Chapter I
The Missing Documents
Just about anyone would say that one of the most beautiful things in the world is the view of the setting sun. When the sky bathes in a combination of purple, pink, and orange and right in the center of that is the blazing sun that's screaming out 'Here I am! Watch me before I disappear into the night!', only a few have the tendency to look away.
Whether coming home from work or going out for a few drinks with some friends, the life of the person whose eyes were caught by this magnificent sight would go in a standstill, and even if some might contest against this well known opinion of the sunset or not, the setting sun will always be one of the perfect backdrops for a romantic scene.
Botan was cruising over the human world flying westward and she couldn't help but giggle when she recalled the little kissing scene that Yusuke and Keiko had just recently.
Yusuke, after staying in the demon world for almost three years, suddenly popped out of nowhere and with the same view of the golden sun infront of Botan which was now slowly sinking into the horizon, the complicated relationship between Yusuke and Keiko was somehow finally sealed with a kiss.
The sunset was one of Botan's favorite things and as a deity of death who has the ability to fly by summoning an oar that enables her to, she considered it a perk to be able to see the setting sun from the sky and not be blocked by buildings or high structures and after the thing with Yusuke and Keiko, watching the sunset made her even more happier.
Botan's expression suddenly turned cat-like, smiling slyly as she thought of turning her errand of delivering a new mission to Yusuke into a surprise visit by showing up at his Ramen store or at his house wanting to catch him and see if he's spending more time with Keiko.
Being the nonchalant bubbly grim reaper that she is, Botan's mind jumped from Yusuke and Keiko formally dating, to them getting married and to them having kids but she instantly snapped out of it when a strong gush of wind almost tipped her off her oar and an old document she's carrying slipped from her hands.
She quickly dove to recover it and she started freaking out as pages of the documents started to detach themselves from the spine of the book that contained them. Botan tried to gather them one by one as she continued to drop from the sky but aside from the difficulty of actually getting her hands on the pages that were flying all over the place, she also needed to be careful not to rip it apart once she gets them because the document appears to be a couple of hundred years old and if she damages them, she'll be the one who's going to be ripped to shreds by Koenma.
"Thank goodness!" Botan exclaimed in relief when she finally caught the body of the book and gathered all of the fragile sheets. She was about to congratulate herself in accomplishing what she just did when she slammed into the ground, in the middle of a baseball field, crushing the ancient book beneath her.
"Where is it? I placed it right here." Koenma grumbled through his pacifier as he lifted and pushed aside the piles of paper on his desk.
"Uuuh… What are you looking for Lord Koenma?" George the ogre couldn't help but ask when he noticed that his boss seemed to be having a hard time finding something, noticing as well that Koenma seemed a bit off when he continued to look for that something at the very same spot where he had already looked at.
"The documents from the Houjin town incident, I placed it right here!" Koenma yelled in frustration, slamming his small right hand on his desk.
George backed out a bit. He sure was used to Koenma's temper but at that instance, his tiny boss really looked upset.
"D-do you mean the old brown book?" George asked.
"Yes I mean that old brown book! The Houjin incident happened seven hundred years ago, of course it was documented in that old brown book!"
"Hey now, no need to get mad Lord Koenma. Botan took that thing a while ago. I mentioned to her that you wanted to have Yusuke and the others look into that and she was glad to take it to them herself. No need to worry about it anymore, Botan's on it. That's one work off your hands now right?" George gladly informed him, emphasizing on the fact that he has one less manuscript to go through that day.
"Whaaat?" Koenma yelled, his voice echoing inside his office. "Didn't I specifically tell you to give the book to Ayame?"
George trembled in fear and he sputtered as he tried to explain himself. "B-B-But., Botan's the one who's well acquainted with Urameshi and his friends; wouldn't it make sense if she was the one who delivered the book?"
Koenma groaned in frustration, this was no time to be arguing with an incompetent underling.
With one piercing look, he sent George running out of his office and to Koenma's slight relief, Ayame, the black haired ferry girl appeared before him.
"Lord Koenma, my apologies for not being able to gather the documents as soon as you have ordered them to be delivered to Urameshi-san." Ayame said, unable to look straight into Koenma's face.
