The procession advanced along the mountain road in western Suruga. The torchlight stretched into two long serpents in the night, painting the rugged path in outlines of orange and red. The forty ashigaru marched in unison, the fine metallic clink of their armor echoing through the valley.
Shinji still walked at the very front. His gray robes flickered in and out of the firelight. His white hair hung down his back. The sheath of Muramasa at his waist swayed gently with his stride. He didn't look back at the column behind him. But he hadn't been idle.
There was a waist-high bluestone by the roadside. As he passed, his palm pressed against its surface. Yōki seeped in. He paused for a moment. "…Mn. Nice texture," he murmured to himself, and kept walking.
[Bluestone: Affection +1]
A dozen steps further on, an old cedar beside the road had a natural hollow in its trunk. He reached inside and felt around. "Not bad. Pretty warm in there."
[Old Cedar: Affection +1]
A few more steps. He pulled out the map Imagawa Yoshimoto had given him, unfolded it, studied it, folded it, unfolded it again, folded it again. Three times in total. Each time he unfolded it, he muttered something under his breath. "…Route's correct." "…Don't wrinkle." "…Decent paper quality."
[Hand-Drawn Map: Affection +1]
This scene, naturally, fell upon the eyes of a small figure trailing beside Yoshimoto's palanquin within the traveling party. A girl of just over ten years old. She was tiny, barely reaching the waists of the adult ashigaru. She wore a plain gray kosode kimono under a dark brown haori.
The clothes were clearly too large for her, the sleeves had been rolled up twice just to expose her fingertips. Her face was pleasant but unremarkable, round cheeks still carrying baby fat. Perched on her nose was something utterly anachronistic: a pair of spectacles.
Round frames. Wooden rims. The lenses were polished crystal. Such a thing was exceedingly rare in the Warring States era, seen only among the most exotic luxuries imported by the Southern Barbarians.
She wore those spectacles, blinking her slightly vacant brown eyes behind the lenses, sticking close to the palanquin, her stubby little legs pumping fast.
Matsudaira Motoyasu, Daughter and heir of the Matsudaira house of Mikawa Province. Presently ten years old. Due to Mikawa's submission to the Imagawa, she had been sent to Suruga as a political hostage. Hostage she might be, but her treatment wasn't poor.
Yoshimoto was rather fond of her. Her food, clothing, and daily necessities were better than those of most ordinary retainers' children. Only her freedom was limited, she couldn't leave the castle. This trip, Yoshimoto had made a rare exception and brought her along.
At this moment, Motoyasu stared at the gray figure up ahead who had been speaking to the rocks. Behind her spectacles, her pupils were naturally filled with utter bewilderment.
"Lady Yoshimoto," she whispered, leaning close to the gap in the palanquin's curtain. "That person at the front… has he been talking to things by the roadside?"
From within the curtains came Imagawa Yoshimoto's voice, languid, as though she'd just woken up. "Mn."
"Talking to rocks."
"Mn."
"Talking to trees too."
"Mn."
"He was talking to the map just now."
"Mn."
Motoyasu pushed her spectacles up her nose. Her voice grew even smaller. "…What an odd fellow."
She paused, then corrected herself. "Odd demon?" She thought for a moment, then shook her head to herself.
All demons were odd to begin with, weren't they? So oddness was normal? Then a normal demon would actually be abnormal? So this was actually normal for him? The thought spiraled three times inside her head until she confused herself entirely.
From within the curtains came a soft hmph. "Motoyasu." Yoshimoto's voice held a trace, only a trace of poorly concealed pride. "That isn't oddness."
"What is it, then?"
A folding fan extended through the gap in the curtain and pointed toward that gray silhouette at the front. "He once described himself this way: 'One who has seen the vastness of the world, yet still cherishes the green of a single blade of grass.' I find this deeply fitting." Yoshimoto's voice was neither loud nor soft, but her diction was exquisitely clear.
"An existence capable of slaying great demons, confronting a God of War in battle, and bending a hundred yōkai to his service, yet still willing to crouch down and speak with a mere stone. That kind of existence… is truly remarkable."
Motoyasu blinked. "…Is that really so?"
"Naturally." Yoshimoto's tone was firm and confident, though she herself probably couldn't quite articulate where that confidence came from.
Motoyasu didn't argue. She couldn't. She simply pushed her spectacles up in silence, thinking a single unspeakable thought to herself. The 'filter' in your heart, my lady… is far, far too thick.
But she was a hostage. The most important quality for a hostage was keeping one's mouth shut. So she shut her mouth and continued trotting beside the palanquin on her short little legs, enjoying this rare outing.
Inside the curtains, Imagawa Yoshimoto lowered her fan and leaned back against the cushions once more. The collar of her deep blue kosode kimono was slightly parted. Her cleavage was faintly visible in the dim yellow lantern light of the palanquin. The rise and fall above and below the cinched sash was further defined by her reclining posture.
She was no longer watching Motoyasu. She was watching the gray silhouette beyond the curtain gap. The silhouette walking at the very head of over fifty souls. The silhouette that never looked back.
Yoshimoto knew exactly when she had first begun to take notice of this demon warrior. It was that night. The night the thunder-beast coiled beneath the capital, the entire castle shrouded in a thunderstorm.
She had huddled in the tenshukaku, carrying the fear and frustration of an entire city. And then, a gray figure had descended from the heavens and severed the lightning with a single stroke.
That blade was later enshrined at the highest point of her castle. That figure later vanished into the night. Afterward, desperate to find him again, she had not hesitated to reignite war with the Hōjō. In the end, she got her wish, and forged their pact.
