文字列を添付
Kouta was curious about a lot of things. Admittedly, that wasn't exactly an unusual thing – he was always curious – but this was different, because there were certain dangers involved that he couldn't discern.
That wasn't a good position to be in.
Things were relatively calm now – as much as it could be, when he had to watch Pai and Shiori come to terms with the fact that they knew why Motomi Shiharu had killed herself – but that didn't mean he could be lax now. There were still so many things he needed to look deeper into, to find the answers to, because he didn't know when the next thing that happened could have been prevented if only he'd had answers.
He wanted to know what happened to Pai in the three years of her disappearance, what exactly had been bad enough for her to get the Marie-Antoinette Syndrome, and why she wanted to die after she'd been poisoned by the Onihitokuchi and possibly locked in her own mind, with those memories. He wanted to know who the woman in her subconscious was that Shiori told him about, the one that cried tears of blood. That especially was something that disturbed him greatly. Kanou said that it wasn't normal, for something such as that to happen.
A part of him he couldn't help but wonder if he had, really, made a mistake in letting Pai stay with them. He saw her as a little sister now, someone he wanted to protect and keep safe – but the mysteries surrounding her past couldn't be ignored just because he wasn't sure he wanted to know what answers lurked there. Most concerning of that was the disappearance of the Momozono family, leaving not a trace of their existence behind.
And the more concerning part of that was, how the hell could it be that all the people who once knew the Momozono's couldn't remember them any more?
Still, he couldn't deny the fact that Pai was here had been a good thing. She'd somehow survived the Torimaku and gotten Shin's True Ayakashi under control again without suffering any grievous bodily harm of her own. He wanted to know how she'd done it – he knew what Shin's True Ayakashi was like – but he was grateful that she had somehow done it. That wasn't the only reason he was glad for Pai's presence in their lives; it was just something he couldn't ignore, either.
He wasn't sure how he felt about Shin admitting that Shinigami was more than a little curious about her, though. The little he'd seen of Shinigami told him that it was best that he and Pai remained as far apart from each other as possible.
Shinigami's interest in Pai did raise an interesting flag, too. True Ayakashi were parts of Hengen that were locked away, but they were still part of the whole. That Shinigami would be curious enough about her that Shin consciously realized that meant, in some way, something about Pai had piqued Shin's interest as well.
That was...something to keep an eye on, at the very least.
He wanted to know why the Onihitokuchi targeted Pai specifically. There were plenty of other humans around at the time, easier to get to than Pai was. He wanted to know why the Onihitokuchi had lain in wait; only coming out when Pai was alone. Why hadn't her aura worked to repel the Oni from her?
Asking the Oni Council about it would be pointless as well as ineffective. They wouldn't answer his questions, for there were as many Shimo Oni as there were Yori Chiisai, whose numbers were incalculable. Even if they had a way to track down and keep watch over every Oni in the world, they would see Kouta's asking them why the Onihitokuchi and Amanojaku targeted two people under his protection as a weakness.
Just like with Hengen, allowing Oni to sniff out any weakness was dangerous. Letting them know that Pai, a human, was under his care would be doubly stupid and a complete waste of time and energy. It would only endanger her life, and she'd been through enough as it was.
There was also the curiosity of why Konohana, who Shiori was a Chimei Yoki of, had gone to Pai instead of Shiori to give her Shin's Mask. He knew that Konohana's reason was because Pai was the least likely to think to use Shin's true name against him. But why had Konohana not gone to her own Chimei Yoki? As far as Shiori and he were aware, Konohana had never even so much as approached Shiori, for anything.
He knew there was no way Pai could be Konohana's Chimei Yoki. Kamigami could only claim a human as their mortal vessel once, and it always had to be the same soul of the human whom they could use. Konohana had been taking Hiyori's reincarnations – now Shiori – as her Chimei Yoki for nigh on five thousand years, even if she seemed to be largely ignoring Shiori now.
But why hadn't she gone to Shiori? Why go to Pai, whom she didn't know? Or hopefully didn't, at least. He didn't want the Kamigami sticking their noses into any of his business so much as he could help it.
It was still a little weird that they hadn't reached out to him to get the full story of how Shin lost his Mask and why he attacked and killed the Nue. He didn't like them in his business, but that didn't stop the arrogant gods doing what they wanted under the guise of it being their 'duty'. Kouta had expected them to come asking questions as soon as it happened – and yet, a month had passed and they hadn't shown up.
