Imparting Quietus : Blood on The Axe [ Original / Yokai / Anime-based ]

[Lady Sophitia De Couers]

Small lilies... Sayuri.

They are often associated with purity, beauty, and innocence.
As a sea of small lilies are laid before all eyes to bear witness.
Petals raining like showers from the heavens, beckoning the union of a wedding or the parting of a beloved in a funeral.

But whatever the bestowment.

The lady amidst this floral abundance presents a most compelling juxtaposition of elements.
Her mahogany complexion radiates against the pale, shimmering silver of her hair.
It spilled around her like moonlight hitting dark earth.
Adorned in a roseate gown, she is not merely reclining amidst the blossoms but utterly assimilated.

A solitary petal within an expansive, vibrant mosaic.

Then a voice slowly crept into this vision of sanctuary.
The voice that creeps into the sanctuary isn't a shout, but a ripple.
It carries a tone that suggests it has been searching for this specific corner of existence for a very long time.



"Life cant be understoof backwards...

Inorder to understand it they have to live moving forward.

You still hold on...Because you are afraid of death...

For you havent lived..."

The moment the voice swam to her ears, she instantly knew who it was.



The voice of the silver-haired lady was a mere whisper, like parched earth greeting the gentle caress of rain.

"Sister..."

She replied as she struggles to open her eyes from her deep slumber.

The sea of Sayuri lilies rippled, not from a wind, but as if the flowers themselves were exhaling in relief.
A lady of black hair in a white dress who also seemed to be part of the sea of lilies manifested.
But on top of her, she wore a straw hat to guard her fair skin from the kiss of the sun.

"Oh...Sayuri...The road to hell is paved with good intentions..."
Her sister articulated her thoughts as a veritable deluge of petals danced around them.

"Which is why the road to heaven feels like hell..."
The sister's words hung in the air like smoke.

She leaned in, the brim of her straw hat casting a soft shadow over both their faces.
It shielded them from a sun that felt increasingly distant.
Her face was smiling, though no ill intent was seen nor felt.

The atmosphere was once a sanctuary of soft pinks and silver.
Now it is suddenly sharpened with the cold edge of a paradox.
The presence of a scythe resting against Sayuri's mahogany skin with a terrifying delicacy.

Then comprehension dawned on Sayuri as she was bathed in the shower of petals and scythe gracing her skin.
The serenity of the lilies shattered like glass.
The soft pink of Sayuri's dress and the silver of her hair were suddenly stained by the flickering, angry orange of a memory that refused to stay buried.
The smell of sweet nectar was choked out by the thick, acrid stench of burning timber and scorched earth.

"I remember now..."
Sayuri told herself.

"As you lay dead on my arms...I promised you..."
Sayuri opens her eyes.



"I would avenge us...I would avenge Shin-Saito..."
As those words were uttered in her mind.
The sea of lilies turned into a sea of embers.
The graceful dancing petals became flakes of falling ash.

The sister in the straw hat watched as Sayuri's eyes changed into a devilish yellow.
The fog of innocence and purity evaporated.
It was replaced by a hard and cold glare of boiling wrath.
The sister's smile didn't fade, but it took on a bittersweet edge.

The fires swelled to immense proportions.
Until it burst into a sea of devastation and death.


"And so I did..."

The tranquil sanctuary of the lilies finally curdles.
The soft pinks turning the color of dried blood as the devilish yellow of Sayuri's eyes pierces the veil of her own amnesia.
The memory isn't a burden anymore but it was an achievement.
As the shout echoes through her mind, the vision of the burning civilization solidifies.
This wasn't a tragedy she witnessed but it was a masterpiece she had painted upon a canvas.

"I burnt Baxian to ASH!!!
AND EVERY FOUL YOKAI IN IT!!!"

She uttered to herself in satisfaction.
The screams of the Yokai weren't a nightmare to her.
They were the only lullaby that could have ever put her to sleep.

She exchanged her grief for retribution.
Every Yokai that fell was a petal shed for the honor of Shin-Saito.

