Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She hated Maki. Hated, hated her.

If she hadn’t left, Mai wouldn’t be in this position.

She tripped on a root and was sent sprawling. She let go of her borrowed weapon, catching herself on her arms before her chin could hit the dirt. A whimper cut through the night. She scrambled for the fallen naginata and did her best to ignore the aches and bruises that grew with each passing second.

A stray, delirious thought: This would be so much worse if Maki hadn’t left her uniform behind.

No, Mai clenched her jaw until it hurt, panicked breaths hitting the back of her teeth like animals trying to break free. She wasn’t going to give her sister anything. This was all her fault. Maki left to be a sorcerer, so Mai had to become a sorcerer too.

The crunching of wood, like bone, approached from behind. She dug the butt of the polearm into the ground, heaved herself up on doe legs. The multi-track voice that was chasing her grew louder, the only clue she had of the curse’s position in the darkness. She turned the edge of her weapon towards the sound, trying her best to copy a stance she’d seen her sister use.

Her entire body was trembling. The point of the blade shook so much it was surprising it hadn’t already fallen from her death grip. She didn’t know what she was doing.

Mai had barely been given enough time to get dressed in Maki’s abandoned clothes and to pick a weapon from storage, before being bundled into a car for her first mission. She wasn’t strong or fast. She’d never picked up a weapon before, much less trained with one. She still avoided the weak curses skittering in the corners of the estate, so weak nobody would ever assign them a grade. She cowered and clung and she'd been thrown into the deep end.

The Zen’in didn’t care. Maki had exorcized a Grade Three curse. Mai had to do better. And if she died, they’d just dangle her rotten corpse in front of her sister so they could laugh at her. She was an accessory to Maki, a by-product, something she had to drag around. She’d been discarded like offal but their blood wouldn’t allow that. So now she hung on her leash, strangling with each step Maki took forward.

Gods. It pissed her off so much. The anger was acidic in her stomach, burning her from the inside.

The cursed spirit breached the edge of her vision, lopping on three legs. Saw-teeth gargled begging words (help help me i’m lost mama help it's dark dark) and spit bubbling drool. It had no eyes to see Mai but numerous orifices on its bulbous head opened and closed, taking in her fear and disgust like delicacies. A curse from lost hikers and abandoned children, Mai remembered with a touch of irony amidst the apprehension.

She had to stop running. She couldn’t physically run anymore. Mai was lost, lost like all the children who’d died in these woods. There was a weapon in her hands. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it was all she had. So she’d use it. She didn’t want to die.

She braced herself, pushed forward with the polearm. Her half-hearted charge caught her hunter by surprise, somehow managing to sink the blade on its body. It moaned and pulled back, wounded. A giggle escaped Mai. She’d done it? No. The edges of the tear closed like it’d never existed and Mai realized with a sinking feeling she’d forgotten to imbue her cursed energy into the blade.

A step back, another almost fall as she felt around for the oily thing inside herself. It was never easy to grasp it, the energy wanting to exist away from her, in another place.

The curse pounced from the corner of her eye. She shrieked, flailed with the naginata, the weight of it escaping from her weaker hand and pulling her down. This time, she hit the ground shoulder first, the pole of her weapon wedged somewhere between her ribs, her arm and stones. Hooks pulled at her clothes. Something cold lanced through her bones before the pain hit, burning needles that exploded from her thigh and rolled across her body, freezing her breath with its intensity. It was worse than anything she'd felt before, worse than broken bones or burns or the cursed scratches from the basement ones.

The curse released its jaws to bite down again higher up on the fatter meat of her leg. Mai screamed. She bucked, dislodging its jaw, atavistic terror in every convolution. There was something solid in her hand and she grabbed that lifeline with all she had. Her vision was flashing with yellow-edge black spots, but the naginata moved as lightly as a bamboo broom in the surge of adrenaline. The curse flew back, but it righted itself on its three legs, teeth red. It wasn’t even wounded, so unbothered she might as well have hit it with an actual broom. She clambered onto her knees, heartbeat so fast it drowned out all sounds and signs that her body was sending.