The Kamigami's job was to keep the balance of the world, to make sure no one race stepped out of line, right down to the individual. They seemed to be doing a pretty shit job of it, as far as he was concerned.
He wanted to know a lot of things, yet he found himself unable to find the answers to even one mystery. That fact irritated him beyond words. It meant that there was room for making mistakes. Mistakes, as his father had so often said to him growing up, walked hand-in-hand with weakness. That was not something he could afford to let waltz into their lives.
Now Kouta had one more thing to add to his growing list of unanswered questions; why Yori Chiisai were gaining in strength where they had previously been one of the weakest supernatural creatures in the world, with even Shimo Oni being infinitesimally stronger than them. Motomi Shiharu's death was not supposed to have happened – at least, not the way it did. Humans dying at the hands of Yori Chiisai wasn't uncommon, but the manner of Motomi's death, and what Shiori and Pai, as well as Haru and Shouta, had said about it disconcerted him.
On a night when he should have been enjoying the calmness of an early spring evening, these questions and worries instead swirled around in his head, never leaving him with a moment's peace.
The moon over his head was almost full. The sky above was a deep navy blue, dotted with only a few glittering stars along its empty, entirely cloudless expanse. It was the end of winter, and the grounds of the house had been swept clean of any lingering snow earlier that day. He and Shin were sitting up on the roof, facing the forest that stretched out before Ayashi House in an endless dark field of high-rising trees.
In the distance, if he concentrated, he could hear the honking of cars and the chattering of millions of humans in the city, but he blocked all that out. All he willingly let himself hear was the sound of the night creatures in the forest, the occasional owl that shot out from the condensed branches of the trees to patrol the area around it in search of prey, the night creatures of the land burrowing through the roots as winter slowly gave way to their sources of food.
It'll be full by tomorrow, he thought to himself, staring up at the luminescence of the moon hovering over their heads like a huge bird of prey.
He wondered if he had any saké left in the stores. He was sure he did, but it wouldn't be surprising if the men had already made their way through all of it, after everything with the Torimaku ended. They didn't often drink to their hearts content, but when they did, the Daitengu tended to go overboard. Daichi, Jirou, and Shin were the only ones who didn't get drunk like the others did. Daichi and Jirou avoided drinking more than a few cups of saké. As far as he knew, only Shin was unable to get completely intoxicated, no matter how much he drank.
Kouta had tried, on multiple occasions, to get Shin drunk. He wasn't even sure Shin had a limit to his tolerance of alcohol. He'd seen Shin pretend to be drunk when around the others, but that was only not to spoil the mood. When it was just the two of them, Shin could drink cup after cup of saké and not even get mildly woozy, long after Kouta already passed out.
It was weird. And annoying. Kouta hated it.
He sighed. Now was not the time to be thinking on whether he had any saké left. There was time aplenty for that. Later.
"Motomi Shiharu." Kouta murmured, thinking about what Haru and Shouta, then later that night Pai, accompanied by Daichi, had told him on what happened at the train station the previous week. He sat back with his arms braced behind him. "Did you find out why she did it?"
"Depression." Shin replied, toneless. "What else."
Kouta glanced at him from the corner of his eye. Perhaps he didn't come and say it outright, but he knew Shin hated people who threw away their lives so easily. He knew it wasn't that Shin was heartless – he just had a hard time accepting people who gave up, even if he could understand the circumstances that drove them to such extremes.
Pai and Shiori were devastated by what they'd seen, and rightly so. The experience was a horrific one, more so for Pai since she was in the bathroom and was forced to watch while Teke Teke somehow manipulated Shiharu into killing herself in such a way.
From Shin's flat voice, though, he could have been talking about an ant that got squished under someone's boot rather than a human being crushed to death by an oncoming train.
He wondered how much of Shin he was talking to right now. Kouta knew that Shinigami hated humans because of how weak he saw them as. Shin's attitude to Shiharu's death made him question if the two were separated as much as they had once been.
"What's the story?" he eventually asked.
Shin twirled his tanto blade between his hands with effortless ease, elbow propped up on his knee with the other stretched out in front of him. Kouta noticed that Shin was gripping the edge of his white Mask with his free hand, almost unconsciously, as he spoke. He frowned slightly, recalling the curt responses Shin gave him when informing him that he was leaving the house for a week.
"Her parents got divorced a year ago. Mother abandoned Motomi-san with her father, who remarried three months later."
"Affair?" Kouta asked.
