The seven of them worked their way room by room through the empty home. Koichi remained outside in order to make small talk with the merchant.
Their voices were faint through the walls, but Ryuichi heard their discussion all the same.
“They seem remarkably young. Do you think they can handle this?” the merchant asked. “All the ones before them have failed.”
“Them?” Koichi replied. “Sure... I mean, probably. They need the seasoning. This’ll toughen them up.”
Toughen them up?Just what had their sensei set them up for?
Ryuichi wasn’t a roast, and he really didn’t want to be seasoned by being fed to anything, least of all a demon.
What were they about to face?
To his deepest chagrin, they started fanning out to go off into different directions. Ryuichi hesitated. “Should we be breaking apart?”
After all, bad things always happened when people went their separate ways.
The only one left to hear his question was Taka, who laughed briefly before he, too, went off to explore.
Ryuichi was entirely alone. Awesome. Just what he wanted. Abandoned in a foreign house with who-knew-what on the loose—something that would either try to take his soul or eat his flesh while his sensei casually sat outside, sipping sake with the owner.
Sure. Feed the kids to the oni or whatever else was in here, hungry. Why not? After all, there were plenty more where they came from. If what the others had said was true, the Kai-dan were just another meal for the monsters.
After all, who would miss them? They were the broken ones.
Suddenly, Ichiro’s voice echoed through the house, and Ryuichi heard the others running toward the sound.
Ryuichi was a little more circumspect. He carefully made his way through the empty rooms toward the back garden, where his new teammate continued to call for them and their sensei.
Ichiro stood in the back garden, surrounded by moonlight and dark flowers. A woman was crouched by a pond, muttering between the strands of white hair that hid most of her wrinkled face.
She must be the merchant’s wife. Tiny. Frail. She hardly seemed to be some demonic creature. More likely, she was insane.
That was Ryuichi’s assessment, until he moved close enough to see where her red kimono had fallen away from her shoulder. There, the skin was blotchy from a peculiar blackness that seemed to be growing while he watched it, like an out-of-control weed in a garden.
It appeared to be eating her, crawling along her skin...
But that wasn’t the worst of it. A horrid stench permeated the air, and the closer he stepped toward her, the worse it became. “What is that smell?”
Taka pressed his hand against his nose. “Evil. Pure and simple. Unmistakable. You can’t miss it. And it’s strong with her.”
Masa waved his hand in front of the old woman’s face. She didn’t respond at all. “Shadow demon,” he said.
Shigeru bit his lip as he eyed her warily. “Should we get Sensei?”
Taka snorted and passed an irritated, knowing smirk to him.
Shigeru held his hands out. “Fine. I know he’s drunk. But we don’t really have the ability to handle this on our own. I mean... seriously. We go in or we pull out. Either way, I’m thinking it’s going to grab hold of one of us and make us its snack. I don’t want to be its snack.”
Katashi scratched his ear. “He has a point. Remember what happened to?—”
“Shh!” Toru interrupted. “We never, ever talk about that. Don’t even say that name!”
“I didn’t say the name. I’m just saying it would be wise to heed the lessons learned by the fools who preceded us.”
They all turned to stare at Ryuichi.
“What?” he asked nervously, not liking those speculative expressions in the least.
