Save Me From The Monsters (TomoeXReader) • Completed •

The Friend

I was up all night thinking about this chapter lol.

Chapter 7: The Friend

8 years later

Word Count: 1772

My brother stands before me, a soft smile on his lips as he watches me imitate his teachings with a bamboo shaft in hand. I look to him for guidance as I attempt to copy his skilled swordsmanship.

"No no (y/n), its like this," he says, his voice morphing into a lower tone as he ages. His skin takes on a gray undertone and his eyes turn yellow. With the katana he swings, killing both of my parents in one blow. Advancing toward me. I shout at him to stop, to snap out of it. He swings once more, barely missing my head.

The blade lodges into my shoulder and I cry out. He looks at me with those ugly eyes that I despise and he leaves me to die alone.

@@@@@@

I wake in a cold sweat as I shake off the terror from the nightmare. Silent tears dot my eyes.

They're getting worse

My reoccurring nightmare of my brother, a still image of his disfigured form. Becoming a yokai made him hideous. Mikage tells me that when a human becomes a yokai, the process either kills them, or turns them into the beast represents their soul. My brother took the form of a rat because his soul was corrupted and evilness had consumed him far before I was aware of it.

I've asked Mikage how to stop these awful dreams, but he tells me that it is something I have to find for myself.

I lift myself out of bed and wander to the front of the shrine. Sitting here, in front of the shrine while the moon shines down and the wind blows lightly always calms me after a nightmare.

The thing I love most about the night since I became inhuman, besides of course the soft breath of wind as it rustles sakura petals and tickles my neck, the feeling that the moon and I, and a few fireflies are all that's left of the world, and seeing every part of it through eyes that are new, is the knowledge that I am the monster I used to fear.

The fear of yokai used to keep people of my mountainous village safe.

Lock the doors at night,

Never stay out past sunset,

Sacred laws among my people.

These came from stories of yokai entrancing young women of my village to step into the night with them, to which they would never return. Groups of men would chase after them, only to go missing along with their wives and daughters.

My experience with the night was fleeting.

I only ever once saw the stars before the night my brother came and set our quiet village aflame.

The thing I love most about becoming a yokai is the freedom it gives me, the power it gives me over fear. A time that was once filled with hushed voices and dark houses and monsters that lurked in the night has evolved into a time where I feel the most free, where I feel like I can truly breath.

A time I consider my place of comfortable solitude.

I walk down the cobble stone path that leads to the small koi pond that lies in a courtyard behind the shrine. My bare feet make little noise against the decorative rock as fireflies dance in the tall flowers and owls sing, perched in their nests.

And just like most nights, with the nightmare I just had, I could use some comfortable solitude.

The wind whistles around me, and I take a strand hair in my fingers, mumbling the lullaby that my mother would sing to my brother and me as we fell asleep. That, of course was a long time ago. When we got older, my brother and I would sing it together when we went out to the forest to climb trees.