Shin nodded. "The new woman is a foreigner from Italy, Lupa Anna. There's even another kid from her, a six-month old boy. The new wife didn't like her husband's tag-along daughter in her family. Made life difficult at home for Motomi-san because of it. Still," he snapped the knife up and down, the sound of the blade swishing through the air the only obviously audible sound besides Shin's voice. "That's not what snapped her. Besides Teke Teke."
"What was it?" Kouta prompted when he didn't say anything.
"Before the divorce," Shin continued. "A relative from Motomi-san's mother's side went to visit. Male, late thirties, middle-class, with a family of his own in Aomori. A wife, two kids, girl and boy, both excelling in school. He raped Motomi-san. That's what attracted Teke Teke to her."
"What?" Kouta asked, sitting up a little straighter and staring.
Shin nodded, though he continued to watch the glinting blade as he swung the tanto up and down. Kouta's stomach curled sickeningly as Shin went on.
"When she told her mother, she didn't believe her, claiming that she was trying to stop the divorce." Shin's lip curled in disgust, whether at the mother or relative, Kouta didn't know. Probably both. "She didn't tell her father, either. She didn't tell anyone."
"Teke Teke used the darkness in her to get her to kill herself." Kouta finished, repulsed by the situation the girl had been thrown in. Sometimes, he found himself truly hating the human race, even though he knew Ayakashi could be just as bad. It disgusted him that a man could do that to such a young girl. "If she didn't tell anyone, how do you know?"
Shin shot him a deadpan look, tanto caught in a pinch between his thumb and forefinger.
Kouta lifted his hands up in mock defence. "To be fair, that's quite a lot to have found out in such a short time, Shin."
"Motomi-san looked for outside help through the internet." Shin replied eventually, going back to playing with the tanto. "She didn't try to hide it. I used my connections to get other clues and pieced them together."
Kouta paused. "Them?"
Shin nodded. "I left them almost ten years ago, but that doesn't mean those I left behind accept it." His lips twitched as he flicked the knife up and caught the hilt before the point of the blade could put his eye out. "They still think of me as theirs. Sometimes I use that to get help from them."
"They don't have a problem with it?"
He shook his head. "I've done enough for them that my queries come back answered and with no threats. I am not indebted to them." The tanto swept around the diameter of his palm in one, smooth rounded circle. Kouta was impressed that Shin managed the manoeuvre without slicing into the back of his hand. "They know what I can do to them if they try to ask more of me."
"Hm." Kouta mumbled contemplatively, rendered momentarily speechless at the dark tone in Shin's voice. It wasn't often that Shin spoke like that, but when he did, Kouta knew that Shin was playing on a very thin line between him and his True Ayakashi.
He didn't know much about those that Shin spoke of. All he really did know was that they were a group of Ayakashi who had set aside their differences and worked together, Hengen of each Clan banding together without the prejudices born of the bloody history shared between them.
They called themselves the Yakuza Ayakashi, worlds apart from the human gangsters who stole the name 'yakuza' from them in the first place. They were in a league of their own, and their reach was global.
To join them meant becoming one of them, and staying that way, until death. The tattoos decorating Shin were testament of the fact. He wasn't sure how Shin had left them without being targeted for a death sentence, and though he wanted to know, he never asked. The only reason Shin left them was because he had come to save his people from slaughter nine years ago, and had stayed to serve as Daitengu to his Heir, Kouta.
The memory was a sore one, and not one he wanted to remind Shin of.
Shin twirled the knife three more times around his hand before tucking it into his boot. Kouta watched as his eyes dropped down to the white Mask tied around his wrist with a narrowed look. It was as if he was only then noticing that he was holding onto the trailing end of the Mask in a tight grip.
He eased his fingers around the Mask, visibly forcing himself to relax with a knit frown on his face. He laid down on the roof with his hands laced together under the back of his head, right leg still propped up with his foot tapping to an unheard beat.
"Did you ever ask them about the Momozono's?" Kouta asked, drawing the conversation away from the memory of the Kitsune's attack on the Tengu.
A pause, eyes remaining fixed on the starless blanket of sky overhead. "I did."
Kouta raised his eyebrows in surprise. "And?"
A dark look crossed over Shin's face as he scowled, but not at him. "The only clue about what happened to her family lies is in her own memories of it. Everything else has been scrubbed clean."
The way he phrased it caught Kouta's attention.
"What does that mean, exactly?" Kouta asked warily.
Shin glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "It means that the Momozono family died in a car crash. Every single one of them."
Kouta frowned. "Pai-chan is alive."
