In the fifteenth year of the Meiji Era, Yamabuki Otome bore her husband their long-awaited son.

In the fifteenth year of the Meiji era, the Nura clan fell.

~oOo~

It was murder, they whispered in the dark corners of inns. Someone murdered the first Lord of Pandemonium, and his son had been too weak to keep the clan together.

This was partially true. Nurarihyon had been killed, and with his death came a civil war in the youkai world.

His son had been away from the main house, intending to spend every precious moment with his wife in her final days of pregnancy.

News travelled slowly in those days.

Nura Rihan didn't hear of his father's death until two weeks later, when he was cradling his three-day-old son in his arms while his exhausted wife leaned against his shoulder.

He'd made preparations to leave almost immediately, insisting that his wife stay behind to protect their son. He kissed their baby on the forehead, his wife on the lips, and promised that he'd be back to hear what name she'd decided to give their child.

~oOo~

Yamabuki Otome never saw the love of her life again.

~oOo~

She named their child Rikuo, and swore that she'd give him the happiest life that she could. But her body was already beginning to fail her.

Yamabuki was not an old youkai, but childbirth had taken its toll on her. The curse which Rihan had once spoken of may have been weakened greatly, but it was still present. She knew that she would be dead long before her son spoke his first words.

Looking at her child lying happily on the tatami mats in the morning sunlight, she felt her heart almost break. Tears welled in her dark eyes.

"Mama loves you." She promised, letting him grip her finger in his tiny hand "Mama will always love you."

She could not stay with him, as the months wore on and she felt her time drawing nearer. Unable to hold back her tears, she took her son to the Shinto shrine at the foot of the mountains. It was a shrine to the fox goddess Inari - not the biggest or most beautiful, but she felt the love poured into these grounds by the shrine maidens, and knew that they'd take care of her son.

She spoke with the head shrine maiden. "I will not live much longer," she said softly "but my child has a full life ahead of him." The shrine maiden nodded sympathetically, and an agreement was reached.

Yamabuki wrote down Rikuo's name and birthdate, leaving both given and family name in hiragana. She hesitated for a moment, before writing Otome instead of Nura. Kubinashi, Setsura, and Kejorou would know to look for that name.

Others, enemies, would not.

She left him her favourite fan tantou, and a crudely carved cherry blossom