The loud crash was followed by screaming. The screaming was led by more crashing and so on. It was a vicious cycle which I could not yet understand. I jumped to my feet quickly and rushed outside. It took Ginko a bit longer to run outside and closer to the village with me.
The first thing I saw was dust. The second was that mushi. It was the one that had left me exhausted right before I had met Ginko. That was so long ago and I thought I had placed it somewhere it would never need or want to leave. Apparently this difficult little thing had decided against my better wishes.
I swore under my breath as the thing thrashed about, the fishermen trying to capture it in their nets. It was serpentine, and only a mere twenty feet long, but it was dangerous. It slept in the wet dirt and only emerged if agitated. And they put up a hell of a fight when you were trying to get them away from normal people.
I coughed a little on the dusty air, walking closer to the fight. Ginko and Adashino were next to me then, breathing deeply, Ginko heaving with a cigarette in his mouth.
"What's going on?!" The doctors' voice raised by a few notches. He looked scared and tired.
I took a breath. "It's a mushi." I rubbed at one of my watering eyes. The more the men attacked it, the bigger it became. That was its defense mechanism; you upset it, it gets bigger until it can swallow you whole or scare you away. "Tell the men to stop attacking it!" I yelled over the shouting.
"Ginko already went on to do that…I-I'll go." He answered, noticing my confused look, and jogged off in another direction. I wrapped a cloth around my head, covering my mouth and nose from the dirt. Sneezing and coughing was inevitable, but I could hold it off for a few more hours while I fixed this.
I could hear shouts of defiance from the men tying down the creature. I ran to the men, the villagers, the fishers. I tried explaining to them the best I could, but he didn't seem to understand, that or he didn't he hear me. I went on to the next man as hurriedly and as swiftly as I could in the growing crowd.
It was a younger man this time, he might have been fifteen at the most and he look terrified. His eyes were large and his mouth was slightly agape. I ran to him and shook his shoulder to get his attention.
"YOU BETTER GO, MISS.!" He screamed over the noise. "YOU'LL GET YOURSELF HURT! THIS THING MUST BE 'BOUT TWENTY FEET YET!" I shushed him with a simple hand gesture.
"YOU NEED TO LET GO OF THE ROPE! THE MORE YOU SCARE IT, THE BIGGER IT WILL GET! I AM A MUSHI MASTER, TRUST ME!" I screamed so loudly, I was certain my voice was going to die out right there.
The boy looked at me for a moment. Then he looked back at the monster and nodded. The rope slipped from his tanned hands and he ran. He yelled to the other men, warning them of the dangers. They all soon dropped their ropes as well.
I could see Ginko and Adashino weaving in and out of the men and women holding ropes, and soon three fourths of the people had dropped their ropes and ran. I ran up to the tall man with white hair and tugged on his shirt to get his attention.
There were only three more people stubbornly holding on to their ropes, some even trying to pick up some of the ropes that had been left to lie on the dirt. After only some minor persuasion by the town doctor (and possibly some blackmailing), they released the ropes and ran. As did Adashino when he realized the thing was completely free now.
The waves were crashing close to us. The mushi had been keeping its blind eyes locked on us until it felt a drop of water on its pale green tail. Its head snapped to inspect the water with its long tongue. It slowly turned its whole coiled body and flicked the salty water with its tongue and head, inspecting it.
Immediately, it shrunk nearly five feet. It got closer to the water and shrunk another five feet. It was hard to guess because of how winded its body was, but it seemed to span about fifteen feet now. I looked at Ginko and nodded.
Slowly and quietly running past the slowly shrinking mushi, I scooped a handful of dirt, sand, and water. I tiptoed up to its middle and gently slopped the earth and water onto its sore back. All of my muscles tensed as I touched it, I remembered what it had done to people in the last village. It made a strange purring noise, shrunk more, and delved deeper into the water. I urged it on in my head, hoping it might possibly be able to understand me.