"That's the point." Shin replied. Leaking into his voice was only a bare fraction of the frustration he felt at repeatedly coming up to dead-ends when looking into the vanished family. "The official records say that the Momozono's died in a car accident while visiting friends at Asahikawa. Momozono Akiko, Yamato, Midori, and Pai. All killed. There were no survivors – but she's not dead."
"It's not possible that the official records are mistaken, is it?"
"No." He replied bluntly. "Maybe if it's just one person, but a whole family?" he shook his head at the very idea. "Humans aren't that incompetent. The only way to find out what happened to her family, what the records are lying about, is for her to remember what happened."
"Someone could have doctored them. But why?"
"Exactly," Shin said. "Why? There's also her amnesia to consider, and the only hint as to how she lost her memories points at the Onmyoji."
Kouta eyebrows shot up, and he didn't bother to hide his shock. "Onmyoji?"
"They know how to mess with a person's memory." Shin reasoned.
"How do you know that?" he asked, surprise colouring his voice. Onmyoji were rare, and knowing what abilities they had was hard to find out.
"I came across them, once or twice."
"I doubt they would have told you that they can do something like that," Kouta remarked when he didn't go on to add anything more.
Shin chuckled lowly. "I learned that the hard way. They thought I was looking for them, and tried to make me forget I ever saw them. That's how I know." There was a trace of amusement laced in his voice. It was something Kouta hadn't heard a long while time. The faint smile on his face melted. "August the sixteenth, five twenty-nine past midday. End of total recall, six forty-six."
"What's that?" Kouta asked, confused, though the date struck a chord with him. Something had happened on that day. He was sure of it. There was a festival on that date, he knew as much, but that wasn't what sounded familiar to him.
"She said that, in the Torimaku."
"Pai?" he asked, half his attention of on Shin while the other half tried to remember the significance of that date. Shin nodded in affirmation. "You remember that?"
Shin shook his head. "No. He's still blocking me from remembering everything, but he told me she said that."
Toro Nagashi. August the sixteenth was when the Toro Nagashi festival took place. Kouta clicked his fingers as he finally remembered. "August the sixteenth is when she disappeared, isn't it?"
"Yes." Shin pushed himself up from the roof, one arm slung around his knee as he looked at Kouta. "Five twenty-nine past midday is 17.29 PM. That's likely when she disappeared, exactly. The way she lost her memories, up to a point, is too specific. Whatever kind of trauma she's been through, it couldn't have been so perfectly precise as to suppress her memories right up to the moment she disappeared."
Kouta frowned as he realized what Shin was implying. "You think Onmyoji are responsible for this. But why would they go after a family of humans? What connection could they have to the Momozono's? Shiori says they were just an ordinary family."
It didn't even make sense to think Onmyoji would go after a human family. Onmyoji were humans who had Ayakashi powers, and they loathed the supernatural world, supposedly because their ancestors were once possessed by Ayakashi. They used their powers to help and protect humans in whatever way they could – what possible connection could Pai's family have to them?
Shin remained silent for a while. Then he stood, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked out over at the dark forest ahead. Kouta stood up after him, dusting the back of his jeans off of any bits of dirt from sitting on the roof. When he looked up again it was to see Shin watching him, blue eyes glowing. They were especially eerie against the backdrop of the midnight blue sky behind him, painted with the soft luminescence of the moon.
"Tell me, Kouta. How much do you think a thirteen-year-old girl can remember?"
Kouta had a feeling that he already knew where Shin was going with this. "Why?"
"Do you think Shiori-hime would notice her friend's parents looking at Ayakashi the way she does when she was too busy herself trying to avoid the Yori Chiisai? Would she see them doing things that humans shouldn't be able to do, like light a fire with their bare hands, or put out a candle's flame without actually blowing it out?" Shin tilted his head to the side. "Would Shiori-hime remember noticing those little things?"
"What are you trying to say, Shin?" Kouta asked, not liking how Shin was able to so easily dismiss what Shiori said about the disappearance of her best friend.
Shin looked at him for a moment longer, eyes searching his own for something, though he wasn't sure what. Then he looked away. "Midori-san has green eyes."
"Pai's sister? How do you know?"
He hesitated in answering. "She told me."
"Oh? When?"
"Does it matter?" Shin grumbled. "Us, and the Onmyoji, are the only ones who can have different coloured eyes than humans naturally, especially if we're Japanese."
Kouta chuckled. "All right, all right, no need to get stingy. But one thing doesn't add up with your theory."
"What?"
