Northern Musashi Province. On the ridgeline about three ri north of Kaede's Village.
Oikawa stood on the highest rock, her ice-blue eyes sweeping across the dark, heavy mountains to the north.
A deep-blue kimono wrapped her extremely pale skin; her white hair almost melted into the moonlight in the night wind. Her figure was tall and slender, her waist fine, yet she carried the bone-deep chill unique to the snow-woman clan, as a Yuki-onna she was of course cold, cold in the physical sense, her exhaled breath several degrees lower than an ordinary person's.
Even so, she could sense the demonic energy fluctuations rising from the main hall of the shrine dedicated to the Lord in the direction of Kaede's Village, dense and steady. She withdrew her gaze and continued watching the north.
"…Are you just going to keep staring like that? Aren't you tired?" The voice came from behind, thick with open impatience. Oikawa turned.
A slender figure stood at the edge of the rock. The tips of her short black hair carried a jade-green sheen; her pale skin looked nearly transparent under the moonlight. Ink-black vertical pupils were half-lidded. She wore black clothing like a female ninja's: the fullness of her chest exposed, a delicate waist, the curve of her hips tightly bound by short pants that flared slightly, and finely shaped, full legs extending below.
Sakasagami no Yura.
A tsukumogami whose true form was a comb, a female yokai who had taken human shape after reaching maximum favorability and unification, and one of the closest vessels at Shinji's side. She should not have been here.
Only a few hours earlier she had been in a side hall of the shrine, startled back into her original form by Kikyō's spiritual power and playing dead so convincingly it looked genuine. Yet now she stood in the north, for a simple reason. She had run away. The humiliation had been total; she did not want to stay in that room.
"Lady Yura." Oikawa inclined her head slightly, her manner respectful. According to the Lord's ranking, the snow woman Oikawa was an eighth-rank high-ranking yokai commander, while Sakasagami no Yura was only a sixth-rank tsukumogami.
Yet in the hierarchy of the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, Yura's status stood above hers, maximum favorability, unification, her innate ability once integrated into Shinji's body. That made her an absolute core with zero possibility of betrayal.
"Don't call me 'Lady.' It sounds weird." Yura rolled her eyes, sat cross-legged on the rock, and used her hair to coil a twig, idly striking the ground with it.
Pa. Pa. Pa.
There was clear irritation in the motion. Oikawa said nothing and simply stood waiting. After roughly a dozen strikes, Yura broke first. "Tell me, isn't that shrine maiden going too far?"
"…"
"I'm already his. What right does she have to keep knocking me back every time?" The twig snapped. Yura coiled another.
"My relationship with him is closer than hers!" At least, that was how Sakasagami no Yura saw it.
Oikawa remained silent.
"Say something, will you!"
"…Lady Kikyō's spiritual power is indeed very strong."
Yura glared at her.
Oikawa added, "And she is the Lord's lover."
"I know." Yura snapped the second twig as well; her voice carried the sound of gritted teeth. "I'm not trying to take her place, I just want…"
The words caught in her throat. Her ink-black vertical pupils shifted away, toward the dark mountains to the north. Moonlight fell across her pale profile; the irritation on her face changed into something harder to name.
"He came back to life." Yura's voice suddenly grew very soft. "Before, he was ice. Touching him was like touching stone, no heartbeat, no blood flowing, even his breathing was only simulated by demonic energy. Now it's different. His hands are warm. His heart beats. Blood moves under his skin."
She lowered her head, staring at her own fingers with those ink-black pupils. "I waited a long time. From the day he picked me up, I waited for him to grow stronger, for him to come back to life, for the day he could truly…"
"And then he did come back to life, only for me to realize that I'm still the one who's 'dead.'"
"He said he would wait for me, but tell me…"
Oikawa stood beside her, watching Yura's profile. The short-haired, pretty tsukumogami's face was full of worry. Maximum favorability meant complete trust and devotion, absolute loyalty, yet many anxieties still lived alongside it.
The snow woman's expression did not change. But she suddenly recalled a very old legend, the origin of the surname Oikawa, the story from centuries ago of a hunter named Oikawa and a Yuki-onna. In that story the Yuki-onna left before dawn. Because she was a yokai and he was human. Yet stories were stories, and reality was reality.
"Lady Yura." Oikawa spoke.
"Hm?"
"The Lord… will not let you leave." Yura looked up at her, a little surprised. Oikawa's face showed no extra emotion; she simply stated the fact:
"....Although the Lord has never said it outright, he is a man who values bonds deeply… He has never abandoned anything."
"Every yokai has seen that clearly ever since the day we of the Genya tribe swore allegiance, He gave us fear as our share, assigned us kaidan, gave us names and surnames and shrines and offerings....." Oikawa paused. Her ice-blue pupils reflected the moonlight and the faint, almost imperceptible glow from the direction of Kaede's Village far away.
"Lady Yura has been at the Lord's side longer than any of us. That will not change."
Yura stared at her for several long seconds. Then she snorted and turned her face away. "Who… who's asking for your comfort…" Yet the corner of her mouth clearly curved upward by half a degree in the moonlight.
Oikawa saw it. She did not point it out. She simply turned back toward the north and continued watching the dark mountains.
But in that moment, something stirred deep in the snow woman's heart. Very light. Very faint. Like water flowing beneath ice, feeling the warmth of spring for the first time. She replayed the words she had just spoken. Would they… also never be abandoned…?
…
Kaede's Village. Main hall of the shrine.
The refining was still underway. The deathly aura of the Nekomata's Claw (Cat Demon's Claw) and the toxicity of the Venomous Flood Dragon's Reverse Scale collided and repelled each other inside the wrapping of Shinji's demonic energy, only to be forcibly fused.