An explosion rent the air.

Lightless, a burst of air crashed and rebounded, the soundwave slamming into Mai like a slap. Her ears rang and tittered as she blinked, refocusing on the forest. Mind blank with dread, she looked forward. Her blue eyes, pinprick small in their orbits, saw the curse first, charred and flopping around. Half-caught in the blast, it was missing half its limbs, gaps opened between the holes in its head, yipping in its approximation of pain. (hurts dark hurts hurts mama)

Like she’d been.

Everything spilled from her, fear and anger and hatred, the oil bubbling, roiling and rising to the surface. Mai wasn’t in a state to care about the numbness that wrapped around her hands, the sizzle of her energy as it dripped from the space inside her bones. The tool in her hands popped and frothed with all the pain of tonight. Wood and metal struck the spirit and again and again and again and again and again and fell from her trembling arms.

A mess of black and purple and red spread across rock, congealed like old, disgusting natto. It smoked into ephemeral black particles.

She felt nothing anymore.

The inside of her head was stilling, storm gone, waves lulling. When it became mirror smooth and clear, she noticed her body was beyond feeling as well. No legs, no arms, no heartbeat and no pain. The circles floating around her overtook her vision before her body hit the ground.

Chapter Text

She remembered who she was in increments. Grains of sand were washed away, taken by the waves. She remembered who she wasn’t and the bitter shock of it all, a week or so old, roused her with a sob. She was alone.

The physical world returned in skips, low resolution. Her lousy uncle’s voice resonated in her head, low fps, blurred background art, and her headache increased. Then the aches sharpened into excruciating clarity. The ground spun and she managed to vomit what little she had left to the side. Her leg throbbed with such intensity she wasn’t sure it was really there. Painstakingly, she got up on her elbows and assessed the damage.

Ugly, vertigo-inducing rents were marked on her trousers and the skin beneath. Red spread over, staining the white fabric close to her waist. It wasn’t entirely dry, she comforted herself, so she mustn’t have been unconscious for long, right? The February cold and humidity that soaked her through told another story. How much blood had left her body?

She let her head fall, panting. The pain refused to leave, like always. She almost wished she could die. Dying in the jaws of a curse was scary, but it wouldn’t be so bad to just fall asleep, would it? Her leg pulsed every time her heart kept on beating. “Stupid. Trying to take the easy way out after everything you did to not die.” She admonished herself, crying.

Truly, she didn’t want to die. She just dreaded the next steps of surviving.

Full-body quakes staggered her as she fought to rise to her knees. There was nobody to hide from here, so she voiced out every renewed hurt and anger. Curses spilled from her lips, certain to birth a spirit or two to haunt these woods once again. She found the handle of her weapon in the faint moonlight. The blade was clear of any remains, dissolved back into the world.

One good thing going for her, at least she’d been unconscious when she’d hit what was left of the curse. She didn’t think she could stomach that thought.

Looking for a tree to hold on to, her fingers found burnt bushes, crackling and breaking at the softest of touches. The light was scarce, but even in her dim and blurring vision, the circle of burnt nature was visible. At its very center, something glimmered. A blue and white surface revealed itself, polished like the inside of the glazed ceramic cups back home. A smooth, oval object, something like a stone. It must have been what produced the blast that had crippled the cursed spirit and saved Mai’s life.

Was it some sort of technique? It wasn’t a curse. Mai was not a good sorcerer, bordering on mediocre only by virtue of having a cursed technique rather than nothing at all. She had no power, very little control, and abysmal reserves. But her senses had always been good, her nerves alight with terror at the things she felt on every pore. Like prey, she’d learned how to recognize the feel of cursed energy, from spirits and from humans, and what it transmitted to her. An invaluable survival skill that had kept her safe from the darker moods her family could take. She’d even chased down the oil within Maki and realized what it meant.

