30 The Girl at the Shrine

  [Player: Kuro]

  [Form: Cat (Yokai)]

  [Alignment: Enigmatic]

  [Waza: Shapeshift, Night Vision, Silent Step, Yokai Sense]

  [Status: Submerged | Gripped by Memories]

  [Objective: Confront Past Regrets]

  [Current Location: Sinking beneath the Northern Sea]

  ---

  Kuro’s eyes fluttered open as she sank to the bottom of the sea.

  Dark. So dark.

  Cat’s are afraid of the dark.

  Most people don't know that, but it's true. Their eyes are so sensitive that a cat might never experience true darkness in their entire lives.

  It was all around Kuro now. Terrifying.

  But she tried to keep her eyes open because her memories… because that girl… was more terrifying still.

  ---

  She set down a grande matcha Frapachino, condensation bleeding down it's sides in the summer humidity. Then the girl rummaged around in her bag until she took out a used tube of high SPF Chapstick and a half eaten pack of grape gummies and placed them on the shrine as… an offering? Then she clapped, bowed and rang the bell.

  For a heartbeat, the girl’s face was serene, almost blank, as if genuinely praying, a mask of cpiety. Then she let out a snort and a sharp laugh, devoid of humor. “Baka. What do you think I need from you, kami-sama?” She spoke as though addressing the empty air, but her eyes held a calculating intelligence.

  Kuro’s eyes narrowed, cat pupils contracting. She hopped down softly behind the shrine, a silent shadow in the artificial light, shifting into a young woman, her movements swift and economical. “You’re no victim,” she said, stepping into the girl’s view, her voice low and assessing. “I can see that. You’re something… else.”

  The girl cocked her head, a birdlike tilt, studying Kuro with an unnerving directness. She seemed utterly unafraid, almost expectant. “Who’re you, onee-chan?” - dragging the middle syllable out mockingly.

  Kuro parted her lips in a sly smile, a predator revealing its teeth. “Someone who can show you a world where power is real. A place beyond human laws, beyond human weakness. Interested?

  The girl’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, a flicker of surprise quickly masked. She studied Kuro’s cat-like eyes, her unnatural stillness, then smiled slowly, a chillingly genuine expression. “Yes, actually. That sounds… interesting. Very interesting.”

  The girl wasn't mocking her anymore. She was taking Kuro seriously.

  That should have made her feel better but instead Kuro felt a whisper of unease she couldn't quite dismiss. Something about this human’s calm acceptance, her almost eager anticipation, felt… off. Dangerously so. But she had her orders, and besides… her curiosity was piqued. She led the girl to the shrine’s dilapidated arch, the same weathered torii wood, and brushed her paw—yes, she’d half-shifted to cat again, an unconscious twitch—along the cold, rough surface. A sickly green glow ignited around the torii, an unnatural luminescence. The barrier parted with a silent tearing, a rip in the fabric of reality.

  Together, without another word, they stepped through the glowing portal, leaving the mundane world behind.

  They emerged into a damp, mossy clearing in the Yokai Realm, at night. At first, silence but slowly the hissing sound of lesser yokai stirring surrounded them. Kuro could see the eyes of a half-dozen scuttling shapes, all lean limbs and hungry eyes, drawn by the scent of living flesh entering their domain. Kuro half-expected the girl to scream, to recoil in terror, to crumble into a pathetic heap. Instead, the girl’s lips curved in fascination, a delighted wonder shining in her eyes.

  “So, there are monsters here,” she murmured, her voice barely a whisper, sounding almost… delighted. She reached out a hand, as if to touch the shadows where the yokai lurked, a disturbingly innocent gesture.

  “Be careful,” Kuro said flatly, stepping back, distancing herself. She had seen this many times before. This was typically the point at which the hapless human got swarmed and devoured… or, in very rare cases, forced to awaken some hidden potential in a desperate fight for survival. This was the test.

  Sure enough, the pack attacked, driven by hate and hunger. They leapt from the shadows, snarling, a flurry of claws and teeth. Kuro folded her arms, prepared to watch with cold dispassion, to record the data, to assess the failure.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  But the outcome was… unexpected. Disturbingly so.

  The girl pivoted aside from the first yokai’s lunging claw with startling fluidity. She hooked a foot behind its knee and driving it into the ground with surprising force, the thud of impact muffled by the soft earth. Her speed and precision were shocking for someone who, as far as Kuro could sense, had no supernatural ability, no reishin, no kegare. Another yokai lunged from the side. She reacted instantly, seizing a broken branch, jagged and sharp, lying on the forest floor, and speared it with brutal efficiency into the creature’s gaping mouth.

  Blood sprayed, black and viscous in the dim light. The lesser yokai screeched, a gurgling, strangled sound, thrashing wildly as the girl twisted the improvised weapon deeper, her face utterly expressionless, almost serene in its focus.

  “Not bad,” Kuro murmured, a thread of genuine unease now weaving through her detached observation. This was not the reaction of a frightened victim. This was… something else entirely.