The water in the bronze basin had long since boiled away. In its place floated a dark-blue luster in midair, the essences of two maximum-favorability demonic weapons churning within it.
Yet the fusion proceeded more slowly than expected. The soul-summoning power of the Nekomata's Claw leaned toward cold, deathly yin energy, while the Reverse Scale of the Venomous Flood Dragon carried living, corrosive poison.
One dead, one alive, yin and yang repelling each other. Finding a balance between these two utterly different water-aspected forces required far more than brute force. It needed a catalyst, a medium that could allow dead water and living venom to merge.
Something was still missing.
Shinji opened his eyes. He withdrew the dark-blue orb of light and set it back in its place of reverence. He stood and pushed open the doors of the main hall. The morning air carried the dampness of dew.
On the stone steps beneath the torii ahead sat a person. White short armor and deep-blue battle attire, long hair the color of dark indigo. The white cloth band across her forehead glimmered faintly in the dawn light.
Uesugi Kenshin sat cross-legged at the highest step, a string of prayer beads resting across her knees, agate beads, each perfectly round, with an extremely faint golden luster flowing across their surfaces. She was chanting sutras.
Her voice was extremely low, the specific words almost inaudible, yet the cadence, slow and drawn-out, was completely different from the air-freezing oppression of the previous generation. Instead it settled the surroundings into quiet calm.
Shinji stopped several paces away. Kenshin also ceased her chanting. Her dark eyes opened and she turned her head toward him, her gaze clearly paused for a moment as it swept across his face, then quickly moved elsewhere.
The tips of her ears flushed faintly red. They had already met several times, yet every time she saw that face, the quickened heartbeat refused to be suppressed. Strange. But not unpleasant.
Kenshin recited a line of sutra in her mind to calm herself. Unfortunately, it did not work. Unlike the previous generation, who had always maintained the absolute composure of an ancient well, she was the type who could not stop overthinking.
"You were forging a weapon last night?" She spoke, trying to keep her voice steady.
"You sensed it?"
"Mm." Kenshin stood and slipped the prayer beads into her sleeve. Her gaze moved from Shinji's face to the twin blades at his waist, then to the Banryū on his back. Three blades. Each radiated demonic energy of a different attribute, fire, metal, earth.
Her brows shifted slightly.
"Are you gathering the Five Elements?" Buddhism spoke of the Four Great Elements, yet Kenshin also understood the concept of the Five Elements.
Shinji did not deny it.
Kenshin circled him halfway at a leisurely pace, her eyes alternating between the weapons and the man himself, yet lingering on the man noticeably longer.
"Your demonic power itself seems to contain the Five Elements as well… The path you walk is different from any yokai I have ever seen." She stopped in front of him and looked straight into his crimson oni eyes.
"Yokai grow stronger by devouring their own kind, accumulate resentment through slaughter, and condense awe through fear, that has been the unchanging road for a thousand years, and one that usually takes centuries to walk. Yet you do not devour your own kind; you only subdue them. You do not accumulate resentment, and you forge weapons like a human. Your osore does not come from the most direct fear born of slaughter, but more from the various ghost stories."
The corners of Kenshin's mouth lifted, not the nearly nonexistent curve of the previous generation, but a genuine smile that carried warmth:
"Your path as a yokai is truly miraculous. No wonder you have grown so much stronger in such a short time."
"And so?"
"And so....." Kenshin stepped back one pace and rested her right hand on the hilt at her waist.
The instant her hand settled there, the morning breeze stopped. Dew on the stone steps froze at the tips of the leaves. The power of faith saturating the air suddenly thickened tenfold.
The aura of Bishamonten's incarnation unfolded, unlike the previous generation's all-crushing cold severity, this time it felt more like the stifling heat before a storm: fierce and pressing, yet not bone-chilling, instead carrying a heat that urged the heart.
"Although it is abrupt and rather presumptuous… I truly want to know just how strong you are." Her tone remained sincere and direct. Yet the light in her purple eyes held more than battle intent. There was curiosity. And an even stronger desire to draw closer.
....Though she herself could probably not yet distinguish whether that desire was simply the wish to fight or the wish to look a few more times. In the end it was more or less the same, wasn't it? No… it seemed completely different… Forget it. Just do it!
"In a one-on-one fight, you cannot beat me." He stated it flatly.
Kenshin did not argue. She herself understood, what Shinji had done on Mount Hakurei already proved the point. Even if she had only heard rumors and did not know the exact details.
But she was well aware that even with Bishamonten's Eight-Petal armament fully deployed, her odds of victory against Shinji, who had unified the twelve transformations, were less than one in ten.
"Therefore, if you permit it, I do not intend to challenge you one-on-one." Kenshin said. Her hand left the hilt and instead pointed toward the direction of the northern encampment. Three hundred Uesugi elite troops, among them four female generals.
"I will bring everyone."
"Form ranks, and face each other in formation."
"Without killing intent, yet with full battle intent, each side giving everything they have."
"What do you think? Mm… if it is inconvenient, then pretend I never spoke. I am only curious; it will not interfere with anything."
"…"
So this frank yet reserved manner of hers was truly… not bad. Shinji looked at her, the golden rings within his crimson oni eyes rotating faintly. Perfect timing. He, too, wanted to test just how far he could go after unifying the twelve transformations when facing a properly organized army together with divine implements.
"Fine." He said.
Kenshin's smile widened a little further. When she turned and walked back toward the encampment, her steps were noticeably quicker than when she had come. Her long indigo hair swayed in the morning light; the ends of the white forehead band fluttered lightly behind her.