"Onmyoji pass on their abilities through their bloodlines." Kouta said. "Even a child born only half Onmyoji would still inherit those abilities. They teach their children about those powers, how to control them, to keep them in check, to use them against us, if need be. If Pai was Onmyoji, we would know from her aura, and her parents would have taught her how to be one as well. Pai didn't even know Onmyoji exist until Daichi told her."
"Her aura," Shin repeated slowly. "You know as well as I that her aura isn't normal."
Kouta sighed heavily. "True. But we would still know if she was Onmyoji. She's not, Shin. Maybe she's a quarter, or even less so to affect her aura the way it does, but not enough for it to matter."
A shadow passed over Shin's eyes as the Daitengu continued to look out at the forest. Shin narrowed his eyes, as if he was looking at something, the tense clench of his jaw slackening slightly. Kouta followed his line of sight, eyes scrunched. He didn't see anything.
Finally, Shin spoke again in a quiet voice as he continued to look out at something only he could see. "I never said I think she's Onmyoji."
Kouta looked back at Shin with a frown scrunching his eyebrows. It was true. Shin hadn't actually said he thought Pai was an Onmyoji. Kouta had just assumed that was what Shin meant.
"Then what are you saying?" he asked. "What else could she be that we wouldn't notice?"
"Have you ever heard of – "
Shin flinched, momentarily losing balance as his hand came up to press against the side of his head. Kouta reached forward to catch him if he fell, but Shin quickly regained his balance. His lips were pulled back over his teeth, canines sharper than they should be.
Kouta pulled his hand back when Shin glared at him, twin flames of blue fire burning in his eyes and a low growl building up in his chest. His eyes widened when he saw a thin sliver of red bleed into the sharper blue, outlining them like a limbal ring.
An instant later, the red flickered out like a dying light. Shin blinked, pressing his lips tight into a line. When he opened his eyes, they were their normal blue again. Shin dragged in a deep, calming breath as he closed his eyes and pressed the bridge of his nose between two fingers.
With a surprised jolt, Kouta realized why he was so unsettled by the way Shin had just reacted. It was because he looked exactly like he had in the hospital, the last time he'd seen Shin without his Mask before his True Ayakashi had broken through his control.
"You've been leaving the house more often." Kouta noted, peering at Shin in concern as the other shook his head and looked out at the forest again. His hand was slightly outstretched, at the ready in case something happened again and Shin started to fall.
He'd survive, of course, but he'd get an impressive brow-beating from Kanou for being so careless as to fall off the roof. You have wings for a reason, he'd say.
"Sorry." Shin bit back at him, hard and bitter. He shut his eyes and rolled his shoulders, white lines of tension bracketing his lips. "Sorry." He said again, this time in a gentler tone.
Kouta remained silent for a few moments longer, watching as Shin brought himself under control again. He could see the wall falling before Shin's eyes, a wall that kept him from truly bonding with anyone.
Though, from what he'd spied so far, Shin was almost unconsciously letting Pai through the wall, letting her in and allowing her to see the bits of Shin that he kept locked away from sight behind that wall. Kouta was sad that Shin had to keep the wall up in the first place, and that Shin didn't see any other way to keep the people he cared about safe from himself.
"The Mask isn't working anymore, is it?" he remarked quietly.
Shin hesitated, and Kouta could see that he wanted to deny the fact. But instead, he shook his head. "It's easier to control him with it, but no. I have to let him out now more often, or the headaches get worse."
"How bad?"
Shin laughed mirthlessly. "Bad enough to have me passed out in my room for days."
Kouta's eyes widened as his brows twitched down in a frown of consternation. That was bad indeed.
That was the trouble with Masks – they were good at keeping True Ayakashi down, but once they were taken off, their strength gradually weakened. It was why Hengen never, ever took their Masks off. The rule of never taking the Mask off was drilled into them from the time they were infants. It was only when they were old enough to understand did parents tell their children why it was necessary to wear a Mask at all times.
Shin had gotten his off twice now, but he had never had so much trouble that he got headaches from keeping his True Ayakashi under control. Kouta sighed heavily as he ran his fingers through his hair, worry squeezing his heart tight in its iron grip.
Shin shot him a look. "How do you know that?"
"Know what?"
"That it's not working as it should."
He rolled his eyes. "Immediately after you took it off nine years ago, you only had to go and let him out for a bit, maybe once a year."
"That doesn't mean the Mask is going to stop working."
