Yokai Read online

  “Behind you!” he cried.

  Yumiko had just enough time to lift her sword to ward off a blow from the blue oni. She grunted at the force of the blow, then pushed him back and quickly sliced at his torso, a blow that nearly landed, but was blocked just in the nick of time by the oni.

  The oni’s eyes burned with hate as he swung his blade at her several times, with no break. Yumiko met his steel with hers every time, then showered him with several blows in quick succession herself, forcing him to step back. She smiled at the little give, but in the back of her mind, she was imagining Brian being torn in two, so she needed to end this match quickly, so that she could come to his aid. All she needed was one slice of her mirror sword against his flesh, and he would be imprisoned in the mirror world. But she was finding that it was increasingly difficult to even block his blows.

  Then she remembered the mirror over the door.

  Without betraying a glance in its direction, Yumiko feigned an attack to the oni’s left, but leapt up into the air, swinging her sword wide, easily over the beast’s head. In mid-air, she caught half of the mirror in her free hand, which she’d split in two with her sword, and, blocking a blow of the oni’s sword with her own, she shoved the mirror into the oni’s cheek with a grunt. And it disappeared.

  Yumiko rolled as she tumbled to the ground, then sprang up quickly, sword at the ready, as she assessed Brian’s battle with his enemy. But the oni was on the floor, its own sword embedded in its stomach, loosing black blood over the floor to mingle with Mr. Itou’s. She looked up at Brian, who gazed down at the oni with a troubled expression on his face, the skillet still held loosely in one hand.

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  Brian looked up and tossed the skillet aside casually. “Beginner’s luck, I guess.”

  “Beginner’s luck?” Yumiko echoed, incredulous. “Are you kidding me?”

  He shrugged. “What do you want me to say? I got a lucky hit in. He fell on his own sword.”

  Yumiko couldn’t decide if she believed him or not, but she was interrupted from having to come to a conclusion. A sword thrust through a paper sliding door and cut sharply downward.

  Without waiting for another oni to appear, Yumiko grabbed Brian by the hand and yanked him into a run. She hesitated at the doorway to the bookstore, and looked back.

  “What is it?” Brian asked, his voice high.

  Yumiko leapt back into the room to grab the yokai book, looking up as three more oni clambered into the room, swords drawn. They stopped when they caught sight of Yumiko and Brian.

  “We have to kill them,” Brian insisted, stepping forward.

  “No, we don’t,” Yumiko said. She pulled him out of the room and, stumbling into bookshelves along the way, sprinted toward the exit and burst out into the sunshine. With birds and cicadas making their music around them, it was hard to believe that they’d left such a nightmare behind. It seemed like a bad dream in the stark light of day, where shadows were confined to dark-paned windows and alleyways. But the oni had been as real as the sunlit streets and tourists taking pictures of samurai houses, happily ignorant of monsters in claustrophobic bookstores. Yumiko felt Brian’s solid arm in her grasp, heard his heavy breathing as he kept pace with her and they avoided the carefree bystanders. And she didn’t stop or look back once until they reached the train station.

  They didn’t have to wait long before the bullet train, bound for Tokyo, arrived, and they boarded silently, each lost in their own thoughts.

  Yumiko stroked the cover of the book she’d procured, and wondered if it was worth the life of the man who’d given it to her.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Why aren’t you in any afterschool activities?” Emiko asked Yumiko when she was just nine.

  Yumiko looked up from the homework she was working on during lunch, and blinked at the girl. Beyond Emiko, three other girls watched the interaction with interest. “I’m busy. I take a martial arts class.”

  “Why?” Emiko demanded. “You don’t like the people here?” She gestured back at the girls behind her, who snickered.

  “I like you just fine,” Yumiko told her, trying to smile. “Maybe you’d like to come over some night and have dinner?”

  Emiko laughed, and looked back at her friends. “Yeah, right.” She walked away, as the other girls snickered. “Like I’d want to hang out with a freak like you.”

