Chapter Text
Once upon a time, chasing skirts couldn’t make Kitaro merrier, even if it meant he had to nurse his own shellacking after the fact. It was only one of the many reasons he inherited these messes, but it procured him the most attention. Yet, that wasn’t much inclusive to the pervert patrol that had since been stationed in his preferred haunt. Fists, shoes, and drum sticks he could handle, but billy clubs were quite unsavory territory. The lessons he had previously been mentored in were hard work in practice. Old ladies and their purses, womanly pedestrians singled out during their ill-timed strolls, it mattered not. Kitaro was of the opinion that most grandmothers, wives, aunts, and girlfriends could easily maim him should they be cornered, so he had half the mind to at least act benevolent.
Women didn’t like filthy, underhanded street rats like himself, and his delusions of grandeur were sorely reprimanded according to his hasty, artless impulse in the past. For the trouble, his purpose in the deserted alley that served to complete his arrest was not to harass the countering sex. He could enjoy the night life without a black eye, busted lip, and ruptured spinal cord. Those greedy teachings had been damned anyway, by old shapes and faces that no longer recognized him. It was for the better, anyway. Kitaro had no desire to be a victim of monster politics.
“Ma’am, may I handle your wallet?” He offered candidly, in the manner of a gentleman that fully intended to sacrifice his vest so that the lady before him would not dirty her shoes in a lowly puddle.
The deaths of hundreds of his ancestors couldn’t compare to kindly expended chivalry, in his ungrateful ten year old mind. It might have occurred to him that he was now as old as his first love had been, when he became her manager. The awakening from his rarely wrought sentiments came in the form of a strong hand stuffing his vest’s scruff in it’s grasp. Apparently he was too busy dreaming wistfully to hear the screams for help that bayed through her maidenly throat, but the patrol officer wasn’t. How rude.
“Is this the punk you were talking about?” Exhaled the emblem wielding enforcer impatiently, looking every bit his part. His rapidly blinking eyes and the veins bulging from his neck fashioned a barren stare, until it was congealed by Kitaro’s sole nictating membrane. The woman turned her nose up and curled her lip in condemnation.
“That’s the one! Who hasn’t seen him loitering at this point?” There was no compassion in her astute affirmation, but Kitaro couldn’t really blame her. He merely turned his gaze back to the noise that strained his ears so, lips parting slightly as his captor remarked about taking him to high command. Despite his unflinching eyeballing, Kitaro’s mouth went dry with unease.
High command? Like the police headquarters? This time, he didn’t have his father to save him, and if he was indeed imprisoned, there was no way the feuding old man would bail him out. He had heard many a lecture about the fates of his clan once captured by authorities, so many that he couldn’t swallow. Shaking his head, the suspended child held back a perturbed gasp as the indignant lawman turned on his heel in the direction he‘d undertaken, but merely slackened in resignation. Perhaps like that phony impostor of his, Kitaro could get further by giving up.
What he didn’t expect was the contemptuous la-dee-da he would be forced to hear after waiting for an hour and a half. He expected his worst fears to come alive, just like those wrapped up in his very own Dream Omen. However, once brought to stand in front of the menacing bodement that was the commander’s desk, the alert hairs of his striped chanchanko stilled in mollified calm and boredom.
“Word’s had it that the alleyway in question had frequent cases of sexual assault and unabashed molesters,” Began the director, unknowingly eliciting pins and needles in Kitaro’s dizzying skull, “but I didn’t expect a little kid like this…”
“You just can’t trust these folk, Chief. Nowadays kids are getting worse and worse. This brat can’t be a day over five years old but he’s clearly influenced by the explicit sexual activity fictionalized in today’s mainstream. God knows what’s in those comic books boys love to read,” The patrolman had the decency to clear his throat guiltily. Kitaro would have rolled his eye if he wasn’t frozen on the spot.
Under the director’s mustache, his lips curved in a rueful smirk. “Well, we can’t blame Go Nagai for everything. Movies have had an even bigger influence on children. I for one dread the day unsimulated sexual activity widely releases, coloring the genre with more varied self-indulgences.”
