Chapter Seventeen

His Name is Suminoe

Part 1 of 2

 

What he dreaded most at the end one the first few months at Izumo was the holiday commemorating it. Parents and grandparents came back for the last day of summer, wondering how the children fared in the new environment, wanting to see if the novice child was unhappy and wanted to leave -- and to celebrate if the child was doing fine, or at least was learning something useful and could push through the small hardships on the road.

The post-ceremony festivities took place outside the Shrine grounds, in the town below. Nekohiko could hear the music and elated human voices from the main gates of the School, past the long cedar alley descending into the town. The cedar trees had also been decorated -- ribbons and flying dragon and fish flags billowing in the wind. Myriads of flower lanterns hanged on the branches fused to them like clusters of fruit, waiting for the dusk to glow. The pathwalk was strewn with lucky coin petals, and all the haphazard Bound-Spirit craftworks the novice pupils had been doing for the three summer months. The artworks swiveled in the air suspended from the eaves and arches.

Nekohiko's first ugly Bound leaves and twig stars were among them, but he preferred not to look. It pained him that his Binding was still much less impressive than what the others could do -- speak nothing of Abihiko's or Sakami's filigree Binding. But at least he could Bind. 

Summer had passed by him as tortuously slow as a snail's run. He wasn't advancing in his studies or his martial arts, but he was growing used to the people who surrounded him. Kotone most of all. Head Priest's dummies second. The children...

The children, he ignored. And luckily, they tended to ignore him as well, though he was more than certain that was because of all the merriment and squealy anticipation of today's festival. Most kids had been too busy with crafting and decorating the Shrine School, telling each other their wishes and dreams of seeing their loved ones again. Who had time for some little gloomy girl clinging to the shadowy corners and refusing to speak?

The sun crawled up high but was hiding in the clouds. The swelling heat pressed in waves, only slightly relieved by the meager breeze. Nekohiko avoided meeting any children he knew as he stalked through the buildings to the main square in front of the Shrine. He'd torn a few grass stalks passing by a garden. As he hid in the shadowy corner of a gallery overlooking the main square before the Shrine, he was twining these stalks together, trying to work out a fusion. It went hard; Binding simply didn't yield to him. But he never wasted a chance to exercise.

The noise bothered him a lot. So many people crowding the same space, chatting, laughing under their breaths, hugging, patting each other's shoulders and the kids' heads, sharing exciting news, giving out autumn festival gifts and souvenirs to congratulate their children. Kids running, dragging their friends to go and meet their parents, or showing off what they'd learned in class. Such clamor was distracting to his focus, and he should have left for a quieter place a long time ago.

But he didn't.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched the smiling faces and the proud nods directed at the children by their parents, and his heart panged.

"Mom, look!" Abihiko's obnoxious voice soared the loudest as he and that silly boy Koki pranced through the yard, performing something that looked like a very lame sparring match with a brand new set of wooden swords Abihiko had just received from his father. Of course, Abihiko was a much better swordsman than Koki, but he was held back by the other's incompetence. Not daring to show off. Not daring to strike as he should. And Nekohiko didn't understand why.

Abihiko was rarely ever held back by anything or anyone, the popular boy that he was. His odd lenience and willingness to lose to some people was always incomprehensible to Nekohiko.

Koki managed to disarm Abihiko once again and put the edge of his wooden sword to Abihiko's throat. The delirious smile on the boy's face showed just how amazing it felt, to best Abihiko in anything. Abihiko smiled back at him, not at all acting like this was a defeat.

"Go, go, Abihiko! We believe in you!"

Abihiko's parents -- a proud-backed man and a pregnant mousy woman breezing herself with a round fan -- were amused, but the other two adults who stood beside them weren't. It was the tall, slim man with a harsh face as though cut out with a razor, well-groomed facial hair and angled eyebrows that called all of Nekohiko's attention to him. The hilt of his sword at his hip glinted prominently in the rare sun rays even though weapons weren't allowed into the Shrine.

Except for the five legendary weapons of the Empire, of course. The sword, the glaive, the martial fan, the bow, and the chain sickle.

So this man must be The Sword's owner.

Passersby bowed to him in greetings while he didn't return those, only nodded back. Even Sakami's parents inclined their heads when introduced to him by Sakami and bored Abihiko who only wanted to go back to his wrestling with Koki as soon as possible. And, to think of it -- Sakami's mother was the sister of Great Lady Takarashi of Hisome Lordship. In the whole land, there were only seven people she would need to ever bow to.