  “She’s so weird,” Yumiko heard another girl say as she pretended to be intent on her homework. She blinked back the tears that gathered behind her eyes, not willing to let them see that they affected her so. The math problems before her swam in her vision, her hand gripping her pencil so tightly that it nearly snapped in half.

  She knew that she could wipe the smile off of Emiko’s face with one kick, but that wasn’t going to solve things. And Madame Mori would be very disappointed. If she was going to have a life, she would have to forego the frivolous parts of childhood. She couldn’t afford to waste time building relationships with her peers. They weren’t going to help her ward off Kagami when he came for her. She could only look to herself for the strength she needed. And she was all that she needed.

  Yumiko blinked as she awoke on the bullet train. She was disoriented for a moment as she sat up, dark scenery passing in a blur of black and brown outside of her window. She turned her head to find Brian asleep, his head on her shoulder, mouth open as he breathed deeply.

  She watched him for a moment, his eyes flickering in sleep, and wondered what he dreamed about. Probably not being bullied by children, she decided bitterly. Not with a face like that. He stirred and leaned deeper into Yumiko’s shoulder, causing her to blush. She didn’t dare move, for fear of waking him.

  Brian was an enigma, she decided. She wondered: if pressed, would he tell her about himself? He seemed to genuinely care about her, but it was almost like he was completely comfortable with her, and knew what to expect from her, like they’d grown up in the same neighborhood. But she knew nothing about him, couldn’t even fathom the mystery of the man. He was kind and handsome. He seemed to know the right things to say around her. But who was he? A spoiled trust fund baby? A frat boy who’d inadvertently been cursed by a kitsune? A brilliant folklore student who’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time? She couldn’t imagine him as any one of those things. She couldn’t picture him without her. Which was…troubling. Why had she attached herself to his life? The moment Madame Mori found a cure for him, he would be gone. And where would she be then? Heartbroken. She shook her head. Why should she be left heartbroken when they weren’t even together? What was she thinking, fawning over this guy? Just because he took her on a walk through a boulevard of cherry blossoms, and made her smile, and made her feel happy…

  I am so in trouble, she decided, hanging her head. Why did he have to be so damn nice to her? And why had he shared such a beautiful day with her? A day that could stand out as the single happiest moment of her short, doomed life.

  Swallowing hard, she watched his eyelashes, fluttering softly. Why, she wondered, did she have to find him when she had so little time left?

  Yumiko sighed. She had to get a grip. She was terrible at being around people. Just being in the vicinity of this guy was turning her inside out. Maybe he was just showing her kindness. Maybe he didn’t even find her attractive. What did she know? Shou seemed to be able to tell what Yumiko was thinking and the best way to make her feel tiny. Maybe she was just really easy to read. And when it came to Shou, she didn’t know what to think either. She didn’t understand him, how he could do the things he did, how he acted so entitled and arrogant. Was it all an act, or was he really that confident in his abilities? Did he really think he could be a formidable yokai hunter? Even Yumiko had had her doubts growing up, and she’d dedicated her life to the art.

  She glanced back at Brian again, and started when she met his open eyes.

  “Hey,” he greeted with a slow smile. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

&
nbsp; Yumiko looked away as he sat up and stretched. “We’re almost to Tokyo,” she said, not knowing how to respond.

  “Did you crack open the book at all?” he asked, watching her. She refused to meet his eyes again, but she could feel his gaze on her, willing her to turn hers to him, to face him. She refused to indulge him.

  “Not yet,” she said. “This book...feels powerful. Almost forbidden. It wasn’t meant for my eyes, for human eyes, at all.”

  “But you have to be curious.”

  “Of course I am.”

  Brian grabbed her hand and squeezed it, causing Yumiko to stiffen. A heat crept up her hand from where his skin touched hers, and ran up her arm, warming her whole body. She knew she had to be blushing bright red. Her own body was betraying her when it came to Brian. “I’m right here, next to you. You can trust me, Yumiko. I’ll be beside you when you open it.”