Baxian was an empire of yokai that held dominion with a most unyielding grasp
They had massacred countless human factions all in the name of their emperor.

To Sayuri, however.

She did not care for intricacies or nuances.
She exacted her revenge as wrathful as when the yokais burnt every single one of her loved ones in Shin-Saito.
A wheel of vengeance spun.
The fires of revenge bring a gluttonous appetite.


"The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Which is why the road to heaven feels like hell..."

Her sister uttered as the inferno of Baxian's ruin vanished as quickly as a candle snuffed by a cold wind.
The screams of the dying Yokai were replaced by the haunting, rhythmic rustle of the sea of lilies.
The ash turned back into petals.

But the air remained heavy with the weight of a million death throes.

"The empire is ash.

The debt is paid.

But look at your hands, sister.

In this sea of lilies, are they reaching for peace...

Or are they still looking for another throat to slice?"

Her sister's voice echoes unto Sayuri's skull though her mouth did not move.

Then a revelation hit with the force of a physical blow.
More piercing than the fires of Baxian.
The molten lava of her rage meets the freezing depths of a forgotten truth.

The image of the Ko-Tengu from Neo-Tokyo.
A creature of the very same kind Sayuri had sworn to extinguish.
It flickered in her mind like passing memories.

Sayuri wasn't satisfied with just Baxian.
She resumed her rampage upon the entirety of all yokais whom lived.
But the blood on her trail had also begun to pick on the lives of innocent humans.

It was arguable.

It was no longer about retribution but filling the empty void in her soul.

She was slain by the ko-tengu.
And yet, the yokai spared her soul.
Allowing Sayuri a second chance in life.
That mercy wasn't just a gift.
It was a mirror.
By sparing Sayuri, the Tengu had done the one thing Sayuri had forgotten how to do.

It had broken the cycle.


"It boggles me...

The Tengu...

She spared my life...

Despite everything I've done..."

Sayuri questioned her sister, not understanding the decision of the tengu's mercy.
But a wrathful voice within her burst aflame like molten lava unable to be contained in the earth's core.


"BUT THIS HATRED THAT BURNS WITHIN!

NO!

I WONT STOP!

THESE FOUL YOKAIS!

ARE ALL THE SAME!

WRECTHED MERCILESS BEAST!"

The sister's voice acted as a cooling balm upon Sayuri's ire.
The sanctuary of lilies seemed to weep as the origin of their shared life was laid bare.

"Were we so different from those 'merciless beast'?...

We were orphans both in the Shin-Saito civil war...

Both of our parents were slain by human hands.

It was ma and pops who adopted us from the catacombs when we didn't dare to see the sun anymore, having witnessed our parents' death..."

The sister whispered with a dove on her arms as pets it gracefully.

"Have courage...

Sayuri...

Have the courage to let go of your past and embrace what is to come..."



The dream of the lilies disintegrated.
The soft, comforting scent of the lilies was replaced by the metallic tang of dried blood and the biting chill of the open air.
Sayuri stood alone in an unfamiliar landscape.
Her silver hair matted with the grime of a war that had ended everywhere except within her own mind.

Then a thought raced through her mind like doves taking flight to the skies.



"If I choose to share my sorrows...

It would sear the very tongue that utters them…

If I keep them locked in my heart...

It would ignite myself from slumber to sleep.

Thus, I release them into the world…

AND LET IT BURN!!!"



But now, in the silence of this unknown land.
There was nothing left to burn but the ash of her own memories.

She looked down at her own hands.

The Ko-Tengu had not just spared her soul in the vision.
She had stayed her powers from annihilating her physical form too.
It was an act of mercy so profound it felt like a new kind of torture.
To be forced to live with the weight of what she had done was a far more complex sentence than the simple release of death.

She had never asked her name before their fateful duel, for now she shall remain as The Tengu.
A warrior who had looked into Sayuri's yellow devilish eyes and seen something worth saving.

The sharp, rhythmic quacking of ducks broke the heavy silence of Sayuri's thoughts.
A sound so mundane and full of life that it felt like an intrusion upon her tragic grandeur.
It was a noise that didn't care about the fall of empires or the burning of vengeance.
it was simply the sound of the world continuing to turn.