The Emperor. The Izumo Shrine's Head Priest. And the Five Great Lords.

So this was Lord Hira Okinaga himself, Nekohiko mouthed, half-ecstatic, half-intimidated. This person, the famous owner of the crimson-bright Chifude sword, was nothing less and nothing more than the axis of the Emperor's power. The most reliable Lord of all -- the Lord of the Mountains. Nekohiko had heard many inspiring things about him and his predecessors. Oh, how he wanted to go to him. To tell him who he was, and that he needed his protection, and that he wanted Okinaga to carry him away this very second.

The Head Priest had warned Nekohiko that his old guardians wouldn't be able to come visit him today. Not because they didn't care for him, or didn't have time to come. Only because it was too dangerous for them to come and too dangerous for Nekohiko to see anyone who wasn't a disciple or a priest at Izumo.

So while all the rest of the little kids had the time of their lives cavorting and laughing away with their parents and relatives, Nekohiko was standing on the side. Only able to watch. But never to join.

He wished to see Saho, or Hachiro, or Kusaki instead of Okinaga. Yet seeing Lord Okinaga felt the closest thing to reuniting with his guardians, for the lack of anything else.

But oh well -- he knew better than to rush up to a stranger's face and demand respect from them. Lord Okinaga wouldn't even look at a sullen little girl without any Binding powers as Nekohiko was now. Hey, even Nekohiko himself would be ashamed to look this Lord in the eye, especially with how grim Okinaga seemed as he watched Abihiko play around.

"Abihiko," the man's voice also possessed such raw, metallic power. He beckoned. "What are you doing?"

"He's only fooling around, Oki," the Lord's wife told him, velvetly. She was just as tall as Okinaga, and just as stick-thin, yet dressed in bright shades of red unlike Okinaga's black trimmed with gold. The way she stood so close to Okinaga, leaning on his shoulder, told Nekohiko she was indeed his wife. And yet... those bright red lips of hers. They were familiar, weren't they?

Her face displayed a cat-lazy serenity, and her silky dark hair streamed down her shoulders in long rope-braids, one of which was currently chewed by a fussy baby in the woman's arms. The Hira Lordship's future heir? Now only a toddler. The woman didn't notice drool tangled in her hair, or maybe she didn't care. Her ease reflected in each of her movements, and in each of her words. "Don't boss him around. He knows what he's doing."

"He's losing again and again," Okinaga said barely opening his mouth.

"So? Like when I spar with you and allow you to defeat me sometimes. It's not as if my skills suddenly decrease. It's only that I don't want you to feel too bad about your own skills."

Lord Okinaga gave the woman an only partly stern look.

She smiled all the wider. "Soft power. In some instances of warfare, by letting the other hold victory you win so much more."

Abihiko's parents beside them chortled, exchanging some more cutesy comments with each other and Okinaga. Though Lord Okinaga maintained utter aloofness, it was clear none of this was out of the ordinary for this group of people.

Abihiko trudged into their small circle, his indignant face turned aside so he didn't have to look upward at Okinaga. But he spoke to him directly. "Yes, Lord Hira? I hope you enjoyed my swordsmanship?"

"Yes, we did. A lot," Okinaga's wife answered, then tossed in the air a shiny golden rice-coin. "Following all of my 'warfare' advice. Good boy. Here's the reward."

Abihiko caught the coin in the air, then dashed a jaw-breaking grin at her. "Thanks, Mom!"

Mom? Nekohiko hated eavesdropping, but he was so absorbed by Lord Okinaga's prominence, he couldn't help it. Now he was confused.

The way this woman... Abihiko's mother, held herself with Okinaga seemed to him quite a bit too disrespectful? If she wasn't Lord Okinaga's wife, how dare she mock him to his face?

How dare he allow that, too?

"You will spoil him, Asazuma," Okinaga muttered, but couldn't help patting Abihiko's head when the boy snuggled closer to both of them. Not only he didn't miss an opportunity to pet Abihiko. The little child in Asazuma's arms babbled, seeing Abihiko's high ponytail beside her and reached out to grab it.

And generously, Abihiko let her.

"I'm not spoiling anyone," Asazuma yawned. "Not if he spends it reasonably."

That same moment, Abihiko was already dashing away and toward the town market in the distance. "Sure, Mom! I'll go buy sweet bean cakes for the entire Shrine School, then!"

"Abiiii, how wasteful," Abihiko's father moaned, too late to be heard by the boy. Even Asazuma frowned. "That's not remotely reasonable--!"

