Night had deepened.
The candles inside the shrine hall were still burning, their light wavering across the paper screens in slow, restless patterns.
Kōbe Hikaru sat cross-legged on the veranda, a cloth in hand, carefully wiping down Muramasa.
The blade's violet light was subdued, coiled inward — but the trembling hunger it radiated passed through his palm and sank all the way into his bones. Like a starving ghost that could never be fed enough.
Its Affection was maxed out. But Kōbe Hikaru had never been the type to discard a weapon the moment it outlived its immediate usefulness.
He was sentimental like that.
Fragment shards of other weapons he'd once used — all of them maxed out on Affection — were still on his person somewhere. He wasn't about to treat a blade that had been with him this long like a piece of worn-out trash just because the meter was full.
Kikyō sat across from him, a foot of space between them, her fingers working at several strips of white paper cut into human shapes.
"That old man," Kōbe Hikaru said, not looking up, the question rolling out casually. "Why did he come to you?"
The question was vague, untethered — but Kikyō understood immediately.
He meant the elder of the Demon Slayer village. The one who had died on Kōbe Hikaru's back.
"Because he trusted me."
Kikyō set down the scissors. A pale glow bloomed at her fingertips as she breathed out a thread of spiritual power.
The paper figure puffed up as if inflated, then drifted upright on the table, light as a feather.
Kōbe Hikaru glanced at it. Didn't dwell on it.
"Seven years ago, there was a plague outbreak in Musashi Province," she said. "The source was a pestilence-demon that had grown into something formidable. I was still young then — I passed through that village by chance and purified it along the way."
She said it lightly. Offhandedly.
Kōbe Hikaru's hands stilled for just a moment.
Seven years ago.
How old had she been? Ten? Eleven?
And she'd already been capable of purifying a pestilence-demon.
A natural-born genius, if ever there was one — the kind the heavens themselves decided to bless. Pestilence-demons, after all, were among the more troublesome variety of demon in this era. Whether born from corpses or from accumulated resentment, they were considerably harder to deal with than low-grade animal-yōkai. Few of them rose to become high-ranking demons, but as a rule, they were at least Three Changes — and capped somewhere below Six.
"The elder told me then that I had the constitution of 'purity' — a mind without distractions."
Kikyō's gaze drifted toward the wavering candleflame, her eyes going a little distant. "He said — if the day ever came when he grew too old to suppress the Shikon Jewel in his keeping, he would entrust it to me. That when that time came, perhaps only I would be able to guard it properly."
"Good judgment on his part."
Kōbe Hikaru slid Muramasa back into its sheath with a clean, crisp click.
"Not just because you're capable in a fight. Because you really are pure."
Kikyō glanced at him.
She didn't argue.
But she had the distinct feeling that what this Ghost Warrior meant by 'pure' was not quite the same thing the village elder had meant.
"And you?" she asked, her voice level and unhurried.
"You are a Ghost Warrior. And yet you carry yourself like a… wandering ronin."
"I'm someone who's died once," Kōbe Hikaru said.
He leaned back against the pillar, not bothering to fabricate a more convenient story. "When I came back to myself, I was in a pile of corpses. A spear through my chest. My head full of nothing but fog — and a single stubborn thought that I didn't want to be a beast."
That much was the truth.
The memories of a traveler from another world — those were what had made him who he was now.
Kikyō nodded once, and didn't press further.
In a world at war, everyone had a past they didn't want to talk about.
"The elder's remains…"
Kikyō shifted course. "They're still in that cave on the mountain?"
"Yes."
"They need to be brought back."
"I know."
Kōbe Hikaru nodded.
"Did he have any belongings on him?" Kikyō asked.
"The situation was urgent. I only took the Shikon Jewel."
He cast his mind back carefully to the scene.
The old man, collapsed inside the cave. Left arm severed. Right hand locked around the Shikon Jewel.
Beyond that—
"I didn't notice anything else," he said, honestly.
Kikyō's brow furrowed slightly.
"The elder would have been carrying the heirloom of the Demon Slayer clan."
"A weapon called Hiraikotsu."
