Disclaimer: YuYu Hakusho belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi, who is not me. The small clip from "Nightmare" doesn't belong to me either, but I don't know whose it is…

Yadonushi

…
Japanese:
yadonushi- landlord, (parasitic) host
youko- a fox of great age, supernatural powers, and multiple tails
kitsune- fox or fox demon
-kun – an honorific, a suffix attached to the name of a male relative or close friend
ningen- human
owari- the end
…

It had all been a simple mistake.

Now, as the rush of panic subsided, and the haze of pain and fear melted away, he realized that he was all alone in a foreign place. Survival instincts had carried him this far, but the whole ordeal would be futile without the strength to sustain himself. So while he'd escaped like a fox creeping into a den hidden beneath the earth, he still needed a sanctuary.

With death singing lightly always in the back of his mind, he wandered. Invisible hands tugged at him, pulling him along, so he followed. Voices, as insubstantial as the air, whispered in his ears.

Look there, they said. The landlord's house stands empty.

You can stay there, but his rent will be more than you can pay.

Their capricious and breezy laughter fluttered around him. It is not his room you take, nor his house you borrow. Take his home, thief, and he will surely make you pay. After all, a home is a haven for a soul; it is where his secret life resides.

Is not a life the cost of a life?

But he ignored their cautions, because he was foolish and weary.

The truest mirror would possess no reflection; it would show the occupant not as it appeared to be, but as it actually was. A reflection changes with the light. No matter how limitless the void within a mirror, its flat and glassy surface would not portray a soul.

There were times, however, that Kurama could not tell the difference.

The mirror was mocking him. He scowled as he brushed his long red hair, and the reflection mimicked him with pouting lips that weren't his own. It continued to tease him, silently taunting that all his carefully hidden secrets were blatantly displayed for all to see. And as with most mornings, he barely refrained himself from shattering it.

Kurama absently wondered why he hadn't put up a larger fight in the first place, when Shiori insisted he have a mirror in his room. Perhaps it had been the look in her eyes that pleaded for her to be allowed to do something nice for her son. Maybe it had been a moment of vanity. But most likely, it had been that Shuuichi had wanted it. He wanted to remind Kurama every day, every time he glanced at his reflection.

No matter how the fox tried to escape it, had tried to atone, he was still a thief. Each breath he took, each moment of his existence, was stolen from a boy who would never know what it was like to have green eyes, or red hair, or a mother who loved him, or a father who had died. When Kurama had taken the boy's body as a host, the original soul had no room to finish properly forming. He'd effectively murdered a child, all to save his own pelt.

Angry and conflicted, he ran the brush through his hair with vicious, harsh strokes.

The reflection, also perturbed, looked nothing like him. The human whose features were as lively and gaudy as a late summer's rose bore little resemblance to the impassive youko. And yet… it wasn't very far off, was it? Long silver hair had been stained with garnet blood shed from countless enemies and innocents alike. Intricate deceptions and webs of lies had spun his locks into wavy tangles.

His gaze met the emerald eyes of the mirror's illusion. Long ago, Kurama's eyes had been a liquid-amber gold, like the treasures he was so fond of collecting. Now they were symbols of his greed, turned green with his lust for luxurious and shining trinkets.

There was a fine line between semblance and actuality, and he was treading it well.

Ironically, his "landlord" seemed intent on collecting his rent from Kurama as a life for a life.

And he was winning. Each day, the kitsune's steps faltered a little more as he walked the line between the deceptive appearance of Minamino Shuuichi, and actually becoming him. Each day, he could feel, with horror, the subtle influence that changed an ancient demonic thief into the human boy that the immortal child would have become. The Youko Kurama was slowly being swallowed up, and one day would cease to exist forever.

His brushstrokes wavered and halted, a sick and uneasy feeling rising in him.

A life for a life…

When he was four, Shiori insisted that her Shuuichi-kun go to school. He'd protested. She would state that it would be fun to meet other children and learn new things; he'd demand that it was too nice of a day not to be at the park. She would forcibly dress him, and on the walk to school his hand would slip out of hers in the midst of a particularly thick crowd.

Even with his scarlet hair, she was always unable to spot him until hours later, when he was perched in the branches of a tree far too tall for a child to climb up. It was always after lunch when the class was interrupted as the principle and a harried mother escorted in a little boy with strange green eyes and an immaculately clean uniform.

As the weeks passed, they began to arrive at school earlier, and Shuuichi's complaints gradually stopped. He told himself that he liked to see Shiori happy. He told himself that the ningen children weren't really as bad as he'd thought. He told himself that taking advantage of the knowledge they presented him was a cunning plan.

And he avoided looking in the bathroom mirror, because then he would see that he was telling himself lies.

He pretended that Shiori's love was helping him change his ways. She had showed him how to be good and kind, and he used it to make himself stronger than before. He made believe that his human side was his better self, and that all was well and good.

He pretended he was content, because otherwise he would drown in despair.

With effort, Kurama shoved the thoughts of the inevitable into the back of his mind. His reflection, somewhat pale, resumed combing its bright red hair.

It had all started with a simple mistake.

And it had cost him dearly.

Dark sky that stretches out limitlessly
The sound of distant, cracking thunder
Whenever I stand,
My steps sway.

…
Owari
…

-Windswift Shinju