The stone didn’t have cursed energy. Her palm hovered over it. It did not even feel like the forest, steeped in the negativity of the neighboring villages. Perhaps it had discharged all its energy in the explosion, but Mai felt like she should at least be seeing residuals. The clearing burned into existence was free of those. Or maybe everything was too out of focus, eyelids heavy with dangerous lethargy.

Her fingers grazed its surface then pushed lightly. The stone was moved without resistance, rolling happily at her touch. Curiously, she picked it up. It was light. The length of her forearm and as wide as a temari ball at its thickest, it was light like bamboo rather than stone. Turning it this way and that, it was a rich azure color, with delicate pearl white veins running across its surface. It looked like a good omen, even if she did her best not to believe in such things. It had undoubtedly saved her life, appearing as it had.

Mai had always liked shiny things. It often got her into trouble, but the only lesson she’d taken from it was the need to not get caught.

She tucked the stone inside the folds of her jacket. It was pretty, and it wouldn’t slow her down any more than the holes in her leg or the bruises she had lost count of. She had a long way to go, so she would take this little thing. Mai was good at taking the little things life offered. She didn’t need to reach for more, not like Maki.

She shook herself and forced her body upright, a half-scream coming from too weak lungs.

In running away from the cursed spirit, she’d embroiled herself into the woods. Not too far, she hoped, but more than enough that the brute that had driven the car wouldn’t look for her. Some sorcerers were looked for, even if just to find their bodies and exorcize their predators. The one Kukuru that had dragged her to the mountains surrounding Kyoto would check where she should be, if she was lucky, and assume she was dead.

And if she wasn’t yet, the mountain would soon take her.

In the best case scenario, they’d send another man to hunt down the curse spirit in a day or two. Regardless, he was long gone by now. Mai would have to find her way to the closest road on her own. She was lucky, she’d hit a wire fence as she ran, an almost invisible cage in the dark. Backtracking until she found it would certainly lead her to other people, or at least a road. It wasn’t worth thinking about the other possibilities. She wasn’t far from the city, she thought. Humans or roads, she’d find one or the other. She would.

She did not think about bears or foxes or other curses, tracking her down like an injured deer. She didn’t think about how thirsty she was or how her entrails ached. She didn’t even think about the heat of the bite, sawing at her bone with each step. She thought about all the times Maki had helped her up, or when she’d carried her on her back after she’d twisted her ankle. She longed, she cried, and that was all she could do.

There was no more energy to spare on feelings.

Chapter Text

Everybody wanted a more exciting life. It was why isekai manga existed.

Shinichi slumped even further in his seat at the register. Night shift was so boring. It paid well, but it was so, so boring. It wasn’t like anybody came by. If he was lucky, he’d get a couple of trucks per night. And they just paid by the pumps.

He turned up the volume on his phone and changed to another game.

Absorbed in tapping out the correct rhythm, he didn’t notice anything until an ad popped up and he quickly lowered the volume. He glanced up to check the pumps, more habit than anything else, and froze.

There was a girl in front of him.

1, he had absolutely not noticed her entering. 2, Great Buddha, was that a real weapon!?

“Please forgive my rudeness by asking,” the apparition said, bowing just slightly, “would it be possible to make a phone call from your telephone?”

“Hm…” Shinichi raised his phone. The ad had run its course and the link for a puzzle game was colorfully lighting up his screen. Internally, he was screaming.

The girl stared at his phone like she didn’t understand.

“There’s a payphone…?” He cleared his throat, shoved his phone into a pocket and got up slowly. Polite. He could be polite to an anime character come to life. He was a service worker. He bowed. “I’m very sorry, but this store only has one payphone. Would that be acceptable?”

The girl frowned, but nodded. “Yes, thank you very much.”

He politely indicated where the payphone was and settled back with a practiced smile. Nailed it.

The moment she turned away from him, he had his phone out and was closing his game. This was so weird, he had to take a picture or nobody would ever believe him. The girl… She wasn’t some sort of weirdly intense cosplayer, right? That blade looked way too real and sharp. And now that he wasn’t under pressure, he was noticing other things too. Like the blood.