“What about Sagaru Mizuki?” The stone faced boy asked, looking up from his infinitely more interesting sandal thong. “I look like GeGeGe no Kitaro, don’t I?”
“Who? That your guardian, or something?” The patrolman broke piteous eye contact with the boy to attend to his superior’s input.
“Well, either way, the kid is not to blame,” The commander determined, sickening the boy with his sympathetic softening look while discussing him.
“So, should we release him?”
“Yes, with all the inexplicable explosions lately, we don’t have time for another one.”
“Maybe he’s the one behind them?” Kitaro had a nagging suspicion that the patrolman’s words weren’t serious, but he didn’t understand why. He just was not partial to being patronized. Squeezing his remaining eye shut, the boy wrapped his arms around himself and stomped out. It was a wonder he didn’t bump into anyone that would pummel him. He almost missed that kind of attention, for what he received in that stuffy office wasn’t what he wanted at all.
“Come on,” The buck toothed demon child urged himself on, unwilling the aimlessness to enshroud him in more darkness. He clawed his thrashing hair with his fingers, dancing his digits in vexation. “This is so messed up! I’m no molester. I never went that far, but if I had…”
Something about the attitudes of those two men bore right under his skin, and not just because they kept him until dawn rose.
“…I can’t take it,” If only he didn’t deserve this, was yet another intruding thought. If only he wasn’t similar in mindset. “It’s unforgivable.”
GeGeGe no Kitaro never had to suffer like this. He knew only second hand information about his guardian’s prized manga, but he didn’t go to school, didn’t go to work, didn’t get sick, and had a community he could call his own family. He didn’t have to face his problems alone because he had friends that would go the extra mile for him. A manga that didn’t exist in this cruel, interesting world. This violable, taunting twinge of separation was almost unbearable. He never bothered to ask for acquittal, but he was coming closer and closer to rejecting the heat. Clemency boiled so crisply, he couldn’t even process the cold sweat tempestuously oozing from his pores.
Kitaro picked up his feet and walked in erratic strides, releasing his scrunched up face from the building pressure. His sleepless eye scattered below the fading stars, transfixed only on the paranoia that someone that knows his secret could be watching and waiting for their prey. His darting glances revealed nothing. He didn’t dare continue his harried muttering, instead mashing his clammy hands against his cheeks and jabbing his fingernails into his flushed skin.
It was quite a sight for one root-headed rodent to behold. A malicious smile tugged on his chapped lips. This was definitely more intriguing than the teasing he had in mind for the young demon. When Nezumi-Otoko had endeavored to make a surprise visit, gloating about the purchases he’d made from Kitaro’s stolen checkbook, he didn’t expect to be shooed by a particularly cold Medama-Oyaji. He knew the two were at odds with one another, but he couldn’t have hoped for a more entertaining spectacle if he were desperate enough to pray for it.
Still, he kept his respectful distance from the beset Kitaro. He hadn’t seen the boy ever pull such anguished expressions. It almost angered him a little to spy the normally carefree Kitaro this afflicted. Apparently it ruffled the boy as well, for he took to slamming his geta into the trunk of a utility pole. This tantrum startled the birds that had perched on the electric lines arched above the impudent urchin, but the spectacle was far from over. Rather than like the clumsy oaf Nezumi-Otoko knew, the rampaging runt flung himself down to the ground and clutched his broken sandal with palpable fury.
The unpleasant rumble of wicked mirth interrupted Kitaro from his rising flare-up, blanketing the sensation with an icy veil of dispassionate apathy. Just great, the rat had found him. From the sound of his chuckles, he was abundantly amused. What were the odds he didn’t spend all of Kitaro’s hard won notes? Definitely not in the favor of a child like him. The loss chilled him, but he didn’t care to focus on betting, unlike his pachinko-obsessed company.
