Ink Stained

56: the reason why*

She knew the only reason Kouta and the other men weren't here, in Kyoto, was because Daitengu were supposed to spend the ten years after their initiation training and preparing themselves to actually be Daitengu, separate from the main village. Because Hokkaido was Tengu territory, the Daitengu trained and lived there, in Sapporo. Kouta had decided to extend their stay in Sapporo until Shiori finished her last two years of high school.

While Pai was wonderstruck but still relatively calm, Shiori was going insane with panic.

"Why are you so calm, Pai-chan? Why?"

She tilted her head to the side. "I do not understand."

"No, the better question is – how aren't you freaking out right now?"

She shook her head as she straightened the deep purple sash around her middle, smoothing out the wrinkles it made in the blue homongi she wore. She wasn't about to admit that she had asked Kuniumi to make her not feel so nervous, and made her swear not to use her body the way Kuniumi was sometimes apt to.

Whatever else Kuniumi was, she kept her promises. Pai could count on that, at the very least.

"I do not understand why I need to be freaking out."

"Because I did!" Shiori exclaimed, jumping up from leaning on the wall of Pai's guest bedroom. "I was crazy nervous and terrified to be here the first time, and you're being so calm like it's not a big deal."

She still didn't get it. It wasn't because of Kuniumi's influence, but more like she genuinely didn't understand.

"Shii-chan, what is the difference? I have been living with Daitengu in the same house for over a year now. Everyone here thinks I am a stray Tengu Kouta-sama picked up from home because of this," she reached up and tapped the pendant hanging on a red leather thong around her neck. She couldn't feel anything from it herself, but since nobody had approached her, she thought it was safe to assume that the pendant worked. "Unless I take it off, I am not in any danger of anyone finding out I am human. Why would I be scared, then?"

Shiori gaped at her cold logic, her eyes big in disbelief. She didn't seem able to comprehend Pai's total lack of emotional reaction to the fact that they had just arrived at the main village where most Tengu lived in Kyoto.

Practically the second they'd stepped off the plane, Haru and Ryosuke got the two girls in a car and drove non-stop till they reached the foot of Mount Kurama. It was a hike to get close to the peak of the mountain, just under which the main village stood.

From there, they met what Haru had called a gatekeeper, a middle-aged Tengu man who gave each of them an old coin that they had to flip into the river nearby before proceeding. Pai hadn't understood why, and thought it was all for ceremony and tradition.

It took crossing the small bridge over the river for her to realize that flipping the coin into the water gave them leave to step through a magical barrier that surrounded the village. Ryosuke explained that the coins had magic imbued in them, demonstrating that their path was a shortcut by folding a piece of paper he dug out of his pocket in half, and punching a pencil through it.

The barrier served multiple purposes. For one, it obscured human ability to sense, find, and enter the main village that stood on a large expanse of slightly sloping land that jutted out from the side of the mountain. Without the coin, humans would just keep wandering around and never find the village.

With the coin, tossing it into the river and crossing the bridge, the distance needed to travel warped and was cut in half. As soon as they stepped off the bridge, they were at the edge of the village near a small house where lived a second gatekeeper, who gave each of them another coin they could use to leave the village when they wanted to.