Koenma eased himself on his chair and with a serious tone, he addressed Ayame. "Head off and find Botan as soon as possible. Get the Houjin documents from her and tell her to deliver these to Genkai instead." He said, handing some random folder to Ayame. "If in case, Botan has already delivered the documents to Yusuke, make sure that she will not be able to know the contents of it and insist that she go to Genkai immediately." He added then he drew out a VHS tape from the drawer of his desk and gave it to Ayame as well. "Give this to Yusuke too."
"Understood." Ayame said, her face determined to please Koenma to make up for her lapse just moments ago. But as she vanished to carry out Koenma's orders, she couldn't help but wonder why Koenma was so determined not to have Botan be the one who deliver the Houjin documents to Urameshi and the others.
George did have a point. Ayame thought. Although she hadn't shown herself when Koenma yelled out her name in the middle of his temperamental outburst, she was able to hear George's excuse on allowing Botan to leave with the documents; Botan was much more acquainted to the Reikai Tantei compared to her.
She wondered if it may be because the document was hundreds of years old and Botan, she must admit, can be a bit clumsy and the risk of the documents being damaged by her is too great- but then, Botan had already proven herself as one of the most reliable and dedicated employees in the Spirit world countless of times so that might not be Lord Koenma's reason at all. And aside from that, why doesn't he want Botan to know the contents of the Houjin documents?
Ayame quickly tried to put the questions out of her mind recalling that her purpose for heading to the human world is to fulfill Koenma's orders and not to question them.
Following the most probable path that Botan took to go to Urameshi's house, Ayame kept a watchful eye for her blue haired colleague.
"Ouch- ouch-ouch…" Botan whimpered as she picked herself from the ground. She wasn't supposed to feel any pain but as she was nearing Yusuke's house, she was slowly changing into her human form and if her transformation would've been complete, she would have surely felt more pain and died with her soul going to the Spirit world, then a report regarding a death deity dying would be filed-and that's just messed up.
The sky was beginning to darken and Botan hurriedly fixed herself, brushing off the dirt from her hair and pink kimono then she pulled out the oar from the ground which struck the baseball field like a spear when she fell down from the sky.
From where Botan crashed, it appears that she was just about four kilometers away from Yusuke's house. As she turned to leave the place, she felt her foot step on something smooth and pliable and her eyes grew wide when she realized what it was.
"Nyaaa!" She screamed in horror, quickly lifting her foot from the old brown book she stepped on and picking it up with outmost care from the ground.
The book was bent on several places that it looked like a useless piece of nothing. After making sure that she got all the pages that got torn off from it. She ran to a nearby bench and sat there, nervously figuring out a way on how she would put the ancient document back together and how she'd be able to iron out all the bents and folds on it.
She decided to arrange the pages first, scanning the first and last words on each delicate sheet to see which page should follow which as they were not numbered.
Botan was losing her source of light but the lamp post beside the bench she was sitting on flickered and came on. From the looks of it, the document seemed to consist of narratives from different people and without actually reading each of them, Botan could clearly tell that they were accounts gathered from humans who were reporting a certain demon that once dominated a town called Houjin.
Since the leaves of the book were bound by adhesive on the spine, Botan resorted to just slipping the torn pages inside the book and she almost cried when she realized how useless this endeavor would be since all of those said torn sheets are sticking out slightly and if Koenma would see what she did to the book, she's done for.
Although useless, Botan continued what she was doing and she finally managed to sort the pages after a few minutes. But while she was flipping through the book to place the last sheet that got torn from it, her interest was caught by a passage that was written on the third to the last page of the book.
… The demon Nue refused to be brought to hell and as he attempted to strike upon the great King Enma, one of soldiers of Reikai slashed him with a sword and the demon's bowels spilled from his wound. And there among the demon's blood and entrails we found the spirit of his last victim.
The soul that was freed from Nue was that of a young girl, with fair skin and light blue hair. We have heard of Nue's insatiable craving for human flesh but for a human spirit who had stayed long inside the demon's stomach, the considerable amount of ki coming from her and her strange appearance denotes that she was not an ordinary human when she was alive.
The incapacitated Nue was finally sent to hell and on king Enma's orders, the soul of the young girl was kept under the care of the head death deity, Nakatsu…
For some strange reason, Botan's heart skipped a beat after reading that section of the Houjin documents and her hands trembled over the open book. This document she's carrying, and the passage she just read, was it referring to... her?
