The room was cramped.
Nothing like the spacious shrine hall back in Kaede's village. This vacant thatched hut was genuinely tiny — a low table missing one corner, a clay lamp with barely enough oil left to matter, and a single tatami mat that smelled faintly of mold.
But the old man had called it the finest empty room in the village.
Kōbe Hikaru believed him.
Every other house they'd passed on the way in was missing half its roof, or at least one complete wall.
Pfft.
The lamp wick flared and spat, the flame leaping up an inch before sinking back, sullen and low. Shadows swayed across the mud walls.
Kikyō sat on one side of the tatami, working loose the guards on her hands.
The white lacing came undone, revealing the strip of bandaging underneath — damage from last night's archery, where the string had bitten into her knuckles and wrist from drawing too hard.
Kōbe Hikaru leaned against the post by the door, arms folded around his blade, gaze drifting.
The room was too small. Small enough that even with two or three paces between them, another person's warmth and scent came drifting straight into his nose.
Kikyō smelled good.
At least to a demon with senses as sharp as his, she did.
He dropped his gaze to the blade.
His peripheral vision caught her movements anyway.
The arm guard came free. The shrine maiden rolled her shoulder slightly, and the white kosode — a touch too large for her frame — slipped down along the line of her shoulder.
The collar fell loose.
The lamplight, dim and amber, fell precisely into the hollow of shadow at her collarbone. Her skin was pale enough to hurt the eyes.
Below that, the fabric gathered over the soft rise and fall of her chest, lifting gently with each breath against the front of her robe; further down, the red hakama cinched tight, the sash carving a taut, slender line at her waist. The scarlet fabric pulled taut across her thighs in the kneeling posture, tracing full, rounded contours, folding into creases at the backs of her knees and trailing into the deep shadow at the hem — a deep, suggestive curve drawn there in darkness.
Kōbe Hikaru's throat moved.
"The old man didn't tell the whole truth."
He spoke, breaking the strange, inexplicable quiet that had settled over the demon inside him.
Kikyō's hands paused. She set the arm guard on her knee.
"Mm."
She answered without looking up, eyes lowered, smoothing her sleeves.
"The thing in the shrine isn't a god."
"I know."
Kōbe Hikaru shifted to keep Muramasa from digging into his hip.
"Its appetite isn't small, either. It demands offerings — demands lives. Wants the divine status of something worthy of worship, but can't shed the demon's nature of eating people."
Greedy. Conflicted.
The common affliction of most demons looking for the easy path.
Kikyō raised her head.
The lamplight flickered in her eyes — dark, clear, and cold.
"He knows."
She said it quietly.
Kōbe Hikaru blinked, then caught her meaning.
She meant the old man who had guided them. The village headman.
"He knows it's a demon?"
"He knows."
Kikyō's voice was flat. "But he can't bring himself to admit it. The moment he does, the village's last hope disappears. Even if what they're feeding is a wicked spirit — as long as the village can keep scraping by, they'll press their foreheads to the ground and keep bowing."
That was the Warring States era. Human lives, cheap as weeds.
To survive, becoming a demon's dog was nothing unusual. Even offering up human lives as sacrifice — as long as the rest could go on living, that was enough.
Kōbe Hikaru said nothing.
He remembered the image of that old man kneeling on the ground, pleading with Kikyō to go and "negotiate." Abject. Frightened. With just a flicker of desperate hope.
Thinking back on it now — the old man had never wanted Kikyō to negotiate at all. He'd wanted this powerful shrine maiden to put the fear of the gods into that demon. Make it pull back a little.
The wisdom of the powerless: just surviving already required every ounce of cunning they had.
"So — what do we do tonight?"
Kōbe Hikaru asked.
He glanced at the only tatami mat.
"Just the one. You sleeping?"
Kikyō looked at the mat, then at Kōbe Hikaru.
She must have thought of whatever strange things Kaede had said that morning. A faint flush rose to her face — barely there, but present.
"You're the injured one."
She said.
"I'm a demon."
Kōbe Hikaru tapped his chest. "I don't need to sleep. I can stand the whole night."
"Come sit."
Kikyō shifted sideways, making room for half the mat. Her expression was calm, her face cool and composed — but the tips of her ears had gone faintly red.
Kōbe Hikaru didn't move.
"It'll be too tight."
"It won't."
Kikyō held firm.
She seemed unused to owing anyone a debt, even over something this small.
Kōbe Hikaru sighed, walked over, and sat down cross-legged.
Half a fist's width of space between them.
Fabric brushed fabric.
That scent was stronger now.
Kikyō seemed faintly uneasy — she sat rigidly straight, her breathing gone quiet and careful.
Kōbe Hikaru watched the lamp flame dancing ahead of him, one hand resting on the hilt of his blade.
[Cursed Blade Muramasa reports: hungry. It has caught a very appetizing scent nearby.]
"I'm hungry too."
Kōbe Hikaru said, abruptly.
Kikyō turned to look at him, puzzled. "The grain cakes that old man brought earlier—"
"Not that kind of hungry."
Kōbe Hikaru drew the blade one inch from its scabbard.
Cold light illuminated half his face — and those crimson eyes.
"It's hungry."
"And my hands are itching."
He had no desire to spend the whole night rotting away in this moldy little room, soaking in the despair of this village.
No desire to wake up tomorrow morning and listen to that old man drone on and on, begging them to go bargain with something that ate people.
He was a demon.
He had never been one to hold himself back.
And more than that — he could feel it.
"You're fed up too, aren't you?"
Kōbe Hikaru turned his head, meeting Kikyō's gaze directly — those dark, fathomless eyes looking straight back into his.
Kikyō blinked.
Then the 'young man' in front of her smiled.
He hadn't said anything more — but he could feel it plainly enough: the frustration simmering inside Kikyō, and the hesitation wound through it.
As a practitioner of immense spiritual power, she should be slaying demons and vanquishing evil.
As a shrine maiden, she should be purifying the demon that had desecrated a god's sanctuary.
But after the killing — what then?
Whatever anyone thought of it, that demon had brought a certain stability to this village.
Even if it felt wrong, reason told Kikyō that the old man's choice was the correct one.
Go and frighten it. That would be enough.
Just enough.
Only — the frustration was still there.
Standing by while a demon ran rampant...
The refusal to accept it: that, too, was inevitable.
"Don't overthink it."
Kōbe Hikaru sat up straight and lifted his gaze to the moon beyond the window. "If it's a demon doing evil, it has to die."
"If it's a god doing wrong, it needs to be dragged off its altar."
"As for what comes after —"
"We'll deal with that after."
Kōbe Hikaru stood.
The hem of his grey robe stirred a gust of air that made the oil lamp shudder.
"There's an old saying I've always liked: 'Whether saving you is any of your business.' Some people, some things — you just have to act."
"I'm going to cut its head off. Give this village a wake-up call."
"You rest."
He didn't look at Kikyō. He turned and walked toward the door.
A hand closed around his wrist.
Cool to the touch. Fingertips rough with the calluses of years spent on a bowstring.
Kōbe Hikaru turned back.
Kikyō was already on her feet, her lacquered red bow scooped up from where it rested beside her.
"Together."
She said.
She looked as though she had made up her mind. Her eyes were dark — but bright with it, blazing with something deep and resolute.
Kōbe Hikaru looked at her hand. Then at her eyes.
There was no girlish shyness in them. Only the clarity and conviction of a shrine maiden.
"All right."
Kōbe Hikaru grinned.
"Then together."
Kikyō let go, straightened her robe, and pushed the door open first.
"Together."
She said it again.
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