Early morning was the designated training time in Kaede's Village.
Kikyō stood in the open ground before the torii gate, her white uwagi and crimson hakama immaculate as always. Her longbow was raised level, her expression cool and clear.
Five paces in front of her, Momiji and Botan had each arranged a small host of shikigami paper dolls and were nervously drilling their control exercises.
Momiji's dolls stood in neat, orderly rows, their movements uniform and precise, like tiny soldiers who had been properly drilled. That girl did everything by the book. Even her paper dolls ended up disciplined like a proper army.
Botan's dolls, on the other hand, were utter chaos. Three veered left. Two lurched right. One had flown straight up into a tree.
"Botan."
Kikyō's voice was neither warm nor cold.
"Y-yes!"
"Your paper doll is in the tree."
"I-I know! It won't listen—!"
Botan frantically channeled her spiritual power, and the doll wobbled unsteadily down from the branches, only to flip midair and dive headfirst straight into Botan's collar.
"GYAH—!?"
Botan bounced around on the spot, clawing the doll out of her clothes in the most undignified fashion.
Beside her, Momiji had clapped a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking. She was laughing, but in front of Kikyō, she didn't dare let a sound escape.
Kikyō's expression did not change. But her gaze drifted aside for just a moment, likely because she couldn't bear to keep watching.
"Again."
"Y-yes…"
Botan pitifully reassembled her doll formation.
Kikyō turned and stepped aside, picking up the water flask resting on a nearby stone and taking a drink. In the instant she lowered her head,
The corner of her mouth curved. The barest, faintest bend. She reined it in almost immediately.
But Shinji saw it. Leaning against the doorframe of the main hall, he had been watching the whole time.
"You smiled," he said.
Kikyō's hand, still holding the flask, paused.
"I did not."
"You did."
"…I did not."
"I'm a yōkai. These eyes of mine—"
Kikyō set the flask back onto the stone with a crisp clink.
Then she turned abruptly and, with lightning speed, bent down and pressed a quick kiss to Shinji where he sat, cutting off whatever words he had been about to say in an instant.
Before he could react, the miko had already seized her chance and walked swiftly away, her pace just a touch faster than usual. And her ears, once again, had gone very, very red.
"…Continue practicing."
Her voice had regained its usual cool composure. But both Momiji and Botan keenly noted that today's training workload… did not seem to have doubled.
Thank goodness!
Both of them turned toward Shinji, still seated over yonder, and nodded in silent, heartfelt gratitude.
Those two girls… Shinji touched his lips, smacked them lightly, and chose not to say anything further.
Such scenes, such images, naturally fell in their entirety upon the eyes of Naoe Kanetsugu, still tied to her pillar inside the main hall.
To be precise, from the very first day she had been bound there, she had become the most unwilling, and most faithful, spectator in all of Kaede's Village. She watched others eat while she ate. Watched others train while she… sat there. And when it came to matters of love, she watched that too.
She felt like she was about to lose her mind.
"I am the adjutant general of the Uesugi clan… I have commanded thousands of elite soldiers and numerous shinki warrior maidens… I am Naoe Kanetsugu…"
She muttered the words to herself in a low voice. Self-encouragement. Self-hypnosis.
It was no use.
Because little Kaede had come again.
The twin-tailed girl crouched in front of her, clutching a freshly peeled chestnut in both hands, holding it up to her mouth.
"Big sister, eat a chestnut today!"
"…Thank you."
Naoe Kanetsugu took a bite. Sweet.
"Big sister, why are you tied up here all the time?"
"…Because a bad person tied me up."
"A bad person? Who?"
"It's… your big brother Shinji over there."
Kaede cocked her head to the side and thought about this very seriously. Then she spoke a sentence that nearly made Naoe Kanetsugu choke on her chestnut.
"Big Brother Shinji isn't a bad person! He's really good to Kaede! Big sister must have done something bad to get tied up, right?"
Good? That was a yōkai… Well, fine. Yōkai weren't necessarily bad. And it was true, this time, the fault really did lie with them.
Naoe Kanetsugu opened her mouth. In the end, not a single word of protest came out.
"You're right."
She finally conceded. She couldn't argue against her own conscience.