“Look at you,” Nezumi-Otoko cooed at the unmoving boy, cherishing that his split sandal was still frozen in midair. If only Kitaro could see himself. The rat couldn’t resist leaning forward so the one eyed kid could see his bald-faced relish of his discontent. “If that isn’t just the most adorable sight.”
One glazed eye observed his new tormentor frigidly, as if he couldn’t see anything. Maybe he just didn’t wish to give Nezumi-Otoko the satisfaction of a response. “Oh come on, don’t play dead. I’m not here to drag you back to your dad, if that’s what’s gotten you so subdued.”
No response. Well, it might have been an improvement over being a pile of bones. He had seen the kid in a sorrier state before. It was fortunate for him that the rat was in a superb mood. Or maybe it wasn’t anyway, judging by the unexpected evidence of a smarting eye. Had Kitaro been crying? It didn’t seem out of the question, given the scene he’d just witnessed.
“Kitaro-chaaaan, what’s the matter? Angry that you’re too young, inexperienced, and childish to handle money?” The half human pressed his stupefied company with a roguishness that usually would at least garner a crinkling, scornful scoff. Despite the stiff appearance of his eyelid, the boy didn’t even so much as blink. The sneer on the rodent’s face only leached more evil intent as he proceeded to grab the ankle in front of him. “Surely you’re not so stricken by a little bad omen. Is the baby boy scared?”
Jerking his leg back and finally sitting up from the heap he’d made of himself on the ground, Kitaro regarded his prized sandals with what might have been stoic wistfulness, the prior shock long melting from his countenance. “No.”
If he was surprised by the disagreement, Nezumi-Otoko didn’t show it. “Well, come to think of it, that’s a lot like you. Couldn’t care less about the family you have, just what benefits they could privilege you with, right?”
Kitaro nodded, not so much as narrowing his eye. Rather, when he raised his hand, his finger jammed into his empty eye socket. “If this is about my lost clan, I couldn’t care less. You’re wasting your breath.”
“On the contrary,” Nezumi-Otoko spat in a moment of choler. “ You’re as big of a problem yourself, knowing it all while achieving nothing for it. It’s a miserable attitude to have. You’re too precious about it. Still…your pet eyeball is indifferent to the moment, and struggles to live with it most days. He speaks like that because he’s scared of failing.”
“Doesn’t change anything. I’m glad he’s out of my hair anyway,” Kitaro mutely sighed, his shoulders bowing from the effort it took to respond to a matter he was loathe to bother with. “You don’t care either.”
“Heh,” Nezumi-Otoko caught himself. It would be so easy to make a competition out of this, but he was intelligent enough to recognize and reprimand his kindred spirit’s mood. The question was why one who prided himself in not helping when he was needed would choose to do so. “I’ll have you know I was talking about the man that raised you, idiot. You changed the subject on your own, so it’s your fault you’re not enjoying my company.”
Lifting his hand limply, Kitaro turned a sleepy eye away from Nezumi-Otoko and stood. “He died a useless death, not that I could have changed anything if I tried. I’ve explored all the felicity involved with freedom since. I could use your shelter, however. I could really use your shelter.”
Nezumi-Otoko grimly swatted the pompous, flesh and bone impudence before him without sparing even a second of restraint. He told himself it had to have been a trick of his eyes that Kitaro had shuddered in the middle of his demand. That Kitaro said could have instead of would have. “If I weren’t your best friend, you’d be sleeping on the street again tonight. Come on.”
The defensive snort behind him entailed that the boy at least had the sense to obey him for the moment. They continued onward in relative silence, the rotten little goon caressing his sore cheek. Nezumi-Otoko let him brood.
“I got off too damn easy,” Kitaro muttered rigidly, transfixed on the sound of his geta knocking together. Forcing himself to push down his recurring officiousness, Nezumi-Otoko turned his head to glance at the lagging boy. Kitaro’s sandals hung suspended by his free hand, excreting a faint wooden rasp. It was hard to tell what the boy was pouting about, but it didn’t appear to be related. Grabbing the back of his neck, Nezumi-Otoko gave it a firm squeeze, not much unlike an unskilled massage, before pushing the boy unkindly.
