Rirī stayed there until dusk and only moved because her growling stomach ordered her to, continuing to Tokyo. Youko and Kuronue had gone the opposite direction so she was certain that they wouldn't cross paths. As she walked her heart ached.
'Who knew you could mess things up so bad.' Kasai said.
'Don't talk to me. This is your fault.' Rirī said back.
'I am you. If it's my fault then it is your fault as well. Are you not the one who got us in this mess in the first place?' Kasai asked.
'Leave me alone.' Rirī said miserably.
She reached Tokyo a little after dark, stayed at an inn and tried to sleep. However nightmares plagued her once again. Images of her master's cruel eyes and Youko's livid eyes kept her up most of the night. When the sun rose, she left the inn and went into town. The market place was lively and people moved about their lives happily, making Rirī feel even more out of place as she walked somberly from shop to shop looking for a decent shirt. A sea blue shirt caught her attention and after inspecting it she decided to purchase it. She looked up to see the shopkeeper looking at her disapprovingly.
"I would like to buy this." She said, holding up a money bag to him to prove she could pay.
"Where is your husband, or your father? Why are the men in your family allowing you to impersonate a man? It is dishonorable." The shopkeeper asked after she paid.
"I have no family; dishonor is not something I am concerned with." She replied, leaving to go to another shop.
She continued through town and bought a new bag and some rice. She left Tokyo soon after, seeing that Yomi didn't attack after all.
'Kuronue would yell at me for wasting the trip here, and Youko would laugh at us both.' She thought fondly. 'O, I mean Kurama.' She remembered somberly.
'Stop with this melancholy crap. It's making me nauseous.' Kasai said distastefully.
'I thought I told you to leave me alone.' Rirī reminded her angrily.
Kasai went back to her silence. Rirī went and changed in the woods, putting Youko's shirt in her new bag then making her way to a stream to wash out the blood stains. She was there for a time but she didn't mind; she wanted to keep her hands full. She finished around late afternoon and tried to figure out where she needed to go. Being a wanderer, it's what she was used to, but now that she was alone again she felt how isolated she was. The weather, at least, was warm and it lightened her spirits a little.
After the shirt dried, she put it back in her pack and began to walk towards the ocean. Youko's tale of traveling the world sounded pleasant. Maybe an expedition of sorts would do her good. The ocean was far away but traveling never bothered her before with a determined huff, she straightened up and walked southeast. The walk was long that day, and painfully quiet.
'How did I manage this silence before?' She wondered.
'Because you didn't know what it was like to have people care for you. Also, you didn't have a handsome fox demon following you around who was in love with you.' Kasai said.
Rirī didn't reply, mainly because she believed her other half was right. She continued on, trying to clear her head of everything that had to do with Kurama, which was impossible, just like forgetting Ana and Sasuke. They were her only family and they all abandoned her and left her for dead. They knew the demons would have killed her had Youko not shown up to save her, just like Youko knows Yomi is still going to kill her to get him, though it won't. Yomi may keep up on his word on making her his slave just to make everything ironic. And ironic it would be. Rirī had spent her most of her life as a slave and had escaped, using her new skills to protect others from slavery and in saving one demon slave, she had condemned herself to slavery once again.
In that moment, Rirī decided that leaving the country was the best idea. In Japan, she was still an outlaw and was on the run from Yomi and the law. It would be safer for her to return to her father's country, Ireland, and hunt down the bandits that destroyed her village so long ago. It wasn't something she wanted to do, for it was a path she vowed never to take because her father always told her that revenge was a sin worse than the crime committed towards you. She had hoped she could lead a nobler life, but now that she thought about it, all she has done was get herself in trouble and save the wrong people. It would be nobler to find the people who killed her village and make them pay for what they did.
Her shoulder still hurt from her fight with Akio's Ultimate Warrior, though she had tried to ignore it by pretending it wasn't there, and her mind trick worked while she was with Kurama and Kuronue because they provided a distraction. But now it was her, the forest path, and her wound. She looked up at the sun as it hid behind a huge puffy cloud and tried to distract her mind with that. The cloud was enormous and with the sun hiding behind it, it seemed as though the world was under a huge tree, hiding from the heat of the early autumn sun. The path under her feet shifted and leaves crunched under her bamboo shoes. The birds sang back and forth about their migration to places of warmer seasons. The sun emerged from its hiding place and the world was quiet for a moment, basking in its warm rays of golden light.
As the rest of the world returned to its former activities, Rirī remained looking up at the sun, remembering everything she was trying so hard to forget.