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The sight before Kaho is a veritable bloodbath.
Strewn across the road before her were bits and pieces of the bandits that attacked her, not one of them left alive, or whole. The perpetrator of the massacre stands in the dead center of the scene, not a single sweat broken upon her horned head.
If the knife slipped by the bandits in between her ribs couldn’t finish Kaho off, then she was sure that the oni before her will. She's heard the stories, a thousand times over, of oni rampaging through entire villages, pillaging as they pleased, capturing whoever they wished to take to their mountaintop caves to torment and eat for later.
The oni turns to approach Kaho, and the fear in her quickening heartbeat almost deafens her. This, on top of the stinging, searing pain in between her ribs overwhelms her thoughts, and she cannot stop herself from shedding tears as the oni draws ever closer. Delirium begins to set in as life slips further and further away from Kaho’s body, her sight blurring and blinking in and out of consciousness.
She hears a rustling before her, and sure that the end is finally near, she shuts her eyes and waits for the inevitable.
However, instead of claws or teeth sinking into her flesh, she instead feels something being pressed against her lips.
“Here, drink.”
Kaho does so and winces a little, the strong liquor burning her throat as it goes down. Its warmth helps numb her senses, though, and after a few gulps, she could only feel a dull ache as the oni slowly wriggled the knife from her flesh. The oni pulls away the gourd from Kaho’s lips and pours a bit over her now open, unobstructed wound, then tears a sizable piece of cloth from one of her sleeves and presses it against the injury. Kaho’s eyes jolt open and she whines, the alcohol not enough to prevent her from feeling a sharp sting as more pressure is applied to her chest. She instinctively raises a hand to push the oni’s arm away, but was far too weak to do anything, only managing to barely grip at the oni’s wrist.
“Don’t. You’ll bleed out. Just stay still for me, ok?”
Kaho’s hand slides off of her wrist and flops weakly against her side. It’s really not like she’s in any position to prevent an oni from doing whatever it pleases, even if this one wasn’t eviscerating her to shreds. As Kaho’s eyelids start drooping from blood loss and exhaustion, she feels a hand placed atop her head, gently petting her.
“Good girl. Rest. You’ll be fine, I promise.”
Despite her still bleeding wound, and the monster before her, Kaho felt no fear as she did before. In this odd, comforting peace, she willingly closes her eyes and drifts off to dreamless sleep.
—
It takes all the restraint within Kozue Otomune to not grab Megumi Fujishima by her annoying tanuki tail and fling her from her mountaintop home with all her monstrous strength. Not because it wouldn’t kill Megumi (It will.), but because it would cause too much of a racket and risk waking up the injured forager resting in her room.
Though it is tempting. Surely throwing Megumi full force through a wooden door can’t be any louder than her incessant teasing.
“Hah! Otomune Kozue, feared oni lord of the mountain, saving some traveler’s life AND taking her home! Are you getting soft!?” The tanuki guffaws, taking a swig out of Kozue’s gourd, swiped from where it hung on Kozue’s waist without permission, of course.
“I’ve said this a thousand times, keep your damn voice down. You might wake her, and she needs the rest.” Kozue grabs her gourd back from Megumi, mid gulp. “And stop bumming my sake. You know how to make your own, and I know you still have a stockpile from last autumn.”
“Can’t help it. Yours is best.”
“We use the same method.”
“Details, details! Anyways, what are you even gonna do with the human when she recovers? Just gonna let her go?”
“Yes? What else is there to do?”
“Oh I dunno, Miss “I terrorize anyone who dares set foot on this mountain so people leave us alone” Otomune, kill her? Or leave her by the safe paths for someone else to deal with? Or you could keep her prisoner here. Really drive in that oni image, y’know! A poor little maiden trapped within an oni’s lair, waiting for a brave warrior to come save her~! It’d give us a stable supply of humans to eat.”
Kozue does her best to ignore Megumi’s words, and pensively stares at her room’s door, hand on chin, deep in thought.
“…H-hey, Kozue, don’t tell me you’re actually considering ransoming her. You know I was joking, right?”
She does not grace her with an answer. Only silence. Then more silence, and even more silence, and it begins to worry Megumi. Kozue is hiding something, and she doesn't like it.
“Kozue. You remember why we keep people away from here, yes?”
“…Our sworn duty to her. Of course I remember.”
“Then surely you of all people would understand. That human can’t leave this place, alive or dead. What the hell were you even thinking, bringing her here?”
“It’s my fault that those bandits almost killed her. I had known of their presence for a while, but I left them be. I didn’t think anyone else would venture towards the abandoned paths…”
“That’s her loss, then. With our reputation, there’s no way she wouldn’t have known about how dangerous this place is for humans like them. She would have died even if those bandits weren’t there.”
Kozue’s brow twitches at Megumi’s words. Her subtle annoyance doesn’t escape the tanuki’s notice, and neither does her attempts to conceal the truth of the situation. She has known her for far too long. Megumi decides to push her luck further, hoping to provoke the truth out of Kozue.
“Honestly, you should have just let her stupidity kill h-!”
Without warning, Kozue lunges at Megumi, grabs her by the neck and violently slams her against the stone wall behind her. Her sharp nails dig into the skin of Megumi’s neck, droplets of blood staining her fingertips red. Megumi grips at Kozue’s arm, clawing at her iron-like skin to no avail.
“It was not stupidity that led her here. It was desperation.”
Megumi crumples to the ground as Kozue loosens her grip, coughing and hacking. She rubs at the stinging indents left on her neck, wiping away the trickles of blood. Kozue turns away from her and points at a bloodstained bag that sat in a corner.
“All she had was that. And all that was in it were rare medicinal herbs. The kinds that grow here. The kinds that nobles would pay a fortune for. The kinds that could bring someone back from the brink of death.”
She turns and meets Megumi’s eyes.
“That girl must have needed it for something, someone. I simply couldn’t just leave her to die like that.”
And Megumi knows those eyes, of course she does. She’s been friends with Kozue for centuries, heavens above, and though their time spent together most days end with a bickering contest loud enough to disturb a whole city, she is still one of her closest companions and she knows, intimately she knows, that glassy look of nostalgic reminiscence in her eyes.
Ah, so that was the truth of the matter.
For Megumi remembers how Kozue came to this mountain as a youngling oni, battered and bleeding, her life saved by the mountain’s guardian dragon centuries ago. And she suspects that Kozue remembers too, and her heart now aches with longing for those peaceful days.
“…So that’s it, eh?” She stands and heads for the door, chuckling to herself.
“You’re going?”
“Yeah. I heard what I really wanted to hear. Nothing else for me to do.”
Standing in the doorway, Megumi turns on her heel and looks one last time at the room which the human rested in, and smiles.
“I’ll trust that you’ll know what to do with her. Oh, and don’t worry about the mess you left behind down the mountain. I’ll make sure Tsuzuri cleans it up.”
“…Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Megumi flashes a peace sign and winks. In a puff of smoke, she transforms into a tanuki and scuttles off to go find Tsuzuri.
Now alone, Kozue sighs and relaxes the tension in her shoulders.
She heads for the traveler’s room and opens the door.