A moment later.
Still outside Kaede Village, still atop that same gentle rise on the slope, at the bend in the road.
Sesshomaru sat on a jutting rock.
White fur was spread across the stone to serve as a cushion, his bearing so composed one might have suspected he had come to admire the autumn scenery.
Jaken crouched beside him, the Staff of Two Heads laid flat across his knees, his sharp-mouthed, hollow-cheeked face drawn tight. Now and then he stole a wary glance at Kobe Hikaru, suspicion written all over him.
Kobe Hikaru leaned against another rock. The oni mask was still there, but the demon armor had already dispersed. Having heard the whole of the matter, cause and consequence, his expression was a strange one.
Not quite surprise, not quite shock, but something exceedingly subtle and complicated.
According to what Sesshomaru had said—though it was more Jaken's additions than anything—Kobe Hikaru had grasped the gist.
Inuyasha's death had been no earth-shaking event.
No final duel with a great yokai, no heroic sacrifice to protect someone, not even anything that could be called glorious.
He had died more than two months ago, in the middle of a chaotic battle.
Two months ago—
Kobe Hikaru silently counted back the days.
That was right around the time he had crossed blades with Kibomaru.
And also the moment the four high-ranking yokai from Kyoto had reached the Kanto region.
Sesshomaru gave few details, but from Jaken's fragmentary additions and his own knowledge of this world's background, Kobe Hikaru pieced together the full picture well enough.
Inuyasha—a half-yokai, the offspring of Toga, once the foremost great yokai of the Western Provinces, and a human woman. Dog ears, silver hair, a temper both violent and rash. He had inherited his father's yokai power and bloodline, yet because he was half human and half yokai, both sides had cast him out.
In the story of the original work, Inuyasha ought at this point to still be in the middle of his search for the Shikon Jewel.
But this world's timeline—had forked.
And the crucial point of divergence lay with the Shikon Jewel itself.
In the original, the Shikon Jewel had been guarded by Kikyo, and later, through a chain of events, shattered and scattered, becoming the starting point of Inuyasha's tale.
But in this blended worldview, the Shikon Jewel had been entrusted to Kobe Hikaru by the demon-slayer village chief nearly four months ago.
Afterward, Kobe Hikaru had brought the Shikon Jewel to Kaede Village and handed it to Kikyo to guard.
And Inuyasha—right up until Kobe Hikaru's arrival—had been searching for the Shikon Jewel all along.
Throughout his life as a half-yokai, he had suffered rejection and contempt from both sides for his impure blood. He had long since heard the jewel's reputation, that it could grant any wish, and he too yearned to use its power to turn himself into a full yokai, or a full human.
That much never changed, no matter the world.
So far it deviated a little from the original, but not by much.
Yet the changes came quickly.
On that day, that night, Kikyo pierced the Kamaitachi through with a single arrow. The trail of the Shikon Jewel was laid bare far more completely than in the original—without that gradual, cyclical process of drawing yokai in bit by bit.
And so Inuyasha came from the Western Provinces faster than in the original course of events, tracking the jewel's scent all the way to Kanto.
And there, as chance would have it, he ran straight into the frontline friction zone between Imagawa and Hojo.
Amid the chaos of war, both armies were locked in furious slaughter.
Inuyasha barreled headlong into it.
As a half-yokai he was no weakling—but in the end he had not yet obtained Tessaiga as his later self did in the original.
Still less did he know that the battlefield held more than human armies.
The yokai vanguard from Kyoto—a scouting party sent by one of the four Qualitative Transformation-class yokai dispatched by Hagoromo-Gitsune—had also, at that very time, reached that same area.
Those yokai were themselves coveting the Shikon Jewel.
Inuyasha crashed right into them, all the while clamoring that he would take the Shikon Jewel.
The outcome, of course, was easy to imagine.
With his strength, dealing with ordinary lesser yokai was no trouble at all. His own power was roughly equal to what Kobe Hikaru would define as a Six Mutations yokai—close to a high-tier boss-class yokai.
A shade weaker than the Tsukumogami Sakasagami no Yura, yet able to seize an opening and turn it against her. The gap was a hair's breadth at most.
Indeed, carrying the bloodline of the top-tier great yokai Toga, if driven into danger he could even fall into a berserk frenzy, activating the great yokai's blood within him and reaching fully the level of an Eighth or even Ninth Mutation yokai.
Against high-ranking yokai, had he wished to flee, he certainly could have fled.
But he was set upon by the human soldiers of both armies at once—a half-yokai on the battlefield, whom neither human nor yokai would let pass.
Attacked from front and back, enemies on every side.
And it happened that that day was the eve of the night of the new moon.
As a half-yokai, on the night of the new moon Inuyasha lost his yokai power and turned into an ordinary human, and in the days approaching the new moon his yokai power waned as well.
On top of that, the battlefield held an illusion-wielding yokai like Gakimaru.
Inuyasha was dragged through an entire day by illusions, never once getting the chance to enter his berserk frenzy.
The timing was wrong, the place was wrong, the opponents were wrong—and the enemies far too many.
And so he died there, in the chaos of war between yokai and humans.
His corpse drifted downriver, and only recently had it been found by Sesshomaru.
This too was truly Kobe Hikaru's butterfly effect.
Had Kobe Hikaru never crossed over—Kikyo could certainly have dealt with the Kamaitachi, but she might not have been able to annihilate it utterly at such tremendous cost, nor would she have caused so great a commotion.
Kibomaru would not have come; those four high-ranking yokai would not have come.
And Inuyasha most certainly would not have tracked his way here so quickly.
He would not have been drawn into the clash of two armies, would not have met the yokai vanguard from Kyoto.
He would not have died.
It looked, of course, as though Inuyasha's luck had simply run out to the very last.