“Scoot, birdbrain. I’ve changed my mind.”
“Stop antagonizing me!” Kitaro squawked, his lips smacking resonantly. He was much too cranky to admit that the initial contact wasn’t that bad. “I let you live that time, so you ought to remember your place, subordinate!”
Nezumi-Otoko’s eyes glittered with infused boorishness. “That was because your old man burrowed into my head. Simmer down and let me finish speaking, you brat!”
Releasing a husky grunt, Kitaro complied. “This better be good, hippo head.”
”We’re staying in my apartment instead! It’s been awhile since you were my cute little secretary,” Nezumi-Otoko decreed, suddenly upraising Kitaro by his vest scruff and giving him a firm shake. “We’ll be as thick as thieves, two brotherly heels abound for trickery!”
“You rented another apartment?” Kitaro intoned dimly, his face betraying nothing if he was unimpressed. It was much too early for this romp, and he hadn’t slept a wink.
“Yep,” Nezumi-Otoko affirmed, omitting the little fact that it was with Kitaro’s checkbook that he did so. He’d already blown his own money with his affinity for gambling, but his charge needn’t know that. He rubbed his whiskers against his cheek as if to transfer something more than infectious to the vulnerable boy. “Once I get you settled, I’ll even bring you caramel Chocoballs. A deal you can’t refuse, right?”
There was an instantaneous shift in the moody demon’s vibe. A pained smirk devoid of virulent intent curved up his lips. It didn’t look out of the ordinary, however. “Aww, that’s so kind of you. You’re not the type to feed children rat droppings.”
That did it; the complete absence of sarcasm would be his undoing. There was something Nezumi-Otoko would have liked about this diabolical child, and it wasn’t stifling enough. It was such a shame that he had to be an ingrate. A stinky gale of laughter ushered from his bad breath.
“Kyoro-chan’s droppings are another story. A run of the mill yokai you are, but I suppose you must love colorful mascots like him. So…”
Kitaro’s puffy eye watered at the wretched odor. A run of the mill yokai? Did that mean he wasn’t just a normal kid in the eyes of the rat himself? That was definitely points above his father. He didn’t have to latch on to something like heritage to have recognition. “So?”
Having reached his target, Nezumi-Otoko set the boy down on his feet and steered him inside. “Will ya give me fifty yen in exchange?”
Kitaro smacked his lips in distaste, pinching his own neck, then the bridge of his nose. His hand fumbled and retrieved a coin from his pocket. “Well, some compromises must be made. Just this once. You blow your chance and you’re a dead man.”
“Hey, nice!” Nezumi-Otoko glowed victoriously, flipping the coin from his thumb and snatching it resolutely with his palm. It was ever fortunate that children weren’t allowed where he was heading. Once he was gone, Kitaro couldn’t kick up a fuss, and so no threat shot his way mattered thus! “You can get a spare blanket from the closet and sleep on the rug. Do not touch the couch under any circumstances. I’ll be at the parlor. You can’t miss it, it’s right down the lane. Later! Meet me, baby bird!”
With the door shut in his face, Kitaro toddled to the aforementioned furniture and yawned. “I wonder what kind of mascot Kyoro-chan is,” His shrinking pupil roved the leftmost side of the room, picturing a silly bird instead of making much note of his surroundings. His nictating membrane dropped like a heavy curtain, blurring his vision as he curled up without the rag that was probably in the closet. His geta slipped from his fingers and clattered on the ground. “Nn…”
“Kitaro!” That was a familiar voice. At the edge of consciousness, he realized he was being caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to, but there was something wrong with that voice. He perceived both of his eyelids sealing him away. He could see nothing but the color of his skin, and yet that voice continued to needle him. A rough hand shook him by his shoulder, and he sighed. Waking now would be like lifting a boulder six times his size. Senseless as it was, he began to gasp for breath.
“My geta!” He yelped, shooting upright and prying his eye free. Immediately he was shushed by the pad of a wrinkly finger on his lips. Searching with his adjusting eye, Kitaro stiffened mistrustfully at the sight.