"I'm not going to say 'I told you so'," Okinaga said under his nose.

For a long while, the grass stalks in Nekohiko's hands were nothing more than crumpled plant matter he forgot was even there. With difficulty, he tore his gaze off these four laughing, joking adults. Not even any adults. But the real, blood parents of Abihiko's, and the boy's direct guardian -- a person as close to his charge as a second father. Four adults wasted on one spoiled person.

Did Abihiko have any idea how blessed he actually was?

Nekohiko's eyes returned to his stalks but froze before reaching them. As he was rounding away from the Shrine square, he thought he saw... something... someone.

Heart in his throat, his palms both sweaty and cold, he slowly turned to the square once again.

Could it be? Could it, against all odds?

"Saho."

That sickly but dear face and the enormous gentle gaze. He could not be mistaken. His eyes wouldn't be so cruel.

Nekohiko didn't have a single thought about why she'd come here when she shouldn't, or why she stood all alone in the middle of the square, watching the crowds of children and adults mingling. Transfixed, he gaped. A disbelieving smile crept up his lips.

She came. Like all the other children's guardians and parents had. Maybe not as important or as gift-laden as others, but she came. Nothing else mattered to him.

How could she have left him forever? Of course she wouldn't. Not Saho who loved him even more than a mother he'd never known. Grass stems crushing under his feet, he darted down the gallery to get to Saho faster. But in the mouth of the gallery--

The Head Priest.

Nekohiko bumped into him full force, and almost flew to the floor from the impact.

The Head Priest didn't notice. The man's eyes were drawn to Saho as well, but with a grave, dark glint in them. Nekohiko tried to swivel out of the Head Priest's way, but it was too late. Like a hard clutch of a Bound guard's hand, powerful long fingers lay on Nekohiko's shoulder.

"Nekohime."

Nekohiko's breath erupted in an almost-sob. "Please! I have to go -- Saho came to see me! I--"

Head Priest's voice wafted of cold. "That creature is not your nurse."

"...you... how dare you!"

Nekohiko went still. A shiver ran up his spine. He lifted tearful eyes at the Head Priest. From this vantage point, the man looked ever more solemn and otherworldly. The clean-cut angle of his jaw, the icy glare to his eyes, the blank curve of his mouth. His eyes swept off Saho in the distance and met Nekohiko's.

"That is not your Saho," he repeated barely audibly. His hand released Nekohiko's shoulder, and as though he'd lost the sole balancing axis in his body, Nekohiko swayed.

"Not my Saho? But--"

The Head Priest had already turned to continue his way down the gallery. He halted a moment. "You can check for yourself. Walk directly in front of her. Then see if she recognizes you." The Head Priest's sideways gaze had the impact of an icy shower. "Or not."

Or not?

...or not?!

Scalded by that gaze, Nekohiko dashed out of the gallery and into the swarming crowd of people. His feet carried him solely on the fuel of anger, but as he came closer and closer to the lost-looking, familiar, sweet Saho, his pace slowed down. Until he was standing on the same spot, trading one heave after the other, unable to move.

The voices of the people around him seemed to fade in his ears, the swerve of colors -- to dim into a fog before his eyes. He saw only her. He cared not to see anyone else.

Please, turn, he pled in his mind. Please look at me, and then please smile. Turn to me and prove him wrong.

Please, Saho.

But she didn't turn. In fact, with how tense and startled she looked, Nekohiko thought she would miss him even if she knew he was right there beside her. Saho always tended to be a bit airheaded. It wouldn't be such a huge deal to just go and greet her, would it?

Nekohiko sped up again, but in the swerving rush of the crowd, some older kid rammed past him when he was reaching to grab Saho's sleeve. From beyond the gates to the Shrine, a limpid, high voice rolled across the square.

"Everyone gets one! A bean cake for everybody -- my treat!"

It was because of Abihiko's yelling that the throngs of children roiled in giddiness and flooded over to where the owner of the voice was. Nekohiko received another oblivious shove and toppled down.

He fell on his knees in front of Saho. Her sandals peeked from beneath her gentle-lavender robes so close he could brush his hand against her toes. And yet, she didn't move.

Saho? Wouldn't react to a child falling before her? Not in a thousand years...

Nekohiko raised his head warily.

The concerned yet at the same time detached gaze looked at him from above. Saho's long eyelashes caressed her cheeks and a feverish blush stained her soft face. It was as though she saw him but also didn't. After a minute of staring, she slowly turned in the direction where the majority of the kids had run off to. And as she did, a small jerky movement of her neck made all the hair on Nekohiko's body stand up in an instant.