As she pushed through the tall, dry stalks of grass.
Her yellow devil eyes were grounded by the earthy reality of the marshland ahead.
The tall grass gave way to a hidden pond, its surface shimmering like a sheet of hammered silver under the moon.

A small cluster of ducks paddled through the reeds, oblivious to the blood-stained woman with silver hair.
After the screaming fires of Baxian and the ethereal sea of lilies, the sight of the ducks was jarring.

It was a life lived without intentions of good or bad.

Sayuri stood at the edge of the water, her mahogany skin catching the natural light.
For a moment, her boiling ire went completely silent.
She watched the birds, her mind replaying the days when she played with her sister at the farmlands chasing ducks and chickens with laughter on thier faces.

The ducks didn't scatter in fear.

They hadn't heard the name Sayuri nor the monster of Shin-Saito.
To them, she was just another part of the landscape.
A tall, silver-haired reed standing still in the wind.

She looked down at her reflection in the water.
The blood on her face had dried into dark, flaking maps.
Beside her reflection, a single wild white flower grew at the water's edge.

A small lily…Sayuri.

The quacking of the ducks was a jagged, humble sound that tore through the remnants of her self-importance.
She leaned over the water for the first time and she truly looked into her reflection to reflect upon herself.

She didn't see a saviour.
She didn't see a hero.
By refusing to move on, she had become irrelevant to the living world.

With trembling hands, Sayuri reached into the water.
She began to scrub off the blood of her foes and the dirt of her long journey.
The water around her hands turned a murky,rusted brown as the blood of the Yokai dissolved.
She washed her face until the mahogany glowed again.
She splashed the silver of her hair until the weight of the grime lifted, allowing the strands float like ghosts on the surface of the pond.

She was like a sinner baptised upon the water.
Though can sins truly be repented?
That is determined by the mind and soul.

As the water settled, the ducks drifted closer.
Perhaps sensing that the fire in Sayuri had been doused.
Sayuri remained on her knees, her hands dripping, her yellow eyes staring at the ripples.



"Empty…"

She whispered to the reeds.



Her ire was now vacant.
She can no longer feel the sizzling hatred she bore in her dream.
The Tengu though nowhere to be seen, Sayuri felt her eyes watching her.
Judging her every future step.

She stared at the water for a long time in silence.
One could even mistake Sayuri as a spectre from afar.

Then the silence was broken but a gentle voice.
A young girl, framed by two dancing blue embers.
They looked like a creature of sevitude that heed every word the little girl commands.
She was dressed in a maid's outfit.
In her hands holding a duck, who was peacefully sleeping on her arms.
While a long line of other ducks followed her envious of the sleeping ducks, quacking at it.
Then it raced in Sayuri's mind.

Before her was a Yurei.

A Yokai.

And yet she fails to muster the rage to slice her in one fatal attack.
The Yokais Sayuri had hunted were supposedly merciless, yet here was a little yokai girl.
Showing a kindness that Sayuri had long ago burned out of herself.

"Are you alright miss?
My name's Ichikawa Yutaemon.
If you are lost, I can bring you into the nearest inn..."
Yutaemon asked curiously upon the mysterious women.

Whom she thought was a fellow yokai, Sayuri had long elf ears in her current physical form.
For Sayuri, in an ironic twist of fate, had turned into a yokai.
She partook in a forbidden ritual known as Kodoku that replaces the human heart with a Hell Bug.

One of the very few ways for humans to achieve powers rivalling yokais.

A technique developed by a sinister cult of dark practitioners that bends the rules of reality and frequent in the arts of taboo.
It was this very same cult that approached Ito Sayuri.

The word "Inn" sounded like a foreign language.

A bed?

A roof?

Food that wasn't scavenged from the ruins of a battlefield?

Sayuri stared at the girl, then at the sleeping duck.

The sheer ordinariness of the scene was what finally broke the last of her defenses.

"An... inn?"
Sayuri's voice was a cracked bell, unused to speaking to the living without a threat slung back at her.