“You left them at the genkan,” Sunakake-Babaa assured, peering at him incredulously. “You wore toilet slippers to bed. What possessed you to do that?”
“Eh?” He had also left someone at the genkan once, but he needed his thoughts and memories not to crash into one another. One sheepish glance at his outstretched feet confirmed that he really had adorned them, which meant he had been walking in them in order to get back to his room. How unseemly!
“Night terrors,” Sunakake-Babaa filled in for him, sighing as if overcome by a lightheaded feeling. She covered her mouth with a hand she’d hidden in her sleeve, clearing her throat before bumping her shoulder into his. “That Konaki…I told him not to scare you with those stories about Amamehagi. Once he’s drunk, he can’t help himself.”
“I only told him that so I could tuck him in properly,” The old lush in question stood at the entryway, evidently lured by all the noise. “You never make sure he covers his legs up! It gets cold at night! Besides, he wasn’t scared! Right, Kitaro?”
Kitaro had the meekness to bow his head. This was more embarrassing than mixing up Nezumi-Otoko’s apartment for a stranger’s and eating some British elite’s tasty dinner. “Amamehagi isn’t scary, just weird…he has paralysis powder in his bellybutton and only scares little babies because his breath smells like decaying toes.”
“You idiot! You’re not helping matters,” The conjurer of sand scolded her closest friend with a practiced ease, miraculously hiding her own mirth. Konaki-Jijii didn’t have any restraint and didn’t care about being subtle, on the other hand. Kitaro didn’t know which approach made him feel worse. At least his slight and Sunakake-Babaa’s backing shut him up. “Maybe he wants to appear cool and unafraid because he looks up to you!”
On second thought, Kitaro could have preferred if Konaki-Jijii had prevented this comment. He didn’t look up to these people, as interesting as they were. He was a boy that crawled from out of his mother’s grave, not even raised by his flesh and deadbeat father. He idolized nobody…anymore.
“It wasn’t a nightmare,” Kitaro asserted unconvincingly, “it was just a bad dream. You weren’t there, and you weren’t there, and Nezumi-Otoko gambled my fifty yen away even though he promised me Choboballs! I wasn’t allowed in the Pachinko parlor and he beat me up for embarrassing him in front of some wealthy old shithead with oily skin. His head was bigger than a Chinese gourd and he wouldn’t stop asking about me, even though I could barely see him there! I think I was apprehended by the authorities but they let me go because I read manga.”
“Why were you crying, if that’s true? That sounds an awful lot like Nurarihyon, and he’s a joke to our kind.”
“I…” Kitaro rasped as if speaking through chunks of cinder block lodged in his throat. His sole pupil a smoldering tunnel glutted by the exchange, it became clogged by invasive colors prickling his focused sight. He could see everything else clearly, but as soon as he dedicated his aim to look at anything, it danced away like floating shards of glass. An ache behind his eye pressed him to knead the shut organ with his knuckles. When he endeavored to do so, it felt as if his hand had passed right through his head.
Slowly widening the interstice made by his eyelids as if severe sunlight would agitate his rods and cones with it’s piercing rays, Kitaro endured merely the warm glow of his vest in a stretch of blackness. He made to snap his fingers and call his will-o-wisps, but no sound except the rustle of clothing on his arm penetrated his ears among the calignosity. A shred of slender light oxidized above his head, it’s frail glare lighting the area regardless. There was no sign of anybody he knew. His arm rose so that his fingers could conduct his ghost light when he finally noticed.
“My hand!” He inhaled air through barbed nerves, his dilated eye broadening in alarm. There remained only the stump of his wrist, as if he had lobbed it off. A queasy mewl rolled it’s rotten whine directly to his ears, the sickly thing imploring him. His mouth opened when he felt a fuzzy, protruding bone rub his legs. A lithe tail wrapped around him possessively, making his knees buckle. He kneeled, overcome by dismay.
