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The cemetery is long and sprawling and cramped all at once, tombstones of varying sizes jutting up in a massive wave of gray. Teru keeps her eyes firmly on the horizon, scanning for the yokai she’s come here for, but steps around the gravestones as best she can without looking, sword clutched preciously in her hand. The moon provides generous light tonight, and maybe it makes sense that she finds the tenome quickly, hunched forward and fragile as the sightless old man it’s meant to be.
“Young lady,” it croaks, turning toward her, “young lady, are you there? Would you spare an arm for an old man? It seems I’ve lost my way.”
He reaches a hand out, and Teru watches carefully as the moonlight reveals a single unblinking eye in the center of his palm. Quietly, she reaches for her sword.
At the very first sound of metal unsheathed, the tenome freezes, and so Teru does, too. It turns its palms toward the sound, but Teru turns with it, hiding her sword behind her hip, the length of it tucked into her coat. “What were you doing out here so late, old man?” she asks politely, stepping around him to circle toward his back. “It’s been dark for hours.”
“The same as you, I hope,” it chuckles, only the tense set of its shoulders betraying any suspicion. “To honor the dead.”
Tenome — terrible creatures who disguise themselves as human, who hunt humans and tear them to pieces and feed on their bones. Truly, its disguise is impressive; if the night were a little darker, and Teru kinder and stupider than she is, then she too may have fallen for it.
An image of Kou flashes in her mind suddenly: kind, stupid, and dutiful to a fault. If she had been here instead, her thirteen year-old little sister, if she had been asked by a little old man to help him find his way, would she think to refuse? Would she even want to?
But Teru knows better. The creature doesn’t breathe right: too shallow, too fast, like an injured animal; when the wind blows from it, it smells like rot. For weeks now, Teru has been getting reports of bodies found limp and wrong, and she can’t help but picture those missing bones in the thing’s guts — innocents’ bones, her little sister’s bones, even with Kou safe at home, waiting patiently for her big sister with no idea of what she’s truly doing out here.
Teru’s hatred bleeds bitter in her mouth. “To honor the dead,” she echoes flatly.
The sound of her sword unsheathed is harsh and sharp and fast. Teru thinks of her front door, the persistent squeak it carries in between oiling; she thinks of the lock on Kou’s bike. The blade meets moonlight and the tenome hesitates for a split second before running off into a blur. That’s the thing with tenome: they aren’t strong, but they’re fast. No average human could compete.
Thankfully, Teru isn’t an average human. Her feet move too quickly to mind the graves and some base-human instinct tugs nauseous at her gut as she steps up on and vaults herself over a tombstone. Her feet move so quickly she digs up turf; the scent wafts all around her, musky earth and wet grass, and she thinks of Kou again: Kou coming back with a soccer ball under her arm, grass stains on her clothes and scrapes on her knees; Kou setting up a sprinkler in the yard for Tiara, holding her hand as she toddles through the water, hair damp, face flushed. Laughing.
The tenome bounds down the hill with its eyeball-studded hands outstretched before it, no doubt trying to escape under the cover of night. It makes a jump too large and Teru watches clinically as its ankle crumbles underneath it with the fall. A sound jumps from its mouth, too bestial to be human and too human to not make the cold fury in Teru’s heart burn even colder. Teru thinks of pain, of the bones in the things gut, of the graves all around them; she thinks of Kou at home with her twisted ankle all bound up in a bandage and wonders, absently, if she’s still making dinner tonight, or if she’s resting it, like Teru told her too.
Another bound off another gravestone, and Teru lands heavy on the tenome’s shoulders, forcing it face-first into the dirt. A caterwaul rips through the air, but the thing doesn’t even have time to struggle before Teru is shoving her sword down through the back of its neck and yanking.
Blood bursts from it like a scene from a movie; Teru leaps lithely off it and takes cover behind a grave. The blood is the same color red as a human’s, the same color Teru bleeds, the same color her sisters bleed. It’s too heavy, though; the sound it makes as it paints the gravestone is like stones hitting a window.
Even so, Kou could fall for this, too. Even if she saw the thing how it is now, writhing and jerking in death throes alien to any human sensibilities, its stone-dense blood thrown about as a weapon, before Teru stabs her sword down into its throat from the other side hard enough to nearly decapitate it — Kou could stumble in, or she could cover her eyes, or she could watch no matter how Teru tries to keep her from it, until her stomach twists and her palms sweat. But no matter what she sees, Kou is still Kou; if there’s a nine out of ten chance its a monster, Kou will still be juggling what ifs long, long after Teru’s gone for the throat.
Kou has some mental image of a monster in her head, and this costume of a man doesn’t fit into that image.
She’s always been naive. This kind of work wouldn’t suit her.
