad luck. But in this blended world, in a heaven and earth where gods, buddhas and demonic fiends truly existed, any change at all was reasonable.
And Kobe Hikaru had never let his guard down.
The deduction he was making now followed as naturally as water running downhill.
"He's stalling."
"Holding you here."
"So that tonight… you can't get home."
Yoriichi's pupils shrank to points.
For the first time, the aura of that ever-still young man broke into disorder.
Holding me here?
For what?
However good-natured he was, by now he could see it.
He saw the person waiting at home.
"Uta…"
Yoriichi said the name aloud.
Their target was his wife!
The next instant,
the old man on the ground moved.
Gone was the trembling wretch at death's door. He lunged like a madman, both arms locking around Yoriichi's calves with shocking strength, his nails digging through the cloth.
"You can't go! You can't go!!"
He shrieked, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth, his face twisted like a vengeful Demon's. "It promised me! Just hold you here and it'll add years to my life! It'll give me a new heart! I don't want to die! I don't want to die!!"
Yoriichi looked down at the old man clinging to his legs.
His hand rested on his woodcutter's hatchet, but he did not draw it.
Even knowing this was a chang-Demon working to destroy his family, even knowing the malice in him, the world his eyes showed him said only one thing: a pitiful old human man, driven mad by the fear of death.
He could not bring himself to kill a man.
But at that same moment—
"Move."
Kobe Hikaru's voice fell, and after it came a flash of dim light.
Blade-light!
Onikiri left its scabbard.
Not a shred of hesitation. Not a scrap of pity.
A wet sound.
The head rolled free.
The headless body was still twitching, hands still clamped tight on Yoriichi's trouser legs; only after several seconds did they slowly loosen.
The smell of blood spread through the air.
Kobe Hikaru flicked the beads of blood from the blade and slid it home.
"We're going," he said. "Get back too late and all you'll be doing is collecting your family's bodies."
Yoriichi said nothing.
He glanced at the corpse on the ground. There was no blame in those deep crimson eyes — only a heavy gravity that filled them to the brim.
He lifted the dead man's hands away, gently, but without a trace of indecision.
Then he turned.
That gait of his that melted into the natural world was gone.
In its place — an explosion.
Pure explosive force!
The earth burst apart under his feet and he shot off like an arrow loosed from the string, tearing toward his home in the mountains.
Kobe Hikaru went after him.
Thunder cracked beneath his soles.
"If it's putting chang-Demons out on the road, that Demon must sit fairly high up the ladder," he murmured into the wind, his voice carrying out from under the oni mask.
"Good. It'll do to test the blade."
…
Deep in the mountains, the night was ink.
The place was remote — so remote that not even the beacon-fires of the wars had reached it. A few households lay scattered through the hollow like orphans the age had forgotten.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi's home was the furthest one in.
A crude wooden hut, its roof laid thick with thatch, its walls tamped from earth and broken stone.
Inside, a single oil lamp burned.
The wick had been trimmed low; the dim yellow halo of it barely reached one corner of the tatami.
The woman named Uta braced her back with one hand and, carrying the high swell of her belly, edged slowly across the room to close the window.
The wind outside was strong.
It rattled the shutters, and the shadows of the trees swung about like a pack of monsters baring teeth and claws.
"Yoriichi."
Uta whispered her husband's name, her palm stroking the curve of her stomach.
It had been fully dark for a long while. By rights he should have been home already.
For some reason, he wasn't.
A nameless dread grew wild as weeds inside her chest.
And then—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Someone was rapping at the door.
Light, polite. Nothing like her husband coming home — Yoriichi made no sound at all when he walked, and he always simply pushed the door open and called her name softly from the threshold.
Uta didn't go to the door, and didn't answer.
She only listened, carefully.
"Excuse me… is anyone home?"
It was a young man's voice, weak and anxious. "I'm a travelling pedlar passing through. I've lost my way, and I've hurt my leg and can't walk any further… could I trouble you for a mouthful of water?"
Uta steadied herself against the wall and hesitated.
Mountain folk were simple and kind, but her husband's warning before he left was still in her ears.
A neighbour should have been with her, but the hour had grown late and the woman had had to go home to her own children.
Alone as she was, caution was called for.
"I'm sorry."
She spoke through the door, working to keep her voice steady. "My husband will be back any moment. It isn't a convenient time."
The voice outside stopped.
Then—
"Heh heh."
A laugh came worming in through the cracks in the door, very low, slick with malice.
"Husband? That red-haired fellow?"
"I've no idea who he really is — gives me a dangerous feeling, that one — but…"
The voice had changed. No longer weak, it brimmed now with greed and brutality, like iron scraping over bone.
"He isn't coming back. That old thing will keep him tied up till he drops."