The white karate jacket she had on, and the leg wraps on the same side, were definitely stained red.

Maybe he should call the police, discreetly? Or an ambulance, on second thought? She looked rough. There was mud, dirt and leaves staining her ninja outfit, and maybe she was clutching the naginata like that because she was using it as a walking stick. Yeah, he thought as he surreptitiously took a series of pictures. She was limping.

She didn’t look dangerous… well, she looked dangerous but with low health points. He didn’t feel in a lot of danger.

Only the danger of the girl possibly being a yokai.

The girl turned back to him. Shinichi totally didn’t fumble with his phone. “I am terribly sorry to continue to impose, but would you please do me the favor of buying a phonecall for me?”

She bowed more deeply, shaking even. Shinichi suddenly worried she might fall or pass out or something. So he reflexively said ‘sure, no problem’. What’s this, since when had he become such a… bland person? He was blaming his weak attitude on the possibility she could actually gut him.

Trying not to be seen hovering, he strained to hear her conversation as he opened LINE. Wait, nobody he knew was on at this hour. Twitter? His old account. More anonymity.

> [img1] [img2] help , what do you do if a yokai ( ? ) visits your konbini ?

“It’s been taken care of. Yes. Nothing pressing.” The girl was talking in a very respectful tone to whomever on the other side. She covered the phone’s receiver and asked him. “Excuse me, where is this in relation to Kyoto?”

Shinichi racked his brain before giving her a vague direction and the name she could use to find it on a gps. He hoped whoever was possibly picking her up knew how to use a gps. He hoped he wasn’t inviting more trouble. Maybe he should have called an authority.

>> crazy good cosplay
>> girl looks like she needs a hospital
>> run

Yes, he knew. There were other responses to his various panicked tweets with a variety of hashtags but, well, otaku freaks did not deserve attention. What were these people smoking?

>> be nice to the yokai .
>> man living the anime life when warrior goddess picks his konbini

He shouldn’t have posted anything.

There was a click as the girl ended her phone call. For the first time since she’d entered, her face wasn’t a variation of polite neutral. She scowled at the payphone like it’d offended her and Shinichi felt a frisson.

“The fucking worst.” But she took a deep, painful-looking breath, and her face returned to a vague placidity. “Thank you very much. My family will be picking me up shortly. I will ensure that your generosity isn’t unpaid.” And with a final bow, she limped outside. And half-leaned, half-sat against the old guardrail, clearly in pain.

Shinichi went back to his spot behind the register. He tapped his fingers on the back of his phone. Looked outside. Still there.

February was cold. And humid. She was shaking. Maybe that was being hurt and not the cold… Shinichi wasn’t an asshole. Anymore. He’d left that person behind after highschool.

He got up and moved just until the automatic doors opened, standing on the threshold. “Would you like me to call an ambulance, miss?” The closest clinic was like, a five minute drive away.

She looked at him, then scoffed very lightly, shaking her head. “No, that would only make it worse.”

Right. He walked back in.

> what kind of offerings do urban legends like ?

Five minutes later, he walked back out with several goodies in his apron’s pocket. “Hm, would you like a rice ball, or like, a chocolate bar?”

The girl stared at him. Shinichi did his best to not blink.

“... Chocolate?”

She almost tore into the chocolate bar he presented. It was a bit worrying, but also cute to see the girl light up as she ate something sweet. Definitely a good choice. Now he felt a little bit less worried about the hurt kid standing outside. Because with some time to observe her, she definitely looked younger than him.

Weren’t all the secret combat magic whatever societes in anime based on highschools? That was otaku reasoning, but the other option was supernatural or… some sort of cult?

After she was done, she stared at him suspiciously from under her fringe. He supposed it was fair that she wasn’t trusting a random stranger like him. Shinichi walked back inside, feeling a little bit proud of himself. Offering giveth, offense not giveth.

It took at least another tense fifteen minutes before the car stopped at his station. Several cars had passed by, making both of them perk up, but none had stopped. Shinichi supposed that was a blessing because he did not want to deconflict whatever would happen if a trucker asked the girl about her very obvious weapon.