“I’m stuck,” He recalled, stirring from his self-soothing reveries. “but what happened to those two? I won’t die here,” he couldn’t look at the cat. His inmate wouldn’t last long in there without food or water, and oddly enough, it disturbed Kitaro. The boy who didn’t curl his lip or test his moral code after buying dead cat heads for himself and his surrogate to eat was qualmish over the well-being of a moribund feline. The why came back to him in messy, agonizing images of their shared experience. The sensory denial was the most anguish he’d ever endured, it’s slow broil smarting his abdominal regions and tearing him up inside out.
Still in misting delirium, Kitaro’s own Dream Omen had him convinced that this was no lost cat that just happened to stray too close to an unfortunate mishap, to him, but Neko. His Neko. Even though his feelings for her were credulously possessive and superficial, they weren’t all as such. Though he’d changed over the years almost too easily and moved on to other things, this was too much.
“I won’t die,” He swallowed again, burying his face in her emaciated figure. For a cat to accept his advances so wholeheartedly without shredding his flesh, it had to be her. That or the kitten, who had been trapped in this isolation for much longer, couldn’t live through more of it without attention. Standoffish creatures cats might be, but no creature could survive devoid of another’s rhapsody without succumbing to turmoil. Especially one so young. “But you will, unless...”
It occurred to him yet more that he could take off his vest. It would be so easy to die with her. He too was starving, dehydrated, and rotten. Instead, he lulled her inside his vest, nestling her close. It was no act of kindness. It was selfish, prolonging her suffering in such a manner just so he could feel some sort of connection to himself. Even his lingering attachment to his figment infatuation with Neko wouldn’t truly connect him back to himself, however. For once, Kitaro was trapped within his own phantasmagoria, and even being conscientious of the fact couldn’t fasten him back to a reality he couldn’t trust.
“Please don’t leave again,” Kitaro spoke in a small whirr, taking advantage of the confidentiality of the misfortune he now faced. There were times he could hear voices from the world outside of the witch’s urn, but no matter how loudly he screamed and cried, none of them heard him. None of them acknowledged his plight. The two prominent ones even mocked him, though it seemed mostly as if it was a one-sided conversation.
Kitaro recounted, lips wobbling in their unspoken distortion, his hypertension wiring all of his nerves together in a taut bundle. He barely ever exerted for a living being other than himself. Remorse was of emotional intelligence he had yet to firmly grasp developmentally. It was human, he told himself, and he wasn’t that. It didn’t mean he hadn’t come close, but this taste of it was so rancid he thought he might throw up.
The newly dubbed Neko barely moved when salty droplets watered her withering fur. It didn’t matter if he roared in bereavement, for nobody would hear except for her. This time his pride wouldn’t let him continue to beg like the child he was. He was needy, but so was she, he liked to think. This was too human for a demon and an animal. Perhaps this was why his father loathed his crying so much. It wasn’t befitting of one such as him; beneath him.
“I made a promise to you,” Not really, it was more like a resolution. One he made when he was only seven, at a time no one would ever take him seriously. Even now, much hadn’t changed, especially not his grief. It became worse, if anything. “I’m a conniving person, though.”
So sensitive to every twitch, his ear spasmed unmercifully when once again voices passed through the nozzle of the ceramic urn. He breathed out a fluctuant giggle humorlessly, almost plunging into a mindscape of delectable images of his captors’ torment at his hands. He crammed a fist in his mouth and screamed in a fit of misery and rage, a blistering pain enveloping his missing extremity.
“What do we do now? We’ve done this treatment countless times and his hand isn’t coming out. His attempts to strangle me lately aren’t helping matters!”
“It’s a powerful curse. Kitaro’s resentment must not be underestimated. We will break his spirit no matter. He is certainly in immense agony, suffering unlike any those who sought my counsel before have achieved. I wonder if he is listening. Well, Kitaro? Release your curse on Nurarihyon!”