"Forged from the bones of countless demons. It is the most important battle weapon the Demon Slayer clan possesses."
Hiraikotsu.
Something moved in Kōbe Hikaru's chest — but he shook his head.
He was hardly unfamiliar with Hiraikotsu, and his interest was genuine — but the fact remained that he hadn't seen it. He'd assumed the old man simply hadn't brought it with him when he left.
But listening to Kikyō now…
"That weapon is important?" he asked.
"Extremely."
Kikyō said, "It is the Demon Slayer village's most powerful weapon. If the elder set out to escort the Shikon Jewel here, there is no possibility he would have left it behind."
"If you didn't see it, then it was lost somewhere along the road."
"If at all possible, it should be recovered and returned to the village."
Kōbe Hikaru gave a nod. He wasn't surprised.
"Then we search as we travel," he said.
He would have looked for it regardless.
…
The following morning.
The mist had not yet lifted.
At the village gate, Kaede had both hands locked around Kikyō's sleeve, her eyes ringed with red.
"Sister's leaving again…"
Kikyō was the shrine maiden who watched over Kaede's village — but even so, before all of this, she had regularly ventured out on demon-purification duties. And every time, Kaede looked exactly like this.
"I'll be back soon."
The dark-haired shrine maiden crouched down and ruffled her little sister's head, then reached into her sleeve and produced the paper figures she'd cut the night before.
The paper figure drifted to the ground. Touched by the open air, it began to grow — and in the space of a blink, it had become a white-paper child half a person's height, a small wooden stick in hand. Its features were painted on, and yet they held something startlingly alive in them.
A paper shikigami.
A form of onmyō arts — the practice of infusing an object with spiritual power to grant it temporary, directed motion. But Kikyō's execution of it was on another level entirely compared to any ordinary onmyōji.
"It will watch over the village in my place and deal with any minor demons that show up."
Kikyō stood. "And don't you go wandering off either."
Kaede sniffled, glancing from her sister to Kōbe Hikaru, who stood to the side with a hand resting on his blade.
No armor today. No demon mask.
Just the appearance of a handsome young man — apart from the slightly excessive pallor of his complexion and those unsettling eyes of his, he looked considerably more like a swordsman than anything else.
Looking at him, Kaede's tears dried up almost immediately.
"Is Sister going with Big Brother?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Then it's an elopement!"
Kaede declared it with absolute conviction.
Kōbe Hikaru nearly choked on his own breath.
Kikyō's perpetually composed expression locked up for a fraction of a second — and the tips of her ears went visibly, undeniably red.
"We are delivering someone's effects," she corrected.
"I don't believe you."
Kaede pointed at the two of them. "When you two stand next to each other, you look exactly like what the neighbor lady was talking about — what was that phrase again? Oh right — a dashing man and a beautiful woman! That means you're going off to make babies!"
"Pfft."
Kōbe Hikaru couldn't hold it in.
This little girl had a surprisingly comprehensive worldview.
He glanced sideways at Kikyō.
In the morning light, the shrine maiden stood in white and red — her expression as cool and composed as ever, but the embarrassment she was trying to hide wasn't quite making it behind the mask. The faint color at the edges of her face gave her away.
Kind of endearing, honestly.
"Let's go."
Kōbe Hikaru reached out and pressed a hand to the top of Kaede's head, spun her around in a full circle, and gave her a gentle push back toward the village.
"I'll bring you back something sweet."
"Something sweet?! The kind only the lords in the city get to eat?! Kikyō brought me some once — I want the sweetest one! The very sweetest!"
Kaede's voice trailed after them as they walked away.
Kikyō didn't look back. Her pace had quickened by several steps — the unmistakable gait of someone making a strategic retreat.
…
Out of the village, into the mountain.
The scenery transformed around them — towering ancient trees closing in on all sides, wild grass growing waist-high, the terrain folding into layer after layer of ridgelines stacked like a maze.
They walked for half an hour.
Kikyō stopped and turned to look at him.
"Are we there?"
Kōbe Hikaru surveyed his surroundings.
