As I learned more about Goto Onsen, I was less surprised that I had so easily been able to spring in through a hole in the wooden walls to escape the rain.
The place was part ruin and part fortress. The structure of it was wooden and teetering, seeming more a wooden scaffold with some boards lashed to it than an actual edifice. The foundations were stone and solid, or at least as solid as one could expect on the back of a seismic, volcanic island chain. Goto Onsen had been built right on top of naturally-occuring hotsprings, and the smooth, stone kettles that housed the springs had existed in that place, more or less unchanged, for a millennia. The kettles were peppered across a rocky slope, so it had been easy to build the multi-tier onsen buildings along the slope, using gravity to route hot watter from the higher pools down into man-made baths, or the larger, more tepid kettles futher down the slope.
At the higher levels of the onsen, the natural outdoor pools were fenced-in, and a stream was diverted so that they could be used as outdoor rotenburo baths. Lower down, the natural pools had been built into the structure of the bath house, and the piping hot water from the hotter, higher pools was mixed with the tepid water of the lower pools. These lowest baths were completely sealed in, and then insulated by the cedar of the building above and around them. They were always kept dark, and—with the heat—had a distinctly grotto feel to them.
It was no surprise that this was the level on which the monstrous mukade has first been spotted. Dark, It was dark, humid, and warm. On paper, it was just the kind of thing a mukade would love.
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Author's Note: Trying something new. I'm just going to post as far as I get with writing in a lunch period, whether I finishe the chapter or not. I'm sorry that I didn't get further, and I'm sorry if that's frustrating :P
Rest assured that I already know how things are going to shake out with Yuki and the Mukade, I just don't want to rush it.
YOU ARE READING
Yuki the Cat
HumorThis is a story about a cat that might not be a cat, and the ridiculous things he/she attempts to convince his/her owner that she/he is sentient. It was inspired by Diana's actual interactions with her cat and my realization that her cat was trying...