Nurarihyon. That was a household name for one distinct reason. Kitaro would plague the bearer of that name. Just because his head was shaped like a lucky gourd didn’t mean he could ward off Kitaro’s malefic spell. He had hidden himself well, but Kitaro had some shame in the fact he had been duped. This was one yokai that had a distinguished reputation among humankind, but for now he was all bark. To have deadly business with the scanty Kitaro could mean any number of things.
“Can’t say I’ve seen a possession like that from the guy,” A mock-impressed whistle tootled from Nezumi-Otoko’s lips, “I respect Kitaro, but this isn’t his style. He’s either really pissed off or his powers are getting stronger. His train conducting shenanigans would’ve pitted you both against each other eventually, I reckon. Now, I expect you both to negotiate my pay. Hey, watch where you’re swinging that arm!”
Infuriated that Nezumi-Otoko was counseling with the object of his current revenge fantasies, Kitaro swerved Nurarihyon’s arm, enchanted by the surging tingle of a limb that was so foreign to him. The quiet manner of the elderly poser wound up into some profoundly rankled and disoriented glare. The root headed trickster had evaded the attack of Kitaro’s hand, firmly entrenched in Nurarihyon’s own fist.
“I can’t help it! We’ve barely suppressed him with Jakotsu-Babaa’s magic,” He blustered, the flesh of his shaker smelling sharply like steamed fish to the swindling rat’s nostrils. “Don’t you have some kind of solution? I already paid you!”
“I’m under the impression you’ve shown a lot of favoritism for that self-proclaimed Yuta, though,” Snickered Nezumi-Otoko, picking the accumulation of grime under his fingernails as he reviled the old coot with nefarious ravishment. From the depths of his abominably filthy robe, he revealed a single leaf and tickled under his own chin with it.
Sure, he too had been fooled by Nurarihyon, but now he had the upper hand over all three of the fiendish bidders. Most delightedly, even the old hag. For some reason or another, she knew far too much about Kitaro, and even had a history of being consulted for his demise. Usually he wouldn’t care, but he quite liked the idea of being the top monkey on the informant ladder. Not out of some sparked rivalry like the witch had with Sunakake-Baba, but out of some effortless perversion of it.
“It is none of your business, but I am from Bukan,” Jakotsu-Babaa sniffed, but Nurarihyon couldn’t tell if it was acerbic or straightforward repartee.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Rejoiced Nezumi-Otoko, furthering the supposed pleasantries with an underlying boastfulness. “Both of you follow me. I have something that will take care of your little problem. Finally, I can get that wretched brat out of my hair!”
“What hair?” Kitaro griped from his imprisonment, daring to have faith in the rat. He had come through for him once. It was hard to tell which side he was playing on, but he fervently believed in the good in him.
“You see, Kitaro and I go back. He’s always meddling with my life and flaunting his pretentious ideas of superiority. However, he was my servant. Ever since his betrayal, I’ve been searching tirelessly for a method to kill him, or at least get him out of the way.”
Jakotsu-Babaa nodded receptively. “I have my own motives for the boy, too. For many a decade I’ve sought ways to break Sunakake-Baba’s spirit. It is just as prolific to extract her precious errand boy instead. I’ve been watching over him for far longer than she had even to get to know him. With my intuitive powers, I have overseen his circumstances since after the missing day of his birth. ”
“I had plans to blow up the train last week, killing the chief secretariat. The next thing I know, the idiot urchin throws himself over the rails and causes a fuss. Someone robbed me, and it’s all his fault!” Nurarihyon’s tenure held a note of third wheeling; an irony that suited the man that insisted on being carried in a palanquin wherever he wished to go.
“How the mighty have fallen.”
“Just what do you think you’re insinuating, Nezumi-Otoko?”
“Oh, never mind that,” Nezumi-Otoko shrugged heedlessly. He would bet his ringworm afflicted heinie that this petty old man was not truly the leader of the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. He had no commanding air. “I take great pleasure in speaking of rumors and only divulging worthwhile information to handsome sums of compensation. Anyways, welcome. We have arrived.”
“So, what is it that you had in mind? I am deeply testy that you’ve led us to such a barren and rickety old shack,” The elongated head of Nurarihyon turned this way and that, the antiquated relic of a millstone the only thing of note throughout.