Then came Uesugi's southern invasion. The Hōjō besieged. The Kantō shaken. She mobilized five thousand men for an expedition against Echigo. That plan, it hadn't been her idea. It was the very strategy that demon warrior had laid out on the day they sealed their agreement. A strategy proposed by a yōkai.
He had sat in the main hall of her palace and, using maps and sand tables, explained a strategic concept that far surpassed anything conceived by any military mind of this era.
"Uesugi has committed all her forces here. Her rear, Echigo, is empty. The Imagawa have ships. Sail north from Suruga along the inland sea, round Sado, and land on Echigo's coast."
She remembered those words clearly. Not because the plan itself was brilliant. But because the one who spoke them, a demon warrior barely months out of a pile of corpses, had looked at her without contempt, without exploitation.
Only with utterly equal, utter seriousness. He had treated her as a collaborator worthy of entrusting a plan to. Not a girl who needed protecting. Not a daimyō who could be exploited. A partner who could understand him. Who could execute his strategy.
That feeling, Yoshimoto was unwilling to use the word "love" to describe it. Too frivolous. Too unlike her. She would only acknowledge… favor. Exceptionally high favor. High enough that watching him talk to a stone seemed entirely reasonable. High enough to describe "a demon chatting with a rock" with the phrase "one who has seen the vastness of the world, yet still cherishes the green of a single blade of grass."
A filter it indeed was. What she saw might well be an illusion. She knew this. But she didn't care.
Yoshimoto rested her fan upon her chest and closed her eyes. The palanquin swayed gently along the mountain path. The rhythmic footsteps of the ashigaru and the clinking of their armor became the perfect lullaby.
She hadn't slept this peacefully in a very long time. Because someone was walking ahead. At the very least, this sense of security was real.
Halfway through the hour, the procession halted at a flat stretch along the mountain road. The lead samurai directed the ashigaru to set up camp. It wasn't a true encampment, merely a few bonfires built in the clearing beside the road.
The packhorses were tethered, and night watches were rotated. In the late-autumn mountains, the cold dew was heavy. Continuing forward was ill-advised. Moisture in the air condensed on the blades of grass, refracting the firelight into tiny scattered gleams.
The surrounding temperature had dropped low enough that every exhale misted visibly white. The ashigaru huddled around the bonfires, wrapped in their straw rain capes. The palanquin was parked at the innermost position, ringed by two layers of fire and human walls.
Motoyasu was curled up on a straw mat beside the palanquin, her haori wrapped tight around her small body. Her round spectacles had been removed and placed upon her lap. Without them, her face seemed even smaller. She was already asleep. Her breathing was steady. A grain of rice from dinner still clung to the corner of her mouth.
Inside the curtains, Yoshimoto was not asleep. Her deep blue kosode kimono was utterly insufficient against the night chill. She had wrapped the palanquin's sole thin blanket around her shoulders and drawn her knees up.
She clutched her fan, her chin resting on her knees. She was cold. She didn't want anyone to see she was cold. But she was, undeniably, cold. The pampered ruler of Suruga Province, for the first time in her life, was spending a night in the wilderness.
Then, footsteps sounded beyond the curtain. Very soft. Barely audible. The curtain was lifted from the outside. Shinji crouched outside the palanquin. His crimson demon eyes glowed faintly in the firelight.
"Cold?" He could tell. No words were needed. Though he wouldn't call himself a "gentle" person, Shinji had long grown accustomed to the Affection System. He wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to earn some favor. Whether people… or objects. Habit had become nature.
Yoshimoto didn't answer. Her chin still rested on her knees. The thin blanket wrapped her shoulders. Only half her face was visible. But the stubbornness written on that half-face was clear enough. I am not cold.
Shinji nearly laughed aloud. But he said nothing more. He simply extended his right hand, fingers spread. A flame kindled in his palm. Ghostfire. The eerie, green-tinged flame of the firefly demon rose from his hand, just the right size to hold.
Its temperature was low, it wouldn't burn, but it was more than enough to drive away the bone-damp chill of the cold dew. That flame hovered above his palm, its glow soft, bathing the interior of the palanquin in warm hues.
Yoshimoto's gaze fell upon that flame. The ghostly green light reflected in her amber pupils. It reflected off her fair cheeks as well. By all appearances, it should have been eerie. She should have been afraid. But she didn't know why, that sense of fear never came.
Still, she said nothing. She merely shifted her blanket-wrapped body. Quietly. Imperceptibly. Shifting toward the side where the curtain had been lifted. Toward that ghostfire. Toward his hand. The edge of the blanket brushed his fingers.
Yoshimoto's fingers slipped out from beneath the blanket and came to rest over the back of his flame-bearing hand. Very softly. Her fingertips were delicate and smooth. The instant they touched his skin, they flinched back, then returned.
Hovering just above the back of his hand. Not holding. Not grasping. Just suspended there, a hair's breadth away, not quite touching. The ghostfire flickered between their hands, its dark crimson light staining that small space a color entirely different from the surrounding night.
The corner of Yoshimoto's mouth twitched. "…It's tolerable," she said, her tone still stubborn. "You didn't need to do this. I wasn't that cold."
Shinji: "…"
Speechless as he was, he didn't move. The ghostfire in his palm continued to burn. Until Yoshimoto's breathing grew slow and even. Until the tension in her fingers loosened.
She had fallen asleep. Her fingertips still rested over the back of his hand. Shinji watched her for two seconds. He raised the ghostfire's warmth just a little higher, fixed it there, like a lamp.
Then he gently lowered the curtain. He turned. Walked back to the head of the column. Resumed his vigil. Resumed his "cultivation."