Kaede beamed with satisfaction and fished out another chestnut. "Here, big sister, have another one! If you reflect properly, they'll let you out!"
Naoe Kanetsugu chewed the chestnut expressionlessly. For the first time in her life, she felt a deep and profound doubt toward the Uesugi clan's methods of educating the younger generation.
Why had she never met a little girl this skilled at teaching people a lesson?
No wait. The fact that she, a grown woman, was being lectured by a small child… that in itself was the real problem.
She decided to stop thinking about it. Dwelling on it only made it worse.
Days like these, naturally, passed quickly.
Or rather, for Shinji, immersed as he was in the dual pleasures of his daily life with Kikyō and the nurturing of his blade, the passage of time was barely perceptible.
Ever since the night he had first attempted to feed Muramasa with his own osore, the demon blade had become utterly shameless.
It behaved like a starving ghost that could never eat its fill. Every night, when Shinji finished his day's cultivation and drew out the osore gathered by his twenty-three demons across three provinces, the sword would begin to tremble on its own.
Buzzing insistently. The sheath would rattle against his hip like an impatient beggar drumming on an empty bowl.
Tonight was no different.
In the side hall of the shrine, candlelight flickered. Shinji sat cross-legged, Muramasa laid across his knees. Dark crimson osore, thick as clotted mist, flowed from his fingertips into the blade.
The steel was growing hot, not merely warm to the touch, but radiating a heat that seemed to reach straight into the soul. The forge-lines along the blade's surface seemed almost alive now, pulsing like blood vessels as they swallowed the crimson haze.
[Demon Blade · Muramasa: Awakening Progress — 35%]
[It is deeply pleased. It finds this power far more delicious than mere human blood. It wants to cry out, but it hasn't grown a mouth yet.]
The System prompt flickered briefly before fading. Shinji ran his hand along the spine of the blade, his fingertips tracing that faint, living pulse, like stroking a living creature.
As he'd thought. A glutton through and through.
"Eat up," he murmured.
But just then, a violent shudder erupted from within his robes.
It was the crimson comb, the one used to comb the hair of the dead. A yōkai artifact, and a full-fledged tsukumogami in its own right: Sakasagami no Yura.
The comb rattled with a fury that bordered on sheer, petulant outrage. It launched itself out of his robes, smacked against the wooden floor with a sharp thwack, and then proceeded to flop about like a fish out of water, bouncing and thrashing with unmistakable indignation.
[Sakasagami no Yura: Affection +0]
[She is furious. She feels that you've found a new favorite and forgotten your old love. What's so good about that broken blade? It's cold and hard and all it does is eat! She can eat too! She can also comb your hair! She can even control your hair and style it for you!]
A moment later, a chill seeped from the sleeve on his other side. The venomous dragon's reverse scale. Though it lacked the fully-formed consciousness Yura possessed, as the core remnant of a high-ranking yōkai, it still had instincts. Cunning. Venomous. And above all, an instinctive craving for attention.
It was growing cold. Deliberately.
[Venomous Dragon Reverse Scale: Affection +0]
[It senses a threat. Its position is being marginalized. It is protesting. It is attempting to release toxic miasma to draw your attention, advised: placate it immediately, or this room will become uninhabitable in short order.]
Shinji looked at the comb thrashing on the floor, radiating waves of resentment, then felt the icy chill from his sleeve.
He laughed.
It felt exactly like his own backyard had caught fire. But he wasn't flustered in the slightest. If anything, he found it thoroughly entertaining.
"There's enough for everyone."
He reached out with his other hand and scooped up the flailing comb, holding it in his palm. A steady stream of his yōki, pure, refined, threaded with the power of lightning after six physical transformations and three essence shifts, flowed gently into the comb.
The comb went still for a single moment.
Then it began to tremble again, but this time, it was practically purring. Indignation had flipped straight into bliss.
[Sakasagami no Yura: Affection +5]
[She has forgiven you. The lightning-attributed yōki makes her feel all tingly and numb, very stimulating. She now believes she is far more capable of channeling your power than that blade ever could.]
Shinji diverted another portion of his yōki into the reverse scale tucked inside his sleeve. The scale's temperature rapidly cooled, and a gentle, glossy green glow rose to its surface.