Every tree looked identical. Every stone looked identical. And the mountain terrain had folded itself into a labyrinth that all looked exactly the same.
Silence.
He remembered the general direction. But three days ago, when he'd come through here, he'd been running and killing at full sprint — his brain had been operating on a pure kill-or-flee frequency with no bandwidth left for memorizing landmarks.
And the terrain itself hadn't helped. After several battles, his sword-qi and the demons' assault had plowed through the landscape and rearranged it completely. It bore no resemblance to what he remembered.
"Roughly… probably…"
Kōbe Hikaru pointed in a direction. His hand wobbled slightly.
Kikyō looked at him in silence.
She said nothing.
But Kōbe Hikaru felt, for some inexplicable reason, a creeping sense of embarrassment.
It lasted until Kikyō finally let out a quiet, resigned sigh.
"You forgot."
"It's not a total blank," Kōbe Hikaru insisted stubbornly. "It's just that the trees grew too fast and blocked the path."
Kikyō looked mildly pained.
"My spiritual power can sense what's around us — but that only applies to malicious energy. An ordinary deceased body…"
She trailed off. There was nothing to be done.
Kōbe Hikaru looked around at the desolate mountain wilderness.
Not a soul in sight. Asking someone for directions was simply not an option.
But.
No people — but there were things.
Kōbe Hikaru crouched down and located a stone that looked smooth, intact, and possessed of a certain quiet dignity — the kind of stone with genuine character. He dug it free from the earth.
About the size of two fists. Heavy and solid. A thick coat of moss over its surface.
He brushed the dirt off it and held it up in front of his face with a solemn expression.
"Hey. Got a question for you."
Kikyō: "?"
She stared at Kōbe Hikaru.
This Ghost Warrior was having another episode.
Talking to the big tree and the water well back in the village had been one thing — but now he was holding a conversation with a random rock from the middle of a deserted mountain?
"Three days ago, somewhere around here — did you happen to see a Ghost Warrior moving at high speed with an old man on his back?"
Kōbe Hikaru addressed the stone with the earnest sincerity of a man catching up with a long-lost friend.
The stone, naturally, did not respond.
Kikyō pressed a hand to her forehead, visibly weighing whether to put an arrow through him as a mercy.
But Kōbe Hikaru's system panel had already moved.
This wasn't his first time doing something like this. Traveling alone through a chaotic era — no guide, no map — he had long since developed certain unconventional methods for finding his way.
[Nameless Green Stone]
[Affection: 0 (Stranger)]
[It was sleeping. You woke it up. It is annoyed.]
Kōbe Hikaru didn't give up.
He pulled a water skin from his robe, tipped a little water over the stone's surface, then used his sleeve to wipe away some of the moss.
"You looked a bit dry. Thought I'd give you a drink. And this moss — doesn't look great on you. It's blocking your sunlight."
His touch was gentle. His service, thorough.
Kikyō quietly took two steps sideways.
The look on her face was the one reserved for watching someone do something deeply unsettling.
[Nameless Green Stone: Affection +1]
[Current Affection: 1 (Goodwill)]
[It thinks: being woken up was rude — but the water was rather nice, and you seem decent enough.]
[It tells you: Three days ago, something did come through here — a figure carrying an old man on its back, cutting straight through the gully between those two lopsided trees.]
Got it.
Kōbe Hikaru set the stone carefully back in its place, even adjusting its angle slightly so it faced the sun.
"Much appreciated. See you around."
He stood, brushed off his hands, and pointed to the left ahead of them.
"That way. The gully between two crooked trees."
Kikyō looked at him. Then at the stone.
"…The stone told you?"
"This," Kōbe Hikaru said with a small smile, already moving, "is what you call asking a stone for directions."
He stepped forward, taking the lead.
"All things have spirits. With enough sincerity, even a stone will speak."
Kikyō followed behind him, watching the silhouette moving ahead of her.
Rationally, she knew it was absurd.
But…
If it was this particular strange demon — somehow, it didn't feel entirely impossible.
She glanced down at the stone he'd left behind, now wiped clean.
It did, she thought, look rather more pleasant than it had before.
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