Sayuri slowly began to stand, her limbs stiff like a rusted machine being forced to move.
She didn't look like the same butcher she once was.
She looked like a traveler who had taken a wrong turn a thousand years ago.

"I... am lost…"
Sayuri admitted.
The words felt like stones being pulled from her throat.
"I have been lost for a very long time."

She didn't mention the fire.

She didn't mention Baxian.

She just looked at the girl with a weary, searching gaze.



A tear rolled down Sayuri's cheek.






[Posting in royal road too]

 

[Lady Sophitia De Couers]

The transition from darkness to sunrise painted the land like a field of saffron and tinted gold.

Sayuri was greeted by the kiss of the morning sun and a most appetising smell of food brimming in the air.
The air was thick with the aroma of steamed rice, toasted sesame, and perhaps a savory broth.
Its smell bypassed her intellect and went straight to her instinct.

What followed were the toll of bells echoing the corners of every brick house.
Sayuri knew not what it meant, but instinctively she assumed it was breakfast as the villagers gather to the large shrine at the center of the village with the glint of glee in their eyes.

Sayuri's belly grumbled.
She had lost track of when her last meal was.

But she was indeed hungry.

Sayuri followed the flow of the crowd, her tall frame and silver hair making her look like a celestial being caught in a human tide.
Her mahogany skin is now scrubbed clean.
It glowed in the morning light.
As she approached the shrine, she saw the Yurei from the night before.
Yutaemon was still accompanied by her blue flames.
Though now dimmed by the daylight.
They were helping distribute large wooden bowls.

The irony wasn't lost on her.

She had spent a lifetime destroying shrines and leveling centers of power.
Yet here she was, humbled by the simple necessity of a breakfast bowl.

She stood at the edge of the gathering, hesitant.

In her mind, she was still the monster of Baxian.
Her hands were blood-soaked beyond redemption.

But to these villagers, she was just a weary traveler who had arrived in the dark by aid of Yutaemon.

It warmed Yutaemon's heart upon bearing witness of Sayuri's attendance amongst the villagers.
She waved her wooden ladle with a bright smile.

"The bells are for all to share, Miss!
No one goes to work on an empty stomach!"
Yutaemon chirped, gesturing toward a space at one of the long wooden tables.

She began to meticulously prepare bowls of ramen.

The sight hit Sayuri with the force of a tidal wave, more jarring than any battle she had ever fought.
The air was thick with the steam of Kitakata ramen.
It was now patently clear to Sayuri the source of that delightful fragrance.

The rich.
Salty depth of the niboshi and pork broth swirling with the sweet scent of bamboo shoots.
It was a smell of home and of comfort.

A domesticity she had spent a lifetime trying to erase.

But as the steam cleared, the faces revealed the truth.

Sayuri wandered around the dining hall, she began to comprehend.
They were all yokais of all sorts.
She saw Ashirei with their fox-ears twitching in anticipation of the salty broth.
Karakasas hopping excitedly on its single wooden leg, its paper tongue lolling in a comedic display of hunger.

These were the wretched beasts.
These were the merciless monsters of her ire.
And yet, they were sitting at wooden tables, grumbling about the wait and thanking the sun for a hot meal.

Yutaemon approached, balancing a steaming bowl of the thick, curly noodles.
The narutomaki sat atop the broth like a pink-and-white spiral of peace.
The chashu was sliced thin, glistening with fat that promised to melt on the tongue.

"For the traveler with the silver hair…"
Yutaemon said, her voice as gentle as the morning light.
She placed the bowl in front of Sayuri.
"Eat while the noodles are still firm.
The spirit cannot find its way if the stomach is screaming."

Sayuri looked at the ramen, then at the Yurei maid.

Her eyes didn't flare with rage.
It was clouded with a profound, agonizing confusion.

She picked up the chopsticks.
Her hands, which had decapitated generals and burned palaces, trembled as she lifted a tangle of the high-water content noodles.
They were springy, slippery, and carried the weight of the savory soy broth.

As the first taste hit her tongue.