It wasn't only the movement that got him. It was the sound.

The sound he recognized.

An eerie, inhuman crackle he'd heard before only once. In the dark woods. With the mists and the silence and the morbid stench of ghoul flesh slowly making their way toward him.

"You... are you lost?" he asked Saho groggily. He refused to believe. This couldn't be true! Couldn't! "Do you n-need help finding someone?"

Lurching to a halt, Saho regarded him unseeingly once more. "My boy. Have you seen him? I'm looking for my boy. My little boy." Her aimless eyes roved past the currents of people around them. "Tell him to come see me. He's ten years old. I miss him very much."

With each single cut phrase, Nekohiko shrank back involuntarily. The way she spoke. The way her voice sounded. Strained and rigid, but so carefree as if she were talking with a stranger about the weather.

"Have you seen him?"

"No." Nekohiko shook his head, eyes stinging. "No, I'm sorry."

He was ready to bolt, so terrified he felt, but Saho didn't linger herself. Abruptly like a Bound mechanism, she turned away from him without saying goodbye and started toward the biggest whirlpool of children fighting for candy and cakes in the center of the square.

He didn't register how he ended up in the covered galleries once again, trying to blend in with the shadows, wiping his wet face with his sleeves and hugging himself with his arms. Everything in him shook. He hardly heard or saw whatever was going on around him.

"...I'll give one to Chikako, I swear! And I'll even tell her you were the one who gave it to her," a boy bleated after someone.

"Take it, whatever," Abihiko threw back at him. Several pairs of feet stomped tiles nearing from the square, probably making their way to the inner School courtyard. "I don't care even if you tell her that you bought it."

"If I'm the one who bought the cake, she wouldn't take it," the boy answered grimly. "But if it's something that came from you, no girls would mind it..."

"Some people are lucky like that," another boy from the back agreed. "Every single girl likes you. How unfair is that?"

As Abihiko and his cohort of bully friends marched into the gallery, Abihiko had the most disgruntled expression on his face. "Stop talking nonsense. My ears are bleeding," he told the others, then passed the cake basket from one hand to the other to pull the doors on the inner courtyard open.

And only then noticed Nekohiko curled behind the arch on the side.

Abihiko flinched, startled, then threw Nekohiko a disdainful look. He wanted to grab the door handle but paused as if resigning to something unpleasant.

"Here." A soft object bounced off Nekohiko's chest and plopped to his lap. A small round cake bun. "Whatever it is, it's not the end of the world, Kitten. You won't solve anything just sitting around and being miserable."

Nekohiko didn't even care to look up. He felt dead inside.

"Don't waste it on her!" the first boy exclaimed, only for Abihiko to elbow him in the side.

"I'm in a generous mood today," he replied grandly. "Besides, a sweet cake might help her wipe off that bitter expression of her face, for a change."

To the round of relieved chortling, the doors swung open, then closed. Nekohiko mindlessly fiddled the bun in his fingers, then dragged himself up against strange weakness in his limbs and back. He started walking without realizing at first where to. His legs carried him by themselves.

Abihiko was right, he thought. If something could be done, he was the one who should at least try. He'd better.

The doors of the Head Priest's office shuffled aside as Nekohiko rushed in. In general, the Bound Servants would stop anyone from barging in, but the Head Priest must have been expecting him to come.

The man sat on the floor, eyes closed, hands stroking a small white fox with nine tails on his lap. Even from the outside, Nekohiko had heard a trail of a quiet conversation going, but only with one voice: the Head Priest's. The man was silent now. It didn't even look as if he was awake, so tranquil he was.

"You're learning," he said after a while.

"Learning what?"

"To listen to me." Head Priest finally opened his eyes, just as chilly as always. "And to think for yourself about your safety and picking a smart course of action."

Nekohiko mirrored the man's indifference even though his very soul felt ready to explode.

"And that, too," Head Priest said with a sigh, then plucked the fox from his lap and put it on the floor beside him. The small animal shimmered in the air, growing paler until it washed away like watery ink. A Spirit. But it didn't disappear entirely, only wavered off to the corner, waiting for something.

Head Priest nodded to the Bound Servants behind Nekohiko, and they clanged, pushing the doors of the office shut. Only then did the Head Priest come to Nekohiko. His hand, as it did before, lay incorporeally on Nekohiko's shoulder. The man's eyes studied him for a length of time.