[Venomous Dragon Reverse Scale: Affection +3]
[It has quieted. It finds this sensation of being tempered by lightning quite conducive to improving its quality. It has decided to hold off on releasing toxic miasma, for now.]
"As expected. Only competition breeds motivation."
Shinji looked at the two objects in his hands, then at the demon blade across his knees, and muttered to himself. Without introducing Muramasa as a fierce rival, the Affection growth for these two items had long since hit a plateau.
Yura had been stuck at 30 for ages, and the reverse scale had stalled at 44. But now? The moment a sense of crisis kicked in, their progress bars had started rocketing forward.
[Sakasagami no Yura: Current Affection — 47]
[Venomous Dragon Reverse Scale: Current Affection — 49]
Both were charging straight for the 50-point threshold, the key to unlocking a second innate ability.
"You'd both better work hard," Shinji said, addressing the items in his hands with the solemn, heartfelt tone of a ruthless capitalist. "Muramasa is my weapon. If you two don't step up, from now on, I'm only taking the sword when I go out."
The comb shuddered violently. The reverse scale blazed with green light.
[Sakasagami no Yura: Affection +3]
[Current Affection: 50]
[Second Innate Ability Unlocked: Hair-Binding, The yōki infused into the comb can be converted into resilient hair-threads capable of mid-range binding and cutting. The strength of the threads scales with the potency of the infused yōki.]
[Venomous Dragon Reverse Scale: Affection +2]
[Current Affection: 51]
[Second Innate Ability Unlocked: Miasma, When worn, it can generate a barrier of poisonous mist spanning several meters in diameter. It can both insulate against external toxins and actively release toxic miasma.]
Done. Two notification chimes rang out nearly simultaneously.
Shinji put away the comb and the scale with satisfaction, then turned his attention back to Muramasa. The blade was still eating. And it was eating with even greater relish now, as if openly mocking the two defeated rivals.
In the corner of the side hall, Kikyō was polishing her longbow by candlelight. She had heard the commotion from his side and tilted her head slightly, glancing at the pile of objects in his hands, each one glowing or vibrating in turn. Those dark eyes of hers held only the faintest trace of emotion, yet carried something indefinable.
"Still so lively," she said. Her voice gave no indication whether the comment was praise or censure.
Shinji looked up. The violet veins in his crimson demon eyes receded. "They're all a handful," he replied, his tone perfectly natural.
"If they're too much trouble… you could always throw them away."
Kikyō lowered her head and continued polishing the bow. Her white miko robes looked especially soft in the candlelight, but the words she spoke carried a distinct chill.
"That won't do." Shinji tucked the comb and scale away, sliding Muramasa back into its sheath. "They're the family fortune. It'd be a shame to toss them."
Kikyō's hands paused, just for a beat.
"Do as you like."
She said nothing more. Only the pace of her polishing quickened, ever so slightly.
Shinji watched her profile. The candlelight traced the elegant line of her jaw; her long lashes cast soft shadows beneath her eyes.
That fleeting blend of cool detachment and quiet petulance, it was deeply endearing.
After a moment's thought, he reached into his robes and pulled out the prayer beads he had taken from Tsubaki. They'd shown no signs of activity all this time.
"Here." He placed the beads on the floor and slid them toward her. "These haven't stirred yet. Would you like to try nurturing them with your reiryoku?"
Kikyō lifted her gaze. She glanced at the string of beads, then at Shinji.
"Those belonged to Tsubaki."
"They're spoils of war now."
"I don't use things tainted with lingering grudges."
Her refusal was crisp and decisive. But the very next second, she reached out anyway. Her fingertip touched the beads. A wave of pure reiryoku rippled outward, washing through the dark string of beads in an instant.
The grudge within emitted a sound like a shriek, then dissipated into nothing.
[Tahōtō Miko Prayer Beads: Residual Obsession remains, but the Grudge has been cleansed.]
"Clean now." Kikyō withdrew her hand and went back to polishing her bow. "You nurture them yourself."
Shinji picked up the beads. He could feel the clear, empty resonance within, ready to be filled with whatever power he chose to pour in.
The corner of his mouth tugged upward.
Was that… tsundere?
Kikyō could actually be tsundere…
But in any case, whether it was people or objects, as long as all their progress bars were climbing, that was a good thing.