The complex, earthy saltiness of the dried sardines and the richness of the pork.
The Wheel of Vengeance in her mind finally ground to a halt like tires in stasis.

"I burnt Baxian to ash…"
Saiyuri thought to herself.
The noodles felt like lead in her throat despite their deliciousness.
But Baxian likely had mornings like this.
They likely had bells, and broth, and mothers who tucked children into bed.

Around her, the yokais continued to eat.
A small Kitsune child accidentally splashed broth on its shirt and was gently scolded by an elder.

It was so... human.

Sayuri sat in the heart of her enemy's kindness.
Then as the chatter and laughter filled the hall.
Slowly with an eerie crawl.
Creeping into the heart of Sayuri's buried ire.
The chatter and laughter slowly felt like screams and shouts.
The room smelled of savory soy and steamed wheat.
But there was also the scent of the coconut husk burning at the stoves, which triggered a chemical reaction in Sayuri's brain.

To her, fire was never just a tool for cooking.
The immolations of countless was what rang across her mind as they screamed for mercy.

"Yes...
This is what you were made for...
This was your destiny...
Kill...
KILL THEM...ALL...DOWN TO EVERY LAST FOUL YOKAI..."
Sayuri's inner voice compelled her like a trance.
It was beating in symphony to her heart, where the hell bug presided, filling her with her powers.

But like the shatter of fragile glass, Yutaemon's voice shattered Sayuri's compulsive thoughts.

"Are you alright, Miss Ito?"
Yutaemon questioned, tilting her hand as she slurped her noodles.

Sayuri's grip on her chopsticks tightened until the wood groaned.
She looked at Yutaemon out of the corner of her eye.

The Yurei maid was a worker enjoying the fruits of her own labor.
She was selfless, a concept Sayuri had traded for survival long ago.

What kind of irony was this, Sayuri thought to herself.
Sayuri herself selfish to the marrow.
Clouded by her biases and... self-justified thoughts…

Sayuri's hesitant nod was the hardest motion she had ever made.

It was a surrender.

She couldn't look Yutaemon in the eye because she was afraid of who she would see.
Not a monster, but a girl who is lost.

"Is it justified?"
Sayuri's mind raced.
"Trying to find the reasons she had carried for so long.
If I kill her here and now, can I shatter this dilemma?
Or do I just end the only kindness I've felt in a century?"

Yutaemon's smiled as she continued to slurp her noodles.
Her smile was a weapon more powerful than the scythe.
It was the weapon of normalcy.

Sayuri finally took a bite.

The pork chashu was tender.
But to her.
It felt like eating the history of her own sins.
Every chew was an admission that she was wrong.
Or worse, that she was no longer sure if she was right.

"You know...I can see the pain in your eyes..."
As Yutaemon finished her bowl of noodles.

Sayuri's unreactiveness was suddenly ignited with a glare.
Even Yutaemon could feel the fire boiling in those eyes.

"I too..Have endured alot of pain...
I understand the refrain of exposing a bleeding wound but it is never too late to always ask for help...
Asking for help is the bravest thing any soul can do..."
Yutaemon said as she gazed at the morning sun, her eyes breaming with hope and salvation.
Her visage was that of someone who had survived the heavy storm.

Even Sayuri, who once thought of Yutaemon as a mere carefree little girl.
Began to question.
What exactly is her backstory?
Then Sayuri began to articulate her feelings and they were of disdain toward Yutaemon's actions.

"You...
You are only placing a debt upon everyone you help..."
With a most serious sneer, Sayuri uttered.
"You think yourself righteous....
But you are selfish in your desire for superiority over others..."
Sayuri's sneered but at her last words, it could even be deemed a furious outburst.

Was Sayuri genuinely laying out her feelings or saying those words out to assure her own ways.
Even Sayuri herself didn't know.
But those were her feelings.

However, it can't be mistaken, her sneer was a defense mechanism.
A desperate attempt to drag Yutaemon down into the mud where Sayuri lived.

By calling Yutaemon's kindness a debt.
Sayuri was trying to weaponize the mercy she had received.
To Sayuri, nothing in the world was free.
Everything had a price, usually paid in blood or in misery.