After all, as an offspring of the Inu no Taisho of the Western Provinces—even if not a legitimate son, even if only a half-yokai—he bore, in the end, the name of the Western Provinces.
Even with the Inu no Taisho, Toga, already dead, the dog-yokai kingdom of the Western Lands remained powerful.
Any truly powerful yokai, even knowing the Western Provinces cared nothing for this half-yokai's life or death, would still not have touched him, for fear of bringing needless trouble upon themselves.
Yet he happened to run into yokai who were somewhat strong but not truly powerful, and who did not know how mighty the Western Provinces were.
But at bottom, this too came from the world being different from before—the blended worldview. Compounded by the butterfly effect.
One butterfly beats its wings, and a storm is stirred up a thousand miles away.
And that butterfly—was him. Kobe Hikaru.
"…"
And so Kobe Hikaru fell silent for a long while.
He could hardly hold any particular feeling for Inuyasha—no goodwill, and no malice either.
He was only a fictional character Kobe Hikaru had come to know through anime and manga before crossing over.
Though he had all along relied on the so-called original work to exploit every kind of information gap, he understood too that the real world would never unfold like that original. Inuyasha's existence he had, from very early on, already set aside.
But now this character was real.
A person who had once lived, breathed, fought—and then died.
Died because of him.
And all he felt was… that there was nothing to say.
Even knowing from the original that Inuyasha was impulsive and quick to anger, that he often acted without weighing the consequences, an outcome like this still struck him as absurd.
Still, Kobe Hikaru soon turned his attention elsewhere and began to think.
Three months.
The range that Spirit Affinity could sense, and the effective limit of Soul Summoning—a dispersed remnant soul could still, within three months, possibly be called back.
But only 'possibly.'
The longer the time, the thinner the remnant soul.
Three months was already the very edge of the limit.
And Inuyasha, dead two months… was still within that range.
Only.
"Summoning is not resurrection."
Kobe Hikaru looked at Sesshomaru and made himself clear. "What I can do is temporarily gather the scattered fragments of his remnant soul, let his consciousness return for a brief moment—but only brief. Half a day at most."
"After that, the remnant soul will disperse again."
"And whether it succeeds depends, too, on how much of his soul remains."
Sesshomaru did not look at him.
His golden slit pupils gazed at the distant ridgeline, his expression unchanged from beginning to end.
"Calling him back is enough."
He said, "The rest—I will do."
His left hand rested lightly on the plain, ancient scabbard at his waist.
Tenseiga.
One of the two blades Toga had left behind.
Tenseiga, the sword that could sever death itself.
It could not harm the living, but it could cut down the envoys of the underworld and drag the dead back from the brink of death.
One blade, one swing, one life saved.
Sesshomaru explained no further.
But looking at that plain, ancient scabbard, Kobe Hikaru already understood.
What he had to do was call Inuyasha's remnant soul back—even if only for an instant.
So long as the remnant soul existed, Tenseiga could sever the death entangling it.
The soul would return, and with it power would surge forth, and the body too would be restored.
And then—resurrection.
Were it not that too much time had passed, so much that Inuyasha's departed soul had already broken free of his body, Sesshomaru would not even have needed Kobe Hikaru—he could have resurrected him himself.
…This blade interested Kobe Hikaru too, of course. It was inferior to Tessaiga, yet its healing power was still formidable, and Kobe Hikaru recalled that hidden within it lay another power, one belonging to the Meido, drawn from a great yokai of the realm of death that Toga had once defeated.
But now was not the time to show any of that. Though Sesshomaru disliked this Tenseiga, that did not mean he would cast it aside.
It was, after all, a relic of Toga.
And this blade, moreover, had chosen him.
"Your ability need only go this far."
Sesshomaru's tone was not a question. "That is enough."
The conversation ended.
Clean and decisive, not a single wasted word, nothing dragged out.
The thoughts in Kobe Hikaru's mind turned, and in that instant he considered a great many things.
He thought of what Inuyasha's resurrection, if it succeeded, might bring him.
First, that half-yokai's existence would once again appear upon this land… which did not much matter, really. So long as he was here, the so-called original could never come to pass. That much confidence Kobe Hikaru still had.
Second was the whereabouts of Tessaiga—that peerless yokai blade, forged by Totosai from Toga's own fang.
While Inuyasha lived, the means of obtaining Tessaiga was sealed within his body. It was what Toga had left for him; no one could snatch it away.
This seemed to hold no benefit…
And yet an idea flashed suddenly through Kobe Hikaru's mind.
A thought took shape.
Help Sesshomaru summon Inuyasha's remnant soul, let Tenseiga complete the resurrection.
In exchange—no, no exchange was needed.
It was only necessary that Inuyasha be resurrected as something that was not 'the half-yokai Inuyasha.'
In that case.
Would not Tessaiga—and a part of Inuyasha's corpse, that eye of his in which Tessaiga was hidden—become ownerless things?
This was an opportunity.
A superb opportunity to get his hands on Tessaiga.
Inuyasha sought the Shikon Jewel precisely because he wanted to become pure, did he not?
Whether yokai or human—and in this Kobe Hikaru could help him… or rather, in this matter, even if Kobe Hikaru wished not to help, he could not, for his Soul Summoning was hardly all-powerful.
But since this was to be a transaction, then taking a little something for it in return was surely only natural.
He thought it worth a try.
And such an aim, in fact, held no conflict with the Sesshomaru before him.
Even though the other had plainly come for Tessaiga—Kobe Hikaru knew that Sesshomaru could never obtain it.
"When do we begin?"
Kobe Hikaru spoke.
Sesshomaru's golden slit pupils at last settled formally upon him. That gaze was aloof as ever, but within it there seemed to be something exceedingly faint—satisfaction.
"Now."
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