"This office is safe for you to stay until I'm back. I set up the Pearlescent Barrier to keep you in. Nobody from outside the Shrine will be able to enter, and you won't be able to endanger yourself from the inside either." Nekohiko frowned, but the man already turned aside. "The tea on the table soothes one's soul and eases the pain of the mind. Help yourself to it. Grieving for those you've lost is not a lesson I can teach you properly. Only experience will."

"Where are you going?" Nekohiko mouthed as the Head Priest left his side, strolling to the center of the office. The Fox Spirit stepped toward him as well, and as it did, its body grew in size until its head towered so high, it phased through the ceiling, and only its four transparent legs were left standing in the room like fantastical columns.

"I'm going to relieve that woman's soul," Head Priest answered. "And I'm going to deal with the person who controls her."

Nekohiko broke away from the wall. "I want to come, too."

The Head Priest didn't even react to him. All of his focus went to the Fox Spirit's muzzle that phased back into the room from above as if to sniff at the Head Priest's clothes. The size of that head was so incomparable that it could open its mouth and swallow the Head Priest whole, without any trouble.

Which it then did.

Nekohiko gasped. The Fox Spirit's phantom maw opened and closed around Head Priest's body, but as soon as it did, the faint mist of its spiritual form started dissipating and clouding and concentrating around the spot where Head Priest had stood a moment ago.

The merged form of a human and of a divine fox drew back to focus in a swerve of translucent white dust. It roiled faster, coalescing into something much smaller than Head Priest had been. When it breathed out in traces of shimmer, only a solid body of a child remained.

A single child roughly the size and age of Nekohiko's where a Spirit and a man had just been. The child even wore the same pale-green uniform of the Shrine's novices and a distinct array of small details that, to the majority of the world, meant he was a boy. Rougher hair, less intricate the embroidery, much wider the skirt and much narrower the sleeves.

The boy turned to the doors but didn't open them. Without glancing at Nekohiko once, the child walked through the door as though he was just another Spirit. And then he was gone.

"Wait -- I want to go too!" Nekohiko cried after him, but in vain. The doors didn't budge, and the dummies beyond wouldn't let him go even if he broke out. "Damn you! I want to go! Please don't hurt her! Please save her!"

His voice shattered into a rasp on the oncoming urge to cry again, but he refused to. He swung around to the wide-open window and rushed into it to spring out. But as he came within an inch from the window sill, a brutal force -- an invisible wall -- slammed into his face and bounced him away. A barely-felt current of electricity stung his skin where it had touched the spell's surface.

He dropped to the floor, trembling knuckle rubbing his hit cheek. Damn it! Damn it all! The Head Priest had trapped him here, for real? And all while Saho was in danger somewhere?

Much more cautious, Nekohiko sidled to the window without attempting to climb out. He examined some Bound, magical area that kept him within the room. He saw nothing. Nothing that indicated there was a set spell working.

This was the famous Pearlescent Barrier of the Head Priest's.

Nobody it guards against can pass through it. Only if someone unguarded invites you to.

But who -- out of anyone in the world -- would be so bold as to let a seemingly-punished pupil out of the Head Priest's office? Vague shadows of adepts and Schoolmasters shifted in the distance past the camellia branches, but Nekohiko discarded the idea of calling them as soon as he saw them.

Nobody would help him with this. Nobody so bold, and nobody so dumb, was there?

When a few minutes later, a familiar purling of irritating voices sounded off the garden pathwalks nearby, Nekohiko straightened out of a tight ball on the floor. He peeked out.

Laughter, stupid jokes, bravado, telling each other utter rubbish. A head with a high ponytail tied with a bright-red ribbon flashed here and there among the other heads and faces as the group of novices chatted while sauntering.

Even before deciding to, Nekohiko scrambled around the office to find that idiotic cake bun he'd dropped to the floor earlier. And once he did, he took an aim straight into that high ponytail. And into the hateful person it belonged to.

The bun flew through the air in an arc. The soft thump it made against Abihiko's half-turned face was too low for Nekohiko to hear, but he saw clear.

He saw the scowl, and he saw the distaste on Abihiko's previously laidback face. He saw how Abihiko turned to lour at him from over several dozens of feet away.

Nekohiko didn't know any good insults, but he was losing time with each second. He needed someone bold and dumb to drag him out of here. Right now. So he said the only insulting thing he could come up with on the sly.

It was the thing he'd dreamed to say these three whole months. The easiest words in the world.

"I hate you!"