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hineni.
His master offers his hand. Gyomei takes it in both of his and balks.
He feels stainless as falling snow, but he is all bone, wrapped in what must be the thinnest skin the body can allow. He has gotten so sick, and Gyomei cannot help but cry at the sight of him. Ubuyashiki sighs a nasal breath: gentle, almost inaudible. Gyomei knows he is not displeased—rather, content. He has done exactly what is expected of him.
“You look well,” Ubuyashiki says. “You’ve been taking care of yourself?”
His master’s praise melts the ache from his shoulders; he is kneeling, baring his overgrown heart on this tatami altar.
“I have. I cannot overstate how grateful I am to see you again. I have had little rest; this land seems to be swarming with demons as of late. Seeing the crow you sent for me is like a balm to my heart. May I get you some tea?”
“No need for that.” Ubuyashiki hums, the tail of an effortless aum. “Gyomei.”
“Yes?”
“Sit with me for a moment.”
And if he had been sent only to sit by his side, he would have loved it all the same. He is kneeling, as if someone will come to knight him for all he has been—yet if he wanted praise, Ubuyashiki would never have kept him this close.
A sound cannot break from Ubuyashiki’s throat. Gyomei lifts his head. “Is something wrong?”
Ubuyashiki is silent for too long. “You have been so good to me.” He grunts, shocks himself upright and coughs one ragged cough. Gyomei lifts the blanket to his mouth until they settle.
“Amane…” Ubuyashiki makes haste to clear his throat, as if ashamed to debase the temple he is to so many. “Amane hasn’t been eating or sleeping very much as of late.”
Gyomei settles him back beneath his covers. “Is she alright?”
“I believe she’s becoming like the tennyo.”
He does not baffle at the thought; the way Ubuyashiki speaks of her convinced him, at first, that she was one already.
“She is making a seamless transition. Her body gains less and less use of earthly needs until…”
Perhaps Gyomei was sent to say prayers over them: to his knowledge (and though he was never ordained), he is the only one in the Corps who can bestow the proper rites. “Until?”
Ubuyashiki cranes his head toward Gyomei. “It’s not contagious.”
“Ah—forgive me, then.”
“No, no—I believe it’s time you knew.
“One thousand years ago, Muzan Kibutsuji was spawned from my lineage.”
“That’s impossible,” Gyomei says, and promptly regrets. How little trust he must have in his Oyakata, to speak his mind so tactlessly…
But Ubuyashiki does not seem to find it so—or, if he does, he hides it well. “Our curse was that our children lived weak, and died early. For one thousand years, we atoned by devoting our blood to finding and killing this monster. Now, we live just short of thirty.
“You are allowed to feel shocked.”
Gyomei chokes down a sob, his hand clamped over his mouth. He thinks no less of his closest friend for what he knows now—but he cannot gather his voice to say it, and his heart grows sick with shame.
“Gyomei,” Ubuyashiki says.
“Here I am,” is all that proceeds.
And it is enough—for all the blood he has shed for this Corps is nothing, when all that has ever been asked of him is his broken spirit. “Sometime in the next five days, Muzan will come.”
but where is the lamb?
He is back in the monastery, as he is more nights than not. He is twenty-seven years old, and his hands appear to be his father’s. Metal clangs up his body as he steps: he has never been a soldier, a real soldier, but if he were, he imagines he would move like the sharpening of his axe.
The stench of blood behind him, too, feels familiar.
It is the stench of demon, and it looks as he imagines the rest of them to look: sharp teeth, eyes, many arms and sometimes two, a body like spoiled meat, the brittle hair of a corpse, a mocking tongue like a serpent’s. This thing must be scorched from existence—but he knows of someone who will have it for an offering.
He drags it to the altar by one of its malformed appendages. He pulls with all his strength, and it is not effortless: the monster has not moved a hair. He has felt this helpless only once. He gives a look back, to the bone-thin Buddha and its golden graven smile that wavers for no one.
“Take it,” he says.
The candles have waned to a liquid. The orchids are wilted and need to be changed.
“Take it,” he screams.
The Buddha’s eyes are shut.
“Take it,” he screams—and startles awake.
The sun is looming at its highest. The waterfall outside the Stone Estate purls to the ground, and Gyomei settles with it.
He sweeps his hands along the floor, and cannot find his beads. The dream slips from his memory with an arsonist’s grace. Prayers for forgiveness quicken his lips; Gyomei finds his beads but cannot find it in him to assume them, dreading the day he stands heavenly trial for what he has thought.