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“So what’s your name?” The human asked, nonchalant.
He checked the roasting fish, and sighed, “you know I’m not going to tell you.”
“I can’t just keep calling you, ‘Yokai’. It’s not polite.” The human picked at the dirt between his feet, scratching signs into the earth with a stick.
“Since when do you care about being polite?”
The human smirked. “Sometimes.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He compared the two fish, and handed the one with slightly less ash to the human, who cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Thank you.” See, I can be polite, the look said.
The human turned up in his clearing three moons ago, jumped out of the bushes after spying on him, and announced that he’d be happy to teach him how to spar.
“Now you bow to me, and give me your name,” the human commanded, “then I will take you as my disciple, and teach you how to use a blade, proper.”
“Oh.” He caught on. “It’s alright then.”
That was the first attempt.
He had since foiled four more schemes that the human had devised to get him to divulge his name.
“What if you’re an onmyoji and want to bind me?” He explained.
“I won’t.” The human replied quickly. Too quickly.
He was not blind. Let alone the insignia on the human’s robes, anyone with eyes could see that the human was finely dressed. He was not naive, this groove of trees was not far enough from the nearest village for him to not know such things.
Only the nobility could afford dress like that. What specimen of human nobility would want to spend time with a hill yokai like himself? The answer was obvious.
On their sixth meeting the human tried to reason with him.
“Well,” he started, “why are you so guarded?”
Isn’t it obvious? He ignored the question.
“I mean, why are you so against serving an onmyoji? Plenty of yokai seem to take to it fine.”
“Why should I serve an onmyoji?” He sent the question back to the human.
“Why not? You want to learn the ways of humans, don’t you?”
He did not refute. The human was not wrong. He was fascinated by their lifestyles — such elaboration. He had no reason to want to learn how to fight with a sword when he had his own sharp claws and lethal horns. Yet he was amazed by the grace of it.
“It’s an art,” the human explained, ”the art of slaughter,” he added, with a wry smile. ”We call it an art so that we don’t have to think about what it actually is, just an act of killing. Aren’t humans so hypocritical?”
He thought the human might have had a bad day. He could feel it sometimes, when the human was talkative like that, that there was a rage that the human held bottled within him.
Why couldn’t the human just let the anger out? Why wouldn’t he tell him about it? It wasn’t as though he was a mute animal. It wasn’t as though they couldn’t communicate.
He was making good progress with the sword by then. Since the human didn’t seem to want to talk, he offered to spar instead. It seemed to help.
When he watched the human leave his clearing, he noticed the slight spring returning to his steps. A gladness swelled in his chest.
On their fifteenth meeting, the human brought something new. He could sense it as he saw the human climbing over the boulders, and immediately spotted the source of the vibrant energy radiating off the human’s back.
The human noticed how he was glancing at the bundle on his back, and smiled, very smugly.
“Take a guess?”
“A real sword,” he said immediately, mouth dry with anticipation. He noticed, too late, the tinge of want in his own voice, and a chill of impending dread started to trickle down his spine.
“A special sword,” the human grinned and narrowed his eyes. Eyes a crimson red, like his, except he always thought they were prettier, sparkling like the ripe seeds of a pomegranate.
Now they fixed on him, like the nonchalant gaze of a hunting snake.
“I won’t give you my name for a sword.”
He rejected the offer even before it was made. He would not be tempted.
“This,” the human unwrapped the bundle with a flourish, and drew the blade from its sheath, carefully, elaborately, “is no mere sword.”
“No.” His heart leapt even as he tried to turn away from the sight of the sword.
He knew without a second look that the human was right. It was moonlight itself cast into a blade, words could not begin to describe its sublime perfection. He wanted this, his whole life, he had never known, but now he knew, he had been living to see this.
And now he had seen it, he wanted it.
“No.” He declined again, steeled himself to not take a second look, and started running into the woods.
He did not make it far up the hill before the human’s startled cry reached his ears.
He also did not last long in the skirmish before he felt a lethal strike tearing into his chest.
He did not dare to look down as they dealt with the last assailant. He knew without looking that he was bleeding out. Time was of essence.
“Could I see that sword again?” He asked, as the human rushed to his side, and the sky tumbled down towards him. He could not feel his feet. His fingers were tingling. It hurt.
“Of course,” the human told him, drew the blade to his eyes, and helped him close his hand around its hilt.
“I will give you this sword,” the human said, “even if you will never give me your name.”
There was something in the human’s voice that made his heart sink, whatever that was left of his heart.
“Let me die,” he pleaded, “do not bind me.”
He couldn’t quite see so clearly now, the sky was turning a dark, crimson red. Something crackled in the air, a sweet scent filled his nostrils. He reached for the human, his human, groping hopelessly in the air for his hand.
“Don’t,” he mouthed.
“I will not let you die,” the human’s voice was taking on a shrill ring. They were both desperate, for the opposite things.
Don’t make me hate you, he wanted to say. But it was no good, he felt the spell rising, swallowing him, erasing his mind. He struggled to hold on to his last thought.
“I will hate you,” he snared.
The human pinned his hands to his side, pinned him in his embrace. Him, and the sword.
“I only wanted to be your friend,” he rasped, and felt a sorrow that he had never felt before. The fleeting moment hung, then passed. As the spell took, the thought, the sorrow, his name, all were extinguished, all were lost, forever.
“We can’t always have everything, can’t we?” Minamoto no Yorimitsu told his new shikigami as he waited for it to wake, and swore to himself that he would not cry.