  “Can I trust you?” she finally relented, and lifted her eyes to his. “I’m not sure that I can.”

  He tilted his head. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I know nothing about you. And things you’ve said…it’s like your words have another meaning beneath them. I don’t…I just don’t understand you.”

  “Then understand this: I like you, Yumiko. I’m glad that I met you, and I want to be by your side. I know that you don’t understand things, that you don’t understand me, but just know that what I feel for you is real. And I hope that you can return the feeling someday.”

  Yumiko felt like her face was on fire. “Brian, we barely know each other.”

  “Don’t tell me that you haven’t felt a connection to me.”

  “I…” Yumiko hesitated. “I don’t know what I feel.”

  “Then just enjoy being with me,” he said. “And trust me when I say that I will never intentionally hurt you.”

  Yumiko didn’t know what to say to that, so she focused on the book on her lap. With a nervous deep breath, she flipped it open.

  At first, the pages appeared to be blank. Yellowed pages stared up at her, as if mocking her for the trouble she’d gone through to procure the empty book. Her heart sank and she wondered how she could have been so wrong. She could have sworn that she’d felt something when she’d touched its binding. She turned a page to another blank page, then another, willing some sort of writing to appear, some hidden message. And then kanji began to spread over the pages in flickering blue and orange, as if they’d merely spilled into the book from some unseen source. Yumiko stared as they fell into focus.

  “You’re seeing this too, right?” Brian asked her, his voice full of awe.

  Yumiko nodded and her eyes drank in the words before her. It was a tale of Hyakki Yagyo – The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. Once every year, during the summer, the yokai Nurarihyon led a precession of yokai across Japan, and anyone in their path died. Allegedly. As far as Yumiko knew, there had never been a Night Parade, but it was a popular folktale. During this time, Master Mori and Yumiko made hundreds of hand-written scrolls that were supposed to protect people. Yumiko felt sort of strange indulging people in this manner, but people seemed to appreciate the scrolls, even if it warded off evil that wasn’t actually there. The tale before her presently, however, wasn’t so much a recollection of the legend as a call to join the parade. Yumiko blinked at the words as she realized that it confirmed the Night Parade’s existence. This book was definitely meant for yokai eyes only. And Madame Mori definitely did not have this book in her library.

  Flipping through the pages, Yumiko saw many familiar stories, but written for yokai rather than human consumption. It was strange to lay eyes on stories she was so familiar with, but from such a different perspective. Rather than reading a book on legends and myths Yumiko knew to be true, it read like a strange, magical memoir of a community of people. Spirits and monsters. It was only until she reached the back of the book that she came across a legend that she’d never heard of before. A prophecy.

  “What is it?” Brian asked, when he saw Yumiko pale. He leaned closer, trying to read the kanji, but Yumiko cleared her throat and read it aloud to him, softly:

  “While the three great evil yokai call their brothers to arms, plotting to overtake the world and make it their own, only one common yokai prophecy stands in their way. Yokai are a diverse people, and while many yearn for war and domination, most are content with cohabitation with humans, and even prefer it. Shuten-Doji insists that yokai can not live together in harmony with humanity, and deserve to take their place as rulers. But the words of yokai seers hold back a tide of yokai from taking up arms, hoping that war in not necessary. Words of peace. For, one day, a human girl will appear, one with a brave soul and keen mind, and a will so radiant that she will melt the heart of a yokai king. It is in her image that humans will be represented. And upon her union with the yokai king, their bond will extinguish the rage and fury of the great evil yokai and their followers, letting the world prosper, ushering in a new era, one of peace.”

  Yumiko sat still after reading the words, then reread them, letting the prophecy sink in.

  “So, good news,” Brian said, nodding.

  Yumiko could hardly think, the roaring in her ears had grown so loud. “Unless that human girl is going to be devoured by the yokai king to solidify the union.”

  “Devoured?” Brian frowned. “No. You’ve got this all wrong.”