Kouta held up his hands with the pinkie lowered to show nine, and dropped down each finger as he spoke. "Once a year. Then twice a year. Then three times a year. For the next five years you had to let him out at least twice every six months. In the last year that's gone down to three times every four months. Now, you've been gone two weeks in a single month."
Shin lifted an eyebrow at every finger that went down, unsurprised that Kouta had been tracking his 'outings' for the last nine years. "That's detailed."
"After what happened, when removed your Mask the first time, father told me to keep a watch on how often you need to let him out." Kouta replied slowly, putting his hands in the opposite sleeves of his kimono. His fingers brushed across the rough paper that contained a message his father had sent him. In it was a brief summary of the reports Sojobo Kurama had been receiving in a steady stream for the last three months. Reports of humans dying at the hands of Yori Chiisai and Shimo Oni, with staggering numbers Kouta had never seen the likes of.
He shook his head, stomach twisting uncomfortably as he forced himself away from the words his father had written at the bottom of the message, and that was only the half that was least concerning of all. That hadn't been the only worrisome thing Kurama added into the report. It hadn't been only about what was happening to the humans, but Hengen as well.
Hengen are disappearing, Kouta, his father had written. And the numbers are growing.
Tengu who resided in the human world hadn't reported back to the main village, as they were supposed to every month, and the number of those who didn't was steadily increasing and had been for the last few decades. Most were turning up dead, with signs pointing to being killed, yet their deaths were being purposefully made to look like they had died from natural causes.
Others were simply not found.
That was what happened to Kichi, Yukiji's older sister. Kichi was one of the Tengu who had decided to live in the human world, alongside her husband, Nishio, and their adopted human daughter, little Theia, who loved to play with the Tengu children in the main village when they were in Kyoto.
When he saw Yukiji listlessly staring out the window one day, he'd grown concerned that something was wrong. She told him that despite the sisters making a promise to always remain in touch with each other, she hadn't heard from Kichi for almost a year. Kichi worked as an architect and was sometimes out of touch for long periods, up to two months at a time, but it had never been for so long. Nothing had been heard of from Nishio, either, and even Theia had gone missing as well.
Kurama didn't want their people to know what was going on yet because he had no answers for the questions they would surely ask. Telling them would only cause panic to spread among them. Kouta agreed, but he still felt guilty keeping what was likely to be the truth from Yukiji.
The mysterious deaths and disappearances weren't limited to the Tengu, either. Yukari Ariwa, King of the Ookami, had reached out to Kurama and asked if he was dealing with the same problem. It was the same story – Ookami were strangely vanishing, and if they didn't stay missing, they turned up dead from seemingly 'natural' causes.
Putting aside the fact that one King had reached out to another, it was astounding – and disturbing – that the Ookami leader had looked outside for answers. Ookami were known to be as secretive as the Hebi, and kept to themselves. Even their King was rarely ever seen, sending his Heir – young Mariko – to sign the Treaties in his place rather than do it himself.
Ariwa only showed himself when his Clan was in great need. As far as Kouta knew, the last time Ariwa had been publicly seen was during the Territory Wars, in the form of a large black wolf with red eyes that wrought untold havoc to his enemies. The Ookami – along the with the Tengu – were the least troublesome of the Clans only because they never caused any of it themselves, and no outsider was foolish enough to look for trouble about Ookami.
"He had you spying on me?" Shin asked mildly, bringing Kouta's wandered attention back to the present.
Kouta shrugged. "Both of you can call it 'spying', if you want. I call it watching out for a friend. How much longer do you have before the Mask stops working completely? Do you know?" he asked, looking at Shin from the corner of his eye.
Shin knelt, forearm propped on his knee as he slowly leaned over the side of the roof and looked down at the ground below. A rush of wind blew his hair back from his forehead, swirling it around his head for a few moments before settling down. His voice was contemplative when he spoke again.
"There are a few Hengen out there who trained themselves to survive without their Masks."
"A few." Kouta repeated bluntly.
"Better than nothing." He answered. "Which is where my chances stand, at the moment."
"It'll be incredibly difficult, you know."
"Nothing is ever easy in this world. You know that." Shin said evenly.
He did. "You're thinking to ask them to help you?"
"That or I lose control again. This time she won't be able to stop us, even with his name."
"She could – "
"No, Kouta." Shin replied brusquely. Kouta silenced himself immediately. The abrasiveness in his eyes as he looked up at Kouta left no room for argument. "She could have died in the Torimaku. I won't put her through that again."