Yutaemon didn't flinch.
Instead, she turned her gaze away from the saffron sun and looked directly into Sayuri's blazing eyes.
Like a flickering flame, ablaze but yet blown by the wind at every direction.

The contrast was staggering.
A woman trembling with a century of repressed rage.
Facing a girl who looked like she had only offered kindness to everyone.

"Superiority?"
Yutaemon echoed softly, her voice devoid of the anger Sayuri expected and perhaps craved.

Yutaemon set her empty bowl down with a quiet clack on the wooden table.
"You speak of indebtedness, Miss Ito.
Because you have spent your life holding everybody accountable…
You think if I am kind, I must want something.
But the only thing I want is for that fire in your eyes to cease burning before they leave you nothing but ash.
If that makes me selfish... Then I suppose I am a very greedy…"

Sayuri's chest heaved.
Her outburst had been meant to silence the Yurei, to affirm herself.
But in the silence that followed.
Sayuri looked less like a warrior and more like a wounded animal snarling at the hand trying to bandage it.

Sayuri stood up abruptly, knocking over the bowl on the table.
She intends to leave.
She felt ashamed.

But as she was about to storm her way out.
She was halted by Yutaemon's words.

"We owe nothing to this world when we are born...
And when we meet death...
We bring nothing with us...
That is why I believe a person's true character is only revealed when they treat others who can do nothing for them...
That is at least why I do what I do..."
Yutaemon said as she stood up, seeking to answer Sayuri's sneer.

For Yutaemon could see the bleeding wound within Sayuri's words and her eyes.
She wished to reach Sayuri, who has drowned herself in a cacophony of misery and wrath.

She succeeded.

Sayuri did turn around to look back at Yutaemon as the whole hall was silent, spectating this drama unfolding to their eyes like a play on stage.
Sayuri's eyes were a contradiction.
She wished to silence Yutaemon for the humiliation she felt within herself but how could she.
If she did something as petty as killing someone trying to help her.
She didn't think she could live on with such a guilt.

But.

Hadn't she done that so many times in the past...
So...Why is it different now...
Monks, Envoys and many more had attempted the same.
She just killed them all mid-dialogue without even a care of thought.
Then the mess of self-thought was shattered yet again by Yutaemon's words.

"Kindness makes this world a better place dont you think?
So let's be the reason people believe in pure hearts and kind souls..."
Yutaemon ended with bittersweet smile.
She was hoping her words alone could change Sayuri's perspective of her and the way she viewed the world.
Her idealogy.
Sayuri's eyes widened, but not of shock or anger.
It was a dawning realization.
"She...
She reminds me of HER..."
Sayuri thought to herself as she felt goosebumps to her own realization.
Yutaemon reminded Sayuri of her sister.
In their childhood, her sister had always cared for her.
Always putting Sayuri over herself.

Whenever Sayuri starved.
She gave her food.

Whenever Sayuri lacked coin to purchase what she loved.
She bought them as gifts.

When Sayuri was at death's door upon the enemy's axe.
She sacrificed herself to save Sayuri.

Now Yutaemon devoid of all reason to help her.
Did as she did.
A simple act of kindness.
Not something people of the past hadn't done.

But now it became clear to Sayuri's eyes.

We cant see our reflections in the heat of boiling waters.
But when the water calms.
All truths stand unveiled before our eyes.
Then a choice beckons to us all at the height of our dilemma and hesitations.
It will not be what we face BUT how we face it.

Sayuri once more was consumed by her inner thoughts.
"I vowed...
To kill all yokai...
Yet a lack to muster a finger on her...
NO! That's IT!
SHE'S PART OF A CULT! ALL OF THEM!
Waiting for the right moment to buy my trust!
Then they strike like the usual merciless beats they all are!
Nothing but deceitful liars!!!"
Sayuri thought to herself.
She was trying to stoke the flames in her heart, but then like a hand of frost gripping it.
It was Yutaemon yet again.
Just her very demeanour was all there is to be said.
"Or have...I...
NO!...I...I have really lost it...
"I... I have really lost it... Haven't I... Sister?..."
Sayuri finally, for the first time in her life ever since the day she accepted the hell bug unto her heart.
She admitted she was wrong.

