The fire was still burning. The toad's carcass crackled and popped inside the pyre, fat bursting, black smoke coiling upward.
The villagers had already forgotten all about it.
They pressed in around Kōbe Hikaru and Kikyō, a dozen voices tumbling over one another with words of gratitude.
Some knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground. Some clutched their children and wept. Others darted back into their homes and returned with slabs of cured meat they'd kept hidden for God knows how many years, insisting — absolutely insisting — on pressing them into the hands of their two 'saviors.'
It had the frantic warmth of a New Year's celebration.
Kōbe Hikaru stood where he was and let the villagers swirl around him.
He didn't speak. He was watching a single figure in the crowd.
The hunched village headman.
The old man stood at the edge of the gathering. There was not a trace of joy on his face. His eyes were clouded, fixed on the still-burning flames, his lips trembling faintly — like he had something to say, or perhaps like there was nothing left to say at all.
Kōbe Hikaru read that expression clearly.
Fear.
The particular fear of a man who can see the disaster already on its way.
"Headman!" A young man came jogging over, face flushed red. "The god — no, the demon that was pretending to be a god — it's dead! We're free!"
"…Yes."
The old man nodded. His voice came out dry, scraped from somewhere deep in his throat.
"Free."
He turned away. His hunched silhouette looked very old against the firelight.
"I'll go… prepare some food for our honored guests."
He walked off. One slow step at a time.
Kōbe Hikaru watched him go, and the corner of his mouth moved, just slightly.
Kikyō came to stand beside him. Her voice was low.
"It seems he really does know."
Knew the truth — that this so-called god had been a demon wearing a god's mask from the very beginning.
"Mm." Kōbe Hikaru answered. "He understands better than anyone what's coming next."
Killing the 'god' had felt good. Clean.
But after the 'god' was dead?
Those tributes that had been flowing to the 'god' — they wouldn't simply vanish. Someone would come to collect them.
And they would collect with far less mercy.
…
Half an hour later.
A battered wooden table had been set up in the headman's courtyard.
On it sat the finest things this village could offer: half a wild rabbit, a small dish of pickled vegetables, and a short jug of murky rice wine.
Meager, just to look at.
But Kōbe Hikaru knew. This was probably several months' worth of food for these people.
"Please, honored guests." The headman bowed, extending chopsticks toward them.
Kōbe Hikaru didn't take them.
Because he had just noticed something.
There was already someone seated at the table.
No — not someone.
The figure had the appearance of a young man. Golden hair swept back from his face, catching the gleam of the torchlight. It floated — actually floated — fanned out like an open sickle blade, drifting lightly in the night breeze.
He wore a striped kimono, collar hanging loose to expose a solid chest, a long kiseru pipe clamped between his teeth, languidly breathing out smoke.
In front of him sat the largest piece of meat from the meal.
He'd already eaten half of it.
"Oh." The figure lifted his head and grinned at Kōbe Hikaru. "You're here. That slash just now — nice work."
Kōbe Hikaru's hand moved to his sword hilt.
He could feel the demon-qi.
Dense. Brazen. And yet — unlike the toad — it carried none of that rotten-corpse stench. This was something else entirely.
This was…
"Nurarihyon."
Kikyō's voice came from beside him. Calm, but threaded with a thin edge of wariness.
"That aura," she said, "is unique to the Nurarihyon lineage."
Nurarihyon.
Kōbe Hikaru searched the name in his memory.
A demon breed that specialized in 'blending in.' They could appear anywhere without a sound and make everyone present feel as though they had always belonged there — as though it would be stranger if they weren't.
The most gifted infiltrators among all demon-kind.
One of the most troublesome breeds, as well. Their true nature was illusion — like a flower reflected in a mirror, like the moon reflected in water — phantoms among phantoms, a particular strain of specter and demon. In the chronicles of the Night Parade that would be passed down in later ages, they were even considered by other denizens of the hundred demons as a kind of chieftain — capable of mediating conflicts between rival demon factions.
A genuinely difficult creature to deal with.
And the demon-qi rolling off this one… six Changes?
No. Maybe higher.
And that face — why did it look so familiar?
"Relax, would you." The golden-haired young man set down his chopsticks and stretched with supreme laziness. "If I wanted to start something, I'd have moved while you were fighting that toad. Why wait until now?"
He stood. He was slightly shorter than Kōbe Hikaru, but only slightly — tall enough that among ordinary humans, setting aside the likes of shrine maidens and warriors who wielded extraordinary power, he would have stood out immediately.
Up close, Kōbe Hikaru finally got a proper look at the young man's eyes.
Gold.
The pupils were vertical — like a cat's, or a snake's.
They gave off a feeling of profound, unhurried cunning.
"Allow me to introduce myself." He turned the kiseru pipe between his fingers, once, twice.
"Nura Nurarihyon."
"The most handsome demon in this area — well, not just this area, more like within several hundred li in every direction."
"You're also the only one here who poses even a slight threat to me. Just slight, mind you. Barely worth mentioning."
Kōbe Hikaru: "…"
The way this introduction was going felt deeply off.
And — confirmed.
He actually did 'know' this guy.
Nura Nurarihyon — wasn't this a character straight out of 'Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan,' another work he'd watched back in his old world?
So this world wasn't just 'Inuyasha'?
He was somewhat surprised — but his expression didn't flicker. He told himself that this was fine, really, since these were all 'yokai genre' works when you got down to it. It made sense for them to bleed together… or did it?!
"What do you want?"
Kikyō's voice was still level, but the hand holding her bow had not loosened.
If it weren't for the fact that the Nurarihyon breed — strange and dangerous as they were — tended to prefer sneaking into wealthy households for a free meal rather than actually harming anyone, Kikyō's nature being what it was, she would have loosed an arrow already.
"I came to eat," Nurarihyon said, entirely matter-of-fact. "There's a meal laid out, isn't there? I happened to be passing by. I was hungry."
He pointed to the dish in front of him, the one he'd already half-finished.
"Wild rabbit, right? Not badly roasted. Could've used more salt."
"But."
Nurarihyon's expression shifted.
The easy grin fell away and was replaced by something harder to name. Regret, almost?
"Honestly — what you two did tonight? That was satisfying."
He looked at Kōbe Hikaru. In his golden eyes, the distant shrine fire was still burning.
"One clean stroke to take the toad's head. Torching its nest. Letting these people see its true face."
"Sharp. Decisive. Beautiful."
"A shame, though."
He exhaled a slow breath of smoke from the pipe.
"What you did — to borrow a phrase that came over from the Ming dynasty on the continent — "
"Is what you might call treating the symptom, not the disease."
Kōbe Hikaru's eyes narrowed slightly.
"What do you mean?"
Nurarihyon smiled.
There was no malice in the smile. Only a kind of penetrating clarity that was deeply uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of.
"You already know, Ghost Warrior."
He said.
"I'm only saying out loud what you're already thinking."
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