This car was different. Shinichi’s throat went dry at the sight of the big, black, sleek, shiny Mercedes with tinted windows. It was definitely a yakuza car. His brain went over the last half an hour with a completely different perspective.

He bowed to the Buddha. If he’d called the cops…!

The girl had stood up, straightening her back fully for the first time. From his spot at the register’s window, he could see her unclench her jaw and exhale before she was back to eerie politeness. This was some movie shit. He carefully closed Twitter, set his phone down and tried to look like he hadn’t been considering filming the whole thing.

A man left the car first, dressed in the same get-up as the girl. A gnarly scar split the side of his face and his face-mask was pulled up. He was also even taller than the girl, who herself had to be about as tall as Shinichi. He looked down at her, and he didn’t look pleased. But he just stepped to open the back door of the car, letting a woman step out.

She wore a traditional kimono, looking like she’d stepped straight from a tv show. What kind, Shinichi wasn’t sure. He just felt like he was in the presence of somebody who could and would ruin his life. He hoped she didn’t notice him.

“Mother.” The girl said.

Oh. Ooh.

The woman was frigid. “At least, you accomplished your mission. Let’s go, you have wasted enough of our time tonight.”

Shinichi kept his face turned towards a magazine randomly opened on the counter. It was upside down. But neither the woman nor her bodyguard seemed to notice him. It was like he, thankfully, didn’t exist. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the bloodied girl give him a look before she disappeared into the dark depths of the car’s leather interior.

Only when the car had pulled away and disappeared did Shinichi relax. He slumped on the counter and let out a very big, very loud curse. His life had finished flashing before his eyes.

He needed a beer, who cared about work regulations.

The girl would not leave his mind for the rest of the night. And probably the week. As much as the night’s mysteries bothered him, Shinichi hoped to never see the girl again. He was more certain than ever that he’d actually made all the right choices by being polite and helpful, but not too inquisitive or meddlesome.

At the very least, he had increased his karma, paying for a phone call and a chocolate out of his own pocket. Maybe that was the only thing he should take from this.

Chapter Text

Mai remembered the stone as she sat down, the weight settling against her ribs. Sitting down inside the car, her body folded in an unfamiliar way, she fumbled a bit with the naked blade she carried. The weapon was big, barely fitting in the confined space, and its covering long lost. The seat molded itself to her muscles, relieving her injury and the rest of her tired legs.

When they had been younger, Maki and Mai had dreamed of having a car like the ones parked at the estate. Maki would drive, making the machine rumble and carry them away. Mai would sprawl on the huge, heated seats and turn on the music, drowning out everybody outside. They had pretended to drive a car once, left unlocked, and Mai had pressed the horn hard, giggling. The blare had scattered birds in a wide radius and sent the both of them flying before they were discovered.

The door slammed closed behind mother, jerking her out of the past. Her mother was a knife in the dark, a patterned kimono bright in the darkness of the car, straight-backed and facing forward unblinkingly. As the wife of the head’s brother, she commanded a certain respect from the Kukuru assigned to protect her, even as a woman. If she hadn’t given birth to them, she would not need to endure the heckling of other women and inferior men. She would have been honored and envied, she’d always told Mai.

“You were injured.” Her mother’s voice cut through the silence like the car’s horn, startling Mai from her semi-conscious state again. There’s an edge of disapproval in her voice and Mai was too tired to be polite and confirm her mother’s observations.

Yes, yes, yes she was, in some many ways and so exhausted besides. Her mother’s silence was just a prompt for her to answer as was proper, because mother did not comment on Mai’s bruises. She knew where they were from and Mai knew better than to expect to be soothed, when the only reason she was hurt was because she wasn’t following her elder’s teachings well enough.

Maki used to ask who’d hurt her. Then she stopped asking and just glared in silence. Then she stopped looking. Fuck her.

“Mai.” She opened her eyes again, having closed them without conscious thought. Her mother was talking. “Will the doctor be necessary?” Was it going to be necessary to wake up the old man?