Teru does her job; she lugs the beast across the field, finds the right spot, burns the body. The moon shines disapprovingly down on the foul-smelling smoke but Teru can’t do anything to fix that. Instead, she kicks around stones and gets a headache thinking of all the other things she has to do tonight: a follow-up on another hunt, a long trip home, a mountain of homework, maybe even a few hours of sleep. Her sisters will be long asleep by the time she comes back, but it’s all the better; she hadn’t been able to avoid the blood this time around, and she sticks with the disgusting coagulating darkness of it. Tiara is too young to question it, but Kou has always been a worrier, and Teru doesn’t think she can take another night of Kou wringing her hands anxiously behind her in the bath, familiar fingers exploring Teru’s broad shoulders, mapping out her scars for any new wounds.
Maybe it’s her own fault, in a way. Teru is busy, too busy; she isn’t allowed to want things; she isn’t allowed to think of anyone but her own family. There is a hole in their house that none of them can fill but Teru can do her utmost to at least keep any of them from falling in: Tiara, too young to know what she’s missing; and Teru, overworked and obsessive and obstinately keeping the blinders on; and Kou, too, two years her junior and a lifetime her little sister. They’re close enough in age for Teru to resent her and far enough that Teru could never share her burdens with her; Kou isn’t cut out for this kind of work; Kou should stay at home, safe in their mother’s kitchen, and wait patiently inside until Teru gets home.
If she had one point less of morals and five points less genuine affection, Teru thinks she would lock her inside forever until that padded cage kills her.
Maybe Kou is right. Teru does resemble their father.
Once the corpse is burned and the worst of the blood has dissipated from the ground with it, Teru makes one final stop before finding her way out of the graveyard.
“Hi Mom,” she says, breath hanging visible in the cold night air before her as she settles on her knees before the familiar gravestone. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
—
The lights are all off by the time Teru gets home, windows dark, curtains closed. Teru rubs her sore shoulder and opens the door as softly as she’s able, her bloody coat and sword left safely behind in the courtyard where Kou won’t see.
Truly silent houses set Teru’s senses on high alert, but the Minamoto home is rarely ever silent. Coming in after school, Teru falls asleep to the sound of running water and hushed voices; even now, late at night, the boiler kicks and the house settles; the sound of a fan whirring floats even to the foyer.
There’s a squeak of couch cushions, and a spiky head pokes up over the arm. “Teru-nee?” Kou asks, young, high-pitched voice rough with sleep. “Is that you?”
Teru’s bare feet make no noise at all as she gravitates to Kou’s side. “Yeah,” she says, ruffling Kou’s hair, cupping her little sister’s face when she turns happily into the contact. “I’m home.”
Laid out on the couch in little pajama shorts and one of Teru’s old t-shirts, Kou looks smaller than even her thirteen years. She’s always chasing after Teru: wearing her clothes, cutting her hair just as short, every step placed intentionally in a years-old footprint. And Teru can’t begrudge her on it exactly; it’s nice to be idolized. Kou doesn’t know exactly what Teru does, or exactly the ways she’d never be able to do it herself, but she thinks she does, and she thinks she can, and Teru would bite her tongue and cover Kou’s eyes forever if she could.
There’s a gentleness there, and a cruelty. Teru can’t stop thinking about it even as she gathers Kou up in her arms, ignoring her sleepy, half-hearted protests, and carries her to bed.
“Was it really hard tonight?” Kou asks only half-awake, lips brushing Teru’s pulse, breath hot against her neck. Her fingers dance across Teru’s shoulders; her legs are swung on either side of Teru’s hips, clinging to her like a child. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Teru says, elbowing Kou’s bedroom door open. “Have some faith in your big sister, alright?”
When Kou nuzzles her face into Teru’s neck, Teru holds her breath. “I always have faith in you, Teru-nee. Always.”
The desire Teru feels for her sister is so constant and familiar and not acted upon that it hardly even inspires any disgust. Teru isn’t allowed to want things, and so this, too, is something she isn’t allowed; all things are equally discouraged, equally pushed away. Teru’s family is the axis she revolves around, and maybe it only make sense for the full weight of her wants and desires and guilty resentments to gravitate toward home, too.
Kou is her little sister. There can’t be anyone else.
By the time Teru is setting her down into bed, Kou is already asleep. She has a fresh scrape on her knee and a sun-kissed brightness to her face; her socks don’t match, and one of them is coming off. Under it, the bandage Teru wrapped around her twisted ankle is loose and unbound. When Teru pulls the covers over her, she makes a face and kicks them right off; when Teru kisses her forehead, she twists her hands in Teru’s shirt.
“Teru-nee,” she mumbles, eyelids fluttering, not fully waking, “stay.” And Teru traces the planes of her face with her eyes, marks all her freckles, the baby fat on her cheeks, and reminds herself that this, too, is something she isn’t allowed.
When Teru leaves, she closes the door softly and heads off to her own room. She still has so much work to do before the sun rises.