Kouta's lips pressed tight again as he looked away from Shin's kneeling form up to the moon hovering above them. Much as he didn't want to admit it, Shin was right. He wanted to find a way to help Shin, but without Pai using his true name again, he didn't know how else, nor did he see any other viable way. But he wasn't going to put her life in danger again, the way he had so recklessly done a month ago when his desperation to save Shin had driven him to a corner that left him with no choices.
She could have died. It was a stroke of good fortune that she hadn't.
His lips quirked emptily as he thought about what his father would say to him now, hesitant to put the life of a human he had taken under his care in danger to save the life of his Daitengu, his loyal retainer, his best friend. Kurama thought that he allowed his emotions to control him too much, that he allowed Shiori to control him too much.
Truth was that yes, Pai was Shiori's best friend, but that wasn't the only reason why he was unwilling to put her life at risk. Pai had become like a little sister, not only to him, but to all of the Daitengu. No one wanted to see her get hurt again, least of all the man who had made a promise to keep her safe.
OSHIETE, OSHIETE YO SONO SHIKUMI WO, BOKU NO NAKA NI, DARE GA IRU NO? KOWARETA, KOWARETA YO KONO SEKAI DE, KIMI GA WARAU, NANIMO MIEZU NI.
Kouta jumped when the Unravel Ghoul ringtone set in his phone rang shrilly through the night air. His heart practically stuttered to a stop. The answering squawk of a bird somewhere in the forest complaining at the noise of the phone didn't help in calming his suddenly frazzled nerves.
Heir of the Tengu, terrified by his own phone, he thought ruefully as he dug in his pocket for his phone. He shot Shin a dark look when he snickered at Kouta's reaction.
"Don't say a word," he grumbled. "She's obsessed, and there's nothing I can do about it."
"I didn't say anything."
"You thought something funny, didn't you?" he asked, eyes narrowed as he watched Shin fighting off another grin.
He was simultaneously glad that at least something was making his best friend laugh, yet irked that it was the sound of his ringtone that was the cause. Though that was mostly because Shin had been there when Shiori made the two men watch the Tokyo Ghoul anime with her, and seen him when Kouta tried not to cry at the end of the second season.
"No." Shin said, a carefully neutral expression sitting on his face.
"Lie."
Shin rolled his eyes. "I'm going. Answer her before she hunts you down and strangles you with the necktie Obaasan got for your birthday."
"That's not even funny."
Shin shrugged and made a move to jump off the roof, but Kouta called out to him before he could as his thumb hovered over the screen of his phone. His other was hurriedly pressing the volume down button on the side of the phone, and before long Unravel Ghoul stopped screaming into the night. He let out a small sigh at the peaceful silence.
"Are you going to find someone to help you?"
"Only if there's no other choice."
Kouta narrowed his eyes at Shin. "It might be too late by then."
Shin glared daggers at him. "I'm not stupid enough to let it get that bad, Kouta-kun."
"I know, I know. Strings attached?" Kouta asked.
If Shin wound up having no choice but to get help from an outside source to teach him how to live without the Mask, Kouta wanted to know if the request would be accepted with the promise of future favours being asked of Shin. At least if he knew he could prepare ahead of time for an eventual outcome instead of being caught unawares by it.
Shin gave him a flat look. "Everyone has strings."
With that, Shin lifted his arms out on either side of him and released his wings, ink black with the edges of the feathers lined in white, as if they'd been dipped in paint. He leapt into the air, taking flight and angling his body in the direction of the forest ahead. Kouta's hair whirled around his head as the wind from Shin's beating wings lessened, and settled down again by the time Shin had flown up high enough into the dark sky overhead.
He sighed as he scratched his head and ran his hand through the loose ponytail he'd slung his hair back into, messing it all up. He was muttering to himself as he walked over to the end of the roof, sandals clacking in an oddly satisfying way on the tiles. Before jumping down to the ground below, he let a sliver of his True Ayakashi reach up to the surface and enter his voice, unaware that as he did so, his eyes glowed a burning gold.
"Tell me you know that you're an idiot."
A faint laugh echoed in the distance. "What do you think that makes you?"
"A sensible idiot."
"A sensible idiot who is about to die at the hands of his girlfriend for not picking up when she calls." Shin noted reasonably as the vibrating phone in Kouta's hands ceased all motion before immediately starting up again.
A faint blush painted itself across his cheeks at Shin's words, and Kouta had to put the back of his hand up to cover the small grin growing on his face by the second. Shaking his head with a wry smile, Kouta lifted the phone and swiped the screen before putting it up to his ear. His mouth opened to speak, but Shiori beat him to it.