The admission was a silent scream within her mind.
To admit she was wrong was to admit all the nights of bloodshed were meaningless.
It was to admit that the fires of Baxian hadn't been a holy crusade.
But a tantrum thrown by a girl too heartbroken to grieve.

Sayuri's shoulders, which had been held high and rigid like a soldier's for a century.
They finally slumped.

She didn't storm out.
She couldn't.
Her legs felt as though they were made of the same content as the noodles.
Heavy and unstable.

Yutaemon, seeing the shift.
Was glad beyond glee.
She didn't say "I told you so."
She simply walked over.
Her blue fires bobbing gently like loyal hounds, and began to pick up the fallen bowl.

"The soup can be replaced…"
Yutaemon whispered, her voice barely audible over the sound of the morning wind through the shrine.

The villagers, the Kitsune, the Karakasa and the spirits.
All began to murmur and return to their meals.
The commotion was over, but for Sayuri.
The real work was just beginning.
She stood in the center of a room filled with her enemies.
But for the first time, she didn't feel the need to reach for a blade.
She felt a crushing, agonizing need to weep.

She looked at Yutaemon, who was now wiping the table with a clean cloth.
Her bittersweet smile still intact.
Then, even to Yutaemon's surprise.
Sayuri knelt together with Yutaemon, offering her hand to clean the mess she made.
Her first selfless act of service.

Sayuri's whisper was a fragile thing, carried on a breath that felt like it had been held for a hundred years.
"I am sorry about what I said earlier...
And you are...right…
I have a bleeding wound…
I have sinned gravely and done many terrible things…
I am beyond forgiveness…"

Yutaemon's smile didn't waver.
"Then let's knit those wounds together…"
Yutaemon replied, her voice a warm anchor in the sea of Sayuri's guilt.
"Both yours and mine."

Sayuri looked at her hands.
They were wet with broth and water, not blood.

"Where do we start?"
Sayuri asked.
Her voice was still low, but the rasp was gone.
It was the voice of someone who was no longer afraid to understand life moving forward.

Yutaemon handed her a fresh towel and gestured toward the kitchen.
Where the next round of bowls waited to be filled.

"We start with the next hungry soul."
Yutaemon said.
"Including yours."

The atmosphere in the hall had finally begun to settle into a fragile peace.
As Sayuri aided Yutaemon with cleaning up the bowls, marking the end of breakfast.
With the yokais leaving the dining hall gradually.
While Sayuri found a semblance of sanctuary in Yutaemon's kindness.

There had been one particular yokai constantly glaring at Sayuri from the windows of the shrine, granting momentary glimpses of Sayuri.
The Bakeneko wasn't just watching.
She haunted the window frame, her presence a jagged silhouette against the morning sun.
Her missing ear and the thick brutal scar that ran across her eye were the craft of Sayuri's past.

To Sayuri, Baxian was a memory of fire.
To this survivor, it was the physical loss of her sight, her hearing, and her home.

The Bakeneko's heart beat with a rhythm Sayuri would have recognized instantly.
The frantic, thumping tempo of terror turned into hatred.
To the Bakeneko, Sayuri wasn't Miss Ito or a weary traveler helping with the dishes.

She was the Butcher of Baxian, a calamity on the level of the Nihon Sandai Aku Yokai.

The Great Three Evil Yokai.
She had Shuten-dōji's ruthlessness.
Tamamo-no-Mae's spite wrapped in silver hair and mahogany skin.

While Sayuri had began to knit her soul back together with Yutaemon.
She was being observed by the very stitches she had torn apart in others.

The Bakeneko didn't scream.

She didn't attack.

She simply stood there, her fit physique coiled like a spring, her dark hair windblown.
The white strains in her fur were the marks of a stress that had aged her a century in a single night of fire.

"IT'S HER!!!!"

The thought was so loud it felt as though it vibrated through the glass of the window.