“Now, now, my phallic headed friend! There is more to these ruins than what meets the eye. See here?” Merrily skipping to the wheel, Nezumi-Otoko began his extravagant tour. “This mill has much uncharted history to it. An artifact of the times, if you will. And over there?”
“Where?” Nezumi-Otoko resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
“There, behind the drapery! If Nurarihyon passes through, Jakotsu-Babaa and I will supervise as your curse is broken! It’s the show of a lifetime, but there are only two tickets left…such woe! Can you believe these are hard times?”
Jakotsu-Babaa exuded no speculation, merely unadulterated furor. Nezumi-Otoko may reek, but his exuberance was so lively, it was as if he popped right out of a motion picture. The impulse to drop a bundle of all of the yen notes she received as payment was impossible to resist. Even Nurarihyon slackened, acceding with a twinkle in his eye.
“That’s enough for one. Where’s the toll for you, hm? Relax; there’s no need to be so tightfisted! I can tell you don’t want to be left out.”
The weight of the fastened notes dropping at his feet was music to Nezumi-Otoko’s ears. To think it had been so easy to lure Jakotsu-Baba into his trap...she had such a sinister, quiet demeanor that he would have worried. As much as she liked to think herself superior to Nurarihyon in private, the two were both easily dealt with.
To the left, Nezumi-Otoko turned the mill. Over and over, image after image crossed zestfully through the ages and miasma whisked with the wheel. Nurarihyon and Jakotsu-Baba rushed in fits of desperation to get a closer look at a particularly laniferous mammoth. Nezumi-Otoko never paused for a break, even when his arms began to tire. Through the Ice Age, the Jomon era, the Yamato and Tokugawa periods, until he spotted the post-occupation of Japan.
“Phew,” He wiped his brow of sweat, “it would be much easier if this hoary old hunk of junk could turn to the right, eh, Kitaro?” Nezumi-Otoko spoke knowingly, as if he could tell the boy was still listening raptly. With another prolonged sigh, he slouched without any sign of getting up to help. “I guess you can kiss that hand of yours goodbye. If you ever find a way out of that urn, anyway. Your best shot’s banished so far in history, it’ll never get back to free you!”
That’s what the boy got for wasting so much time on his curse. He should have had his hand scurry on to get a hammer or something while the two of them were distracted. If the old urn could simply be broken, anyway. That gave Nezumi-Otoko a devious idea, his heart shrinking three sizes that day.
“Kitaro…you know I value our relationship too much to cast you off for good,” He began rapping his fingers against the urn, “but that’s nothing to do with me anymore, and quite an elaborate fib. I think cutting you off here and now would be a strange little experiment, wouldn’t you? I don’t think I could resist.”
Though he pretended to wait for a response, truly he was imagining Kitaro’s dissent with the demeanor of a defeated professor. “It’s too bad I’ll never know the answer to my own curiosity. You know how that old saying goes. It has nothing to say about rats. To think, this is finally how I’ll get rid of you!”
Kitaro could hear the tart smile in Nezumi-Otoko’s deprecating voice. The next thing he could hear besides the gloating laughter was the splintering urn as he and the kitten made impact beyond the mysterious curtain. From his grasp slipped the fragile life he’d adhered, it’s death yowls feuding with the sharp ceramic lodged in it’s throat.
The extent of Kitaro’s empathy was rendered insensible. His sole eye captured the shape of the bloodied slit and mimicked it. Then, without a noise, he ripped the sunken gash. He was still convinced he had no mercy, even as he shared eye contact with the erring feline. His round eye wrung into the angry shape of an almond as he slowly breathed in the stench of his once companion’s death vapors.
When he released the baleful eupnea, it’s tendrils might have been an exchange of spiritual cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Rather, cardiopulmonary possession. The back of his throat buzzed contemptuously, “Yet again I will play a snide role in someone else’s karma…I won’t be ignobly tossed aside, Nezumi-Otoko!”