  In mere moments, a terrifyingly short span of time, the entire pack lay dead or dying, twitching silently on the forest floor. The final creature whimpered, a broken, pathetic sound, trying to crawl away into the undergrowth, its leg twisted at an unnatural angle. The girl, spattered with gore, face untouched, stepped calmly onto its back, placing her foot with deliberate precision on its spine, pressing down. There was a terrible snap, sickeningly loud in the sudden silence, and it fell still, lifeless. Then, this girl, reached into her school bag - still slung over her shoulder. She rummaged around in it until she found what she was looking for and withdrew a silver and pink canister. And a lighter.

  The girl started spraying an acrid chemical all over the bleeding and twitching creatures. Hairspray. Then she flicked the lighter and set them all on fire.

  Kuro realized she was staring, her cat eyes wide with a horror.

  Then it got worse.

  The girl looked around the clearing, her gaze sweeping over the black oily smoke and the carnage she had wrought, and spied the black cat, Kuro still partially shifted, watching from the edge of the trees. Her eyes lit up, not with fear or aggression, but with an almost childlike glee, a terrifyingly innocent expression. “So you’re the one who brought me here.”

  Kuro blinked, the unease solidifying into real dread. “Yes. I was told to…”

  But that was as far as she got. The girl snatched her up with lightning reflexes, hands clamping around Kuro’s feline torso with brutal strength, like a vise of iron. One moment she was observing, the next she was trapped.

  “Wha—?!” Kuro hissed, claws instinctively scrabbling for purchase, panic surging.

  The girl’s grin widened. “You shift, right? You’re not just a cat. But you’re not completely human, either. How do you do it?” She lifted Kuro closer, ignoring the cat’s frantic squirm and desperate yowl, her eyes bright with unsettling curiosity. “I wonder how you work. Where’s your heart? Your spine? Does it move when you change?”

  Horror, raw and primal, ripped through Kuro. This was the first time she was on the receiving end of real danger, the prey, not the observer. The girl was rummaging in her jacket pocket with her free hand, producing a small, gleaming folding knife.

  “Let’s take a look inside,” the girl said sweetly, voice gentle, eyes shining.

  Kuro hissed again, a guttural snarl of pure terror, claws lashing out, tearing at the girl’s jacket, drawing a thin line of blood. In desperation, driven by nothing but instinct, she allowed her body to shift uncontrollably, catastrophically, from cat to half-human mid-grapple, the abrupt, painful expansion of limbs momentarily loosening the girl’s hold, ripping free.

  With a half-strangled yowl of pain and fear, Kuro pried herself free from the girl’s crushing grip and darted back, stumbling, her breath ragged. The girl’s knife whistled past, a silver blur, nicking her ear, drawing blood.

  The high schooler smiled again, a wide, radiant smile, joy in her eyes. “Now that’s a neat trick. You're something... special.”

  Kuro knew that she had to get away. This situation was no longer in her control. She was terrified. In a split second, the barest flicker of opportunity, Kuro shape-shifted back into full cat form—sleek, small, agile, a shadow darting into shadows—and sprinted into the encompassing darkness, abandoning all pretense of control.

  “Don’t run!” the girl called after her, laughter echoing through the trees, a chilling, gleeful sound trailing in Kuro’s wake. “I’m not done with you! We can be friends!”

  But Kuro didn’t look back. She leapt over fallen logs, scurried under thorny brambles, ignoring the burning scratch of branches against her fur. She ran blindly, driven only to survive. Eventually the sounds of pursuit faded, swallowed by the dense forest. The girl’s laughter was finally gone.

  From a distance, through the trees, she glimpsed the silhouette of the teenage girl in the clearing, crouching over the still smoldering yokai corpses, illuminated by the weak moonlight filtering through the canopy. She was rummaging through them, her posture maddeningly casual, as though going through a shopping bag, probing the still-warm bodies with a detached curiosity. Then she stood, head turning sharply, impossibly quickly, as if she sensed Kuro’s hidden eyes on her.

  Kuro ducked lower, pressing herself into the shadows, invisible against the darkness. She had never encountered a human like that—someone who thrived on violence not because of reishin or kegare, but simply because she wanted to. Someone who found joy in cruelty. She’s not a Vessel… she’s just a monster. A human monster.

  As Kuro was about to flee fully, to put as much distance as possible between herself and the girl, she caught a last glimpse of the her uniform jacket in the moonlight. The pocket flap, ripped slightly from Kuro’s claws, was embroidered with neat, white characters, pristine against the navy fabric:

  Kitazawa Yumi.

  Yumi.

  The name lingered, glowing in Kuro’s fading mind like a brand, a burning accusation...

  ...before the unforgiving sea swallowed all consciousness completely, extinguishing even the memory of a name. The Umibozu’s unanswered question echoed in the silent depths:

  Why?

  ---

  [Achievement Unlocked: Shared Drowning]

  [Next Chapter: Down Where the Water Takes Us]

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