"Kouta, where's Pai-chan? Have you seen her? We had a fight today at the cemetery and it's been so weird and awkward and I want apologize but she keeps avoiding me and using random errands as an excuse even though I know for a fact that Kanou-san said it could wait and – "
A worried frown knit itself in his brows as he heard Shiori's breathless voice shoot out an endless stream of concern. Then he remembered seeing the look on Shin's face when he saw something off in the forest.
He looked up again and squinted, trying to make out what it was that had caught Shin's attention. There, he could just manage to see through the branches of the trees, a flash of blue-and-white patterned pyjamas, right in the direction Shin had flown off in. A blinking sight of long white twin braids eased his nerves slightly, and he smiled when he realized why Shin left.
"Relax, Shiori. She's okay."
"How do you know that? Is she right in front of you? She's not okay, she's the one who was in the bathroom with Teke Teke, she saw Motomi-san and the train and there was that look in her eyes an – "
"Shin's with her."
There was a pause, in which he could hear Shiori's breathing slow as she processed what Kouta just said. Then she sighed. "She's okay, then?"
Kouta chuckled. "She's okay."
"If it's him," Shiori mumbled, as if unaware that he could still hear her. "Then it's okay."
He frowned as he remembered what Shin said about the Momozono family's disappearance, and how he had clearly shown that he didn't entirely trust Shiori's recollections of the years she'd known the Momozono's.
A multitude of ideas and theories, each more extravagantly derisory than the previous, began to pop up in his head as his mind started to connect the few dots he could see. A pattern appeared, and he knew it would make him sound like a conspiracy theorist if he said what shape the pattern made aloud.
Two of the dots, worryingly, concerned Pai. On one end was what Haru and Shouta said about the black substance that covered Shiharu moments before she died. The other end involved the black substance itself. Because of it, Haru and Shouta hadn't been able to sense the residual aura of Teke Teke on Shiharu, even when it was so clearly the fault of Teke Teke that Shiharu was on the railway tracks in the first place. Somehow, it had blocked the Yori Chiisai's aura from being detected by the Daitengu.
The disturbing thing was, Haru said that the same emptiness he'd felt around Shiharu was the reason why he couldn't tell Pai was in the bathroom when he went looking for her. Just by standing on the other side of the door, he'd said, it felt like he was almost touching a void, a hole in the fabric of reality that was inside the bathroom.
It made my skin crawl just being near it, he'd said. It wasn't...natural. Not even exactly supernatural, Kouta. It was wrong, in every sense. No Yori Chiisai should feel like that.
Kouta had never heard of any Yori Chiisai able to manipulate their own auras like that. It irked him that he didn't know why Pai was affected by it as well, despite not being touched by the black substance – that they knew.
He frowned. "Shiori, I need to talk to you about something." He lifted a foot out and dropped straight down to the ground, landing with a thump in the courtyard, little pebbles laid out all over the place crunching under his feet as he began walking along the gravel.
It was nearly midnight, and almost everyone in Ayashi House was asleep, except Karasatengu. He wasn't entirely sure when Karasatengu slept. Kouta's frown deepened, and again he wondered how Pai had gotten out of Ayashi House to the forest when Karasatengu only ever let him or the Daitengu out of the house past ten o'clock. Last time something like that happened with her was when she got to the Torimaku and – strangely enough – Karasatengu said he didn't remember how she got past him.
He shook his head. Shin's with her. Whatever it is, it'll be all right. Nothing bad could happen, not especially with Ayashi House – with eight Daitengu and an Heir – so close by.
"Something important," he added as he walked around the side of the house and inside again, turning and heading in the direction of where he could sense Shiori was, in his room.
"Why do you sound like I did something wrong? Did I do something wrong?" Shiori asked worriedly. "I didn't do anything wrong. And even if I did – "
"Hah, Shiori, calm down." Kouta reassured her, smiling at her sudden brash defensiveness. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"Then why do you sound like you're worried about something?" Shiori shot back. "Besides what happened to Motomi-san."
He thought about it. "It's about Pai-chan, actually. And the Momozono family. I need to ask you something about them."
"The Momozono's? I thought you already did that?" Shiori's voice pitched in a question. "When Pai first came back."
"I know. But I need to know more."
"Did you find something?" her voice was hopeful. "Is that why you're asking?"
Kouta hated to dash those hopes. "Didn't find anything. Maybe." He fought off a frustrated sigh. "But I might have been asking the wrong questions."