  “Do I?” Yumiko stared at the page in front of her. “It seems clear to me. I’m this girl. Kagami is the yokai king. I was chosen for this fate, to save the world. How can I…how can I deny the world this peace?” She looked to Brian helplessly. “For the world to prosper, I must die.”

  “You’re reading into things,” Brian said softly. “Look, let’s take this apart piece by piece with what we know, and…” He stopped and stared at Yumiko. “Are you…?”

  He reached over and ran a finger over her cheek, and Yumiko was amazed to see his finger come back wet.

  Yumiko swallowed hard and swiped at her eyes angrily.

  “Yumiko…”

  “What?” she snapped, turning on him. “What does it matter? All of the hard work, all of the preparation I’ve done?” She laughed bitterly. “None of it matters. I have to go through with this. I can’t even fight Kagami unless I want to see the planet burn at the hands of Shuten-Doji.”

  She’d been so caught up in the book that Yumiko hadn’t realized that the bullet train had come to a stop until people started to pass them on their way up the aisle to the doors.

  “We’re here,” she mumbled, standing and joining the throng of passengers exiting. She didn’t wait to see if Brian followed, although she knew that he was behind her. She made sure that she regained control of her emotions, breathing deeply several times, and letting each breath out calmly and evenly. By the time she stepped out onto the platform, she was able to turn and face Brian again as he rejoined her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  He watched her, but didn’t push the subject.

  She turned on her heel and began walking away from the train station, Brian falling into step alongside her.

  “So, what now?” Brian asked after a few minutes of walking.

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly, too tired to come up with something. She eyed the host club that Shou worked at as they passed by, wondering what he would make of the prophecy.

  The sky growled overhead and Yumiko looked up, just in time for the rain to begin pouring.

  She gasped, then jogged along the street, squinting through the sudden deluge.

  “Well, this sucks,” Brian said, keeping up with her. “What else can go wrong?”

  “You’re tempting fate,” she said, then laughed when she looked at him sideways. His hair was flat against the top of his head and dripping into his eyes. His yellow t-shirt was soaked through.

  “You look just as wet, you know,” he told her, raising his voice to be heard above the roar of water as it pelted the
pavement.

  Ducking under the awning of a convenience store, Yumiko ran a hand back through her hair to try to smooth out some of the excess water. She watched the rain hit the pavement, windshield wipers furiously whisking the water aside as cars passed them. It was dark and with her clothes wet, she was suddenly much colder than she’d been a moment before. She wrapped her arms around herself and glanced at Brian to see how he was faring. He was also watching the rain, water droplets still running down his face and collecting over his lips. She stared at him for a moment, thinking about how breathtaking he looked, then glanced down, and noted that she could see his skin through his wet shirt, clinging to his chest and abs like paint.

  “Maybe they have an umbrella here,” he suggested, and she looked up from his body, meeting his steely blue eyes, which watched her with humor. And maybe…hunger?

  She turned away and glanced into the convenience store. “Perhaps.”

  “Or we could wait out the rain.”

  She turned back to him and he was suddenly much closer than he had been a moment ago. “We could get sushi. There’s a place just up the street.”

  Yumiko smiled. “Are you asking me to dinner, Mr. Mathis?”

  “Brian. And yes.”

  She blinked, and swallowed hard. “I shouldn’t. I have my-“

  But she was cut off as he leaned in, so close that their lips nearly touched. She held her breath as she felt the heat radiating from his lips, and her eyes flickered up to his own, which were so beautiful that she couldn’t help but lean in, and complete the connection.

  His lips were soft and tender, and her heart beat loudly in her ears as they consumed her. For a moment, there was nothing but his lips, but the two of them. And then he deepened the kiss and she let him, feeling that if she couldn’t get closer to him, she would drown. She felt one of his hands in her hair, and another fitting into the small of her back, and she leaned into him, touching his chest through his wet shirt. A shiver ran through her body at the desire that rushed through her veins.