That night, Sui left her hiding place.
Every street in Osaka had been sealed off by the police, and public notice boards were plastered with her wanted portrait.
She could no longer remain in the city's brighter, more respectable quarters, so she thought back to the slums where she had hunted demons before. She slipped into the chaos of the shantytown, and sure enough, no one came looking for her there. She waited until full dark, then lightning flickered through the alleyways as she sped across the rooftops toward the kabuki district.
Her condition was restored to perfection.
She was certain that if that demon dared show itself, the blade of Yaqiu would sever its neck in an instant.
"Sui-sama, Sui-sama." Even keeping up with her was difficult for Chihana, her Kasugai crow. Clutched in the bird's talons was a letter. Sui took it and saw that it was from the Master.
The letter said that one of the Twelve Kizuki was extremely powerful, and that a Hashira had already been dispatched.
That Hashira would arrive tonight, around midnight.
"The Master says that for your safety, he hopes you'll wait and move together once the Hashira arrives." Chihana beat her wings hard, struggling to keep pace with the girl. Sui only shook her head and refused.
Not only was she going, she was going openly.
She would use the invitation that demon had left behind.
This would be its final dance. Sui could grant it that small measure of respect.
Tamatsubaki Theater.
A venerable old kabuki house with a century of history, once destroyed and later rebuilt, it truly stood as Osaka's reigning throne of kabuki.
The word kabuki was written with borrowed Chinese characters, but its original meaning was "to lean" or "tilt."
That was because of a peculiar manner of movement used in performance. Later, the elegant written form kabuki came into use: ka for song, bu for dance, and ki for skill.
Because kabuki performances spread deeply among the common people and became hugely popular, women all over the country began imitating them and taking to the stage. Warriors even fought and killed one another over some of these performers. Two hundred years ago, the Tokugawa shogunate banned kabuki on the grounds of corrupting public morals. Only later was "yarō kabuki" permitted—performances in which only men appeared on stage, with female roles played by male actors known as onnagata.
The art of embodying feminine grace through a male performer had become the very essence of kabuki.
Holding the invitation, Sui entered Tamatsubaki Theater. The ticket the demon had left her granted her access to one of the finest private boxes. She sat alone in an upper room, undisturbed, quietly waiting for the audience to settle and the performance to begin.
It would not take long.
Because she had already been seen.
A crimson haori, closed eyes, hair pinned up—such a figure was too unusual. With beauty like hers, she was impossible to overlook. The police would likely arrive in about twenty minutes.
This was the demon's twisted little joke.
The curtain fell, and the theater sank into darkness, until a single figure appeared on stage.
No—more precisely, a woman draped in plain white robes.
Her face was painted deathly pale, with flakes of gold leaf arranged like serpent scales. She danced like a snake, her mature, graceful figure on full display, while the trailing white costume became her tail.
The audience had already begun murmuring. Women were forbidden from performing in kabuki, this clearly violated the law, yet no one stepped forward to stop it. The organizers seemed to have tacitly permitted it all.
Sui kept her eyes closed, faint currents of electricity flickering around her as her perception spread across the entire stage.
That was Lady Kyoka.
She had been controlled by a Blood Demon Art. In effect, the demon was borrowing Lady Kyoka's body to perform and tell a story—the story of the White Serpent of Mount Shakara.
Lights kindled one by one around the edge of the stage. Lady Kyoka rose onto the balls of her feet, and from the darkness came the ancient rhythm of wooden clappers. The gold-leaf scales on her body lifted and fell with each breath, like countless snake eyes staring into the audience. She played the role of the Serpent Goddess of Mount Shakara, and now she wept in a low voice, sweeping the audience with a gaze full of grief and resentment.
The murmuring ceased.
The performance was simply too good.
The audience had already been drawn into it.
In the old days, Mount Shakara was thick with venomous snakes.
Back then, kagura bells still rang through the mountain valleys.
A young shrine maiden knelt before the Serpent God's shrine, weaving fresh purple morning glories into a crown of offerings. As the miko whose bloodline had served and protected the Serpent God for generations, she had been born with a snake-scale-shaped birthmark on her left shoulder—a divine mark that allowed her to commune with the White Serpent God.
"Sister Aya! This is for you!"
A mud-spattered child shoved open the wooden door, cradling wild berries still wet with dew. She was an abandoned infant Aya had once found by the mountain stream, and now she beamed brightly, one tooth missing from the front.
They had lived together all this time in the shrine atop the mountain—until a man in a Western suit arrived.
He discovered the medicinal value of the serpents living on Mount Shakara, and the villagers who had worshiped the White Serpent for generations were swayed by the promise of vast profits. They began hunting snakes throughout the mountain on a massive scale. On stage, twelve "villagers," actors wearing nō masks, entered and circled Lady Kyoka. Their whispers sounded like the vilest curse. Even from far away, Sui could hear every word clearly: the villagers demanding to know why the shrine maiden was not standing on their side, saying that there were no gods in this world to begin with.
Soon the pharmaceutical guild's operations ravaged the mountain's environment. The sacred altar was smashed. They meant to capture the legendary serpent deity said to dwell there.
People stormed into the shrine and carried off the little snakes, then dug through the nests until at last they discovered a giant white serpent over eight meters long, coiled deep below, flicking its tongue as it watched them. This was the very same cavern Sui had discovered beneath the Shakara Shrine earlier. It had not been excavated by demons after all, but by the snake hunters of that time.
"O god of the mountain—"
The drawn-out lament mingled with the faint scraping of scales over the stage floor.
The shrine maiden protected the serpent god until the very end of her life.
The great white serpent broke free of its ropes and coiled itself beside the maiden's corpse.
A single drop of blood fell from the white serpent's mouth onto the shrine maiden's forehead.
The maiden miraculously rose again and merged with the serpent god. On the stage, Lady Kyoka, crawling with fang-bared ferocity, tore the masks from the villagers one by one, symbolizing their deaths.
From that day onward, no one could find snakes on Mount Shakara anymore. Nor did anyone continue worshiping that god.
Sui understood easily enough what had happened between the white serpent and the shrine maiden.
That drop of blood had not belonged to the white serpent at all. It had come from Muzan Kibutsuji, the progenitor of demons. The Demon King's blood had transformed the shrine maiden, and in the end she devoured every living person before her, becoming the demon now entrenched within Osaka.
Not merely a demon.
But a lonely ghost as well.
It had preserved the memories of its human life, which was why it possessed human cunning and malice, and knew how to manipulate humans into serving it.
At the end of the play, it returned alone to the shrine and gazed up at the night sky, murmuring softly:
"The mountain steps of Shakara swallow moonlight,
white scales crawl from the shrine maiden's skin.
The village shrine weeps in silence.
Yet tell me—who planted lightning in the Serpent God's eyes?"
The chant ended, and thunderous applause burst from the audience.
Whether a woman or an onnagata, no one could deny how astonishing the performance had been.
And in that thunder of applause, Sui heard the shriek of police sirens.
The police were almost here.
Her hand closed around her sword.
Now was the true moment for the curtain to fall.
"Who planted lightning in the Serpent God's eyes?"
Sui repeated the final line of the poem under her breath. Her breathing deepened, and thunder suddenly roared—
drowning out the audience's applause.
"Thunder Breathing, First Form: Thunderclap and Flash!"
She kicked off the ground. In the instant she drew her sword, she streaked across the audience hall and slashed open the stage curtain.
Join here to read ahead.
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Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
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Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
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Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 73
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Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 45
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 45
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I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 26
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