Botan instantly rejected the notion but that did not stop her from going over a couple of facts;
The very first thing that she could remember when she came to was the face of a beautiful woman named Mistress Nakatsu.
Mistress Nakatsu was the head death deity who trained her on the duties of being a guide to the Spirit world.
Botan does not know anyone else in the Spirit world that goes by the name of Nakatsu and aside from herself, she does not know any other girl who had blue hair.
"No, this book could be referring to someone else" Botan thought, shaking her head. "How old is this book anyways?" She turned to the cover of it and saw that it was about seven hundred years old. She sighed, the book could not possibly be referring to her at all, it may have been mentioning the same Nakatsu that she knew but she's not the blue haired girl. She had been a death deity for some time now but she's definitely not seven hundred years old.
"You klutz!" Botan said loudly. "What you should worry about is how you'd fix this book!" She said with an awkward smile as she tried to smooth down the book to an acceptable appearance. But unsurprisingly enough, she went through the book again looking for more information regarding the blue haired girl.
Scanning the last three pages as quick as she can, with her index finger trailing downwards on each page, she looked for any 'blue' word on them that would indicate further details on the spirit of the blue haired girl but she found none.
Botan bit her lip as she finally closed the book, continuing with flattening the bent surface of it but this time, she was doing it aimlessly. She was no longer thinking about what kind of punishment the Spirit world is going to give her for destroying an ancient document, all she could think about at the moment was who the blue haired girl in the Houjin document was and what was she really before she turned into a guide of departed souls.
Not until today had Botan questioned the source of her existence.
She was pondering at this for about a minute or so, looking straight into the dark, empty baseball field when the ghostly figure of Ayame appeared before her.
Botan let out a terrified high pitched scream then she herself placed her kimono sleeve covered hands over her mouth when she realized she's going to get someone's attention and that there was no reason for her screaming since it was only Ayame who had shown up.
"Botan. What are you doing with those documents?" Ayame asked, eyeing the Houjin documents cautiously.
"Oh, it's only you, Ayame. I thought it was a ghost that showed up!" She jokingly said to hide her embarrassment.
"Lord Koenma has been looking for those. Give them to me Botan." Ayame said bluntly.
"Do you mean this? Please don't tell Lord Koenma what I did to it. Look." She said, putting up the bent up documents before her.
"Oh my…" Ayame couldn't help but be concerned on the condition of the Houjin documents, but then, the most important thing was, "You haven't' read that have you?" She asked, in a tone careful not to raise suspicion from Botan who would probably dive in and read the documents once she learns or feels that she is prohibited from doing so.
Botan shook her head. "No I haven't" she said. 'At least not all of it.' She thought to herself.
"Please give them to me, Botan. I need to deliver them to Urameshi-san at once." Ayame said.
"No!" Botan cried out and Ayame's apprehension showed on her usually passive face due to her fellow ferry girls' abrupt reaction. Will she have to force Botan into giving her the book?
"Ayame, I'm sorry for yelling…" Botan quickly said when she saw the look on Ayame's face thinking that she had offended her with what she said. "… It's just that, I don't want you to be blamed that you're the one who did this to the book so… I feel like I should just give this to Yusuke… ", Botan explained. "Then I'll tell Lord Koenma that it was him who destroyed this!" She then added with a wide devious grin.
Ayame smiled in spite of herself and in a gentle tone, she started explaining that it was her who had been specifically assigned by Lord Koenma to deliver the documents to Urameshi and his friends and that Koenma was disappointed that she had not done it immediately and that she does not want Lord Koenma to think that she was trying to disappoint him further by not getting the documents from her.
"Lord Koenma also told me to give you this." Ayame said, handing Botan a relatively newer file that was addressed to Master Genkai.
"I really am sorry about this Ayame. I thought I was helping out, I didn't mean to make you look bad to Lord Koenma." Botan said ruefully as she accepted the new documents and handed the old damaged one to Ayame. Lately, Botan had noticed that Ayame was showing a certain partiality towards Koenma and she would never want to be the person who would ruin all chances of romantic bond between two people.
"I'll head off now, Ayame." Botan finally said, sitting down on her floating oar and Ayame did the same. The two death deities then parted ways, Botan headed northwards and Ayame flew towards the west.