“No.” She lied. “It’s not serious.”

She hated the old man and the piercing eyes behind his glasses. Hated his touch the most.
She had feared the relief he brought even when she was younger, the way he both dismissed and dissected them when they were hurt enough to warrant his intervention. Grown, matured, she didn’t want him examining her more than necessary. A little discomfort from everyday hurts was better than his hands, insistent and encroaching like the curses from under the eaves. The ones that liked to climb into their rooms at night, to drape themselves around their victims.

“I’ll take care of it myself.” She’d taken care of her sister’s injuries more times than she could count. She could take care of it.

“See that you do.”

And that was it.

She blinked, head resting against the glass. Everything was blurred, streaks of golden and ruby lights like shooting stars running next to her. Mai was blurry at the edges, warm, numb. She floated in a black sea, the star shower reflected on the water mirror her face rested on. Every now and then, the waves rocked her body one way or the other.

The door slammed.

Heart hammering, she fell back down into her body. Muscles tensed in anticipation and she hissed, vision flashing. Her hands twisted the coarse fabric over her legs, trembling, and she had to fight herself not to touch her thigh. It would only hurt more. This was going to hurt so much.

The world narrowed down to her very immediate surroundings. The blunt edges of the door, the stone steps to their house, the engawa where she had to remove her sandals, the hallways she knew by heart and the feeling of the staff in her hand, a third leg replacing the raw mass of nerves on her right side. Like a dream she could not escape, only breathe through, always aware of her mother in front of her, the many eyes on the shoji waiting for her to slip.

Without conscious thought, Mai closed the door to the washroom behind her and shook herself. She had arrived at her destination. All she had to do was clean her leg and then she could fall on her futon. She let go of the weapon and clung to the sink, waiting for the ground beneath her feet to stop swaying.

Strip, clean, disinfect, cover. She repeated the steps to herself. She’d done it dozens of times. She raised her gaze to the mirror and told Maki, “You’re an idiot.”

Maki’s face had never been so full of weakness. “I’m an idiot.” It repeated back to her.

Wait. “Maki’s gone.” The one in the mirror was the spare. Dressed in her older sister’s clothes, carrying her older sister’s tool, doing her older sister’s job, and failing worse than her stupid older sister ever had.

Tears she thought had been shed weeks ago resurfaced. “Shit, shit, shit, shit.” She was so tired. Everything hurt. It was cold, she’d walked for hours, ran and fought a curse, the cursed spirit had almost eaten her!

A muffled ring echoed and Mai realized she’d leaned forward so much, her hairs were brushing the scuffed surface of the mirror. She pulled the offending stone from within her tunic.

The washroom’s light was artificial and weak, but the bright azure of its surface was revealed in full, a glow to it that overtook the lamps’ pathetic efforts. It wasn’t smooth like porcelain, but more perfect than the most masterful lacquer work the clan flaunted. Brushing her fingers atop it, she felt the transferred warmth of her body, the only thing from this world that clung to it. There wasn’t another single mark, no scuff or scratch or imperfection, not even a smudge of dirt from her hands, its veins of pear white blending in with the royal blue like reflections in water. If it was a stone, it was a precious one.

Its arrival had saved her life, but now she saw the curiosity from the forest’s darkness as it truly was, almost sacred.

“You saved my life.” She told the thing. Maybe it was a sign. “I don’t suppose you could also heal me?” She thought she heard something, but nothing happened. Just the ringing in her ears that had been coming and going in waves. “Too good to be true.” That was fine, the stone hadn’t promised her anything.

Instead, she braced herself and reached for the medicine box in the corner, stocked with what was needed to treat wounds or alleviate the monthly bleeding. Dressings and disinfectant and painkillers, things she’d bargained and worked for in the shadowed corners of the servants’ rooms. Mai had always made do, always survived without Maki’s ridiculous strength. She was the clever one, who used her brain and got out of trouble rather than into trouble.

She’d survive this as well. She just had to figure out how. She couldn’t count on miracles either way.