"Two days, at the very least!"
Uta's pupils shrank. She backed away on instinct, but her body was heavy and clumsy; she stumbled and sat down hard on the tatami.
Boom!
The next second, the next breath.
With a blast of sound,
the flimsy wooden door was smashed to pieces by an enormous force.
Splinters sprayed. Cold wind poured into the room, carrying a thick, rank stench with it.
A 'man' stood in the doorway.
Or rather, something that had once been a man.
It kept the outline of a human being and nothing else. The body had swollen to over two metres, the skin a sickly blue-grey, the mouth split open to the ears to show a crowded, interlocking mass of fangs.
It wore the tattered clothes of a samurai, and carried a broken sword still dripping blood.
That was… a Demon.
Once a human being, and in some sense a human being still — yet a Demon among men, a thing that had been defiled.
"A pregnant woman…"
The vengeful Demon's clouded, yellowed eyeballs fixed on the swell of Uta's belly, and a long tongue swept across the corner of its mouth. "Two lives in one body. Nothing more nourishing."
"And the smell of your blood is truly fine. I could smell you from a long way off."
It stepped inside.
The pressure of that huge body seemed to thin the very air.
Uta tried to scream, but her throat felt clamped in a huge invisible hand; not a sound came out.
All she could do was shield her belly in despair. In that cramped little room there was nowhere to run.
The vengeful Demon raised its claws.
The distance was far too short.
It could even smell the sweetness of fresh blood rising off the woman, saturated through with fear.
This woman's blood really did smell sweet.
At that same moment,
several li away,
on the mountain road, running one behind the other with Tsugikuni Yoriichi toward the place he called home, Kobe Hikaru stopped short and laid his hand on the Onikiri's hilt.
The evening wind came steadily into his face, and he caught it too.
The smell threaded through the wind.
The scent, blowing straight at him, of a vengeful Demon killing.
They wouldn't make it in time.
Kobe Hikaru knew it.
By Tsugikuni Yoriichi's own account, from here to his house was at least seven li even measured as a straight line, with plenty of obstacles along the way. Even at his own pace it would take close to half a minute — thirty seconds at a dead sprint.
And a woman — a pregnant woman.
Facing a vengeful Demon, could she hold out for half a minute?
The answer was in no doubt at all.
And the outcome, it seemed, was already settled… bound to run exactly along its original track.
Without Kobe Hikaru, it would have been more certain still.
Ahead of him, Tsugikuni Yoriichi was still hurtling forward. The man who had been as serene as a god or a buddha finally moved like someone past caring what it cost him.
But having decided to help, Kobe Hikaru had made his preparations long since.
He had followed Tsugikuni Yoriichi all day without telling him that his home would very likely be attacked by a vengeful Demon — partly because there was no way to explain how he knew, and partly because he was confident he could save her.
However great the distance.
No matter—
—where he happened to stand.
Kobe Hikaru stopped running.
He only tightened his grip on the Onikiri at his waist.
A clear ring of steel.
Onikiri came free of the scabbard.
And then, facing the direction several li away, he brought it down in a single cut.
At the same moment — the very same moment.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi's home.
The vengeful Demon's claws hung less than an inch from Uta's throat.
Uta shut her eyes in despair.
So this is it. Yoriichi — I'm sorry.
Shaking, she clutched her belly, hoping only that the child inside her might somehow be spared.
The vengeful Demon's chattering, unnatural laughter clattered freely in her ears.
And through that grating cackle—
came a sound. A rolling crash.
Thunder, out of nowhere!
Uta's eyes opened before she could stop them.
And she truly did see lightning.
Only it hadn't come from the edge of the sky. It had detonated inside the vengeful Demon's body.
For that instant, time seemed to hold still.
The next second.
The vengeful Demon froze mid-motion.
In those clouded eyeballs the greed had not yet faded; terror hadn't had time to surface.
Down the exact centre of its body, a glowing red line appeared.
And then—
"—!!!"
The vengeful Demon had no time even to scream. Its whole body came apart in an instant, inexplicably, dissolving into countless burning motes of dust.
No — even the dust had been cut to pieces.
And yet the dust rose and settled without so much as a ripple in the air.
Uta lifted her head, dazed.
Only then did she realize with a jolt that there was no roof above her — only a whole sky of stars.
And one thing more.
An invisible fissure running clear across the night sky, as though the vault of heaven itself had been cut in two.
It was the clouds.
The dark clouds overhead, sliced open by something.
The cut was perfectly clean, and moonlight poured down through the gap to light the wreckage below.
In front of her, where the vengeful Demon had been standing, all that remained was a trench too deep to see the bottom of, still smoking with blue-grey vapour and crawling with violet arcs of lightning.
The vengeful Demon?
There wasn't even ash left.
____
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