After nearly ten minutes of Ginko and me softly slathering it with mud, going by trial and error of what to do exactly, it disappeared into the earth below the sea. I exhaled with exhaustion and rubbed my temples.
Before I could release the tension from my arms and legs there was yelling. It wasn't the kind that went with terror, it went with the kind that meant someone was mad. And the one yelling was Ginko.
I stopped rubbing my neck as I looked his way. He was yelling at Adashino. To be honest it wasn't surprising, but I couldn't see any reason why. Adashino didn't yell back at all.
I walked closer to them.
"If you didn't collect your idiotic supernatural things this wouldn't happen. This isn't the first time and I imagine it won't be the last!" It was odd to hear him yell. He wasn't screaming, not by a long shot, but he was talking in more of a normal tone instead of his usual quiet voice. The scariest part was how rough and harsh his voice was. It pushed all blame on to the poor man who was receiving it.
"It didn't come from me and no one was seriously injured." I could just make out the doctors voice.
Ginko opened his mouth again. "It wasn't his fault."
In the time between Adashino whispering and Ginko opening his mouth I had stepped between the two men and placed my hand on Ginko's chest. I kept my eyes on the ground for a second or two until I spoke again.
"Do not just blame him for something, I don't care if he's brought bad things upon this village before, you can't just do that." I moved my hand to hold onto his arm, his muscles were tense.
"…I apologize… Adashino." The tension drained from his arm almost immediately, but he didn't look too happy. Adashino on the other hand looked more smug than I had ever seen a man let alone a man.
"Oh, Ginko, I'm so happy you've decided to apologize to me and forgive me for everything!"
"Don't push it," Ginko crossed his arms and I let my hand drop. "Do you want to go soon?" He looked at me, but all I could do was gaze back, confused.
"You want me to go with you?"
Adashino walked away casually.
I realized instantly it was a stupid question, but I had asked it because….I don't know, maybe I still wasn't sure.
"Nope, I was joking and I kissed you just for the hell of it last night." He looked at me, sarcasm seeping from his very being. I crossed my arms and looked away from him.
"Oh, that's exactly what I thought. I guess I'll just go back to the house and be on my way. All alone, no one to ever talk to, being a lonely sole once more." I pouted and began jogging to the house.
I wasn't really trying to run away, but Ginko caught up with me insanely easily and caught me in his arms, throwing me over his shoulder like I weighed the same as a sack of rice.
"Hey!" It hit his back lightly with my fists. "I was joking," I whined, "Let me gooooo."
"Meh, I don't trust you enough." I could hear the smile in his voice.
"Stop it…" I smiled and pushed him away. "We both need to leave before more of them start coming." I skipped out of the door of the house with my pack strapped to me with Ginko following close behind. He probably had a stupid or weird grin on his face behind his cigarette, but I couldn't see him.
After close to an hour of walking and talking, I remembered something rather important. "We need to go see Motoki, soon."
"Why? He's fine now, usually I just let people go I don't visit up on them unless it's necessary-"
"I promised to see him again and so we must, or just me at least, I guess you could stay in the Hermit House if you really don't want to see the man." I thought aloud.
"I suppose it wouldn't be entirely painful to visit the old pervert again," he rolled his eyes and walked a little faster. Maybe it was just subconscious, but it made a huge difference for me. I was incredibly short compared to him and had to take almost two steps for every one of his. It wasn't fair, but I jogged to catch up to him.
We were well into the forest and my incense sticks had burned out long ago. The sun was setting and the air become a little colder. I shivered under my kimono. Ginko glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.
"Do you want to set up camp?" He slowed to a stop in front of me while I yawned and stretched.
"Sure…"
We had eaten, set up camp, and lied down in our now joined sleeping mats in a little under an hour. I yawned again and sat up on one arm.
"How did you ever become friends with Adashino?" The question had bothered me all day.
"…Well…" he crossed his arms behind his head and regaled me with the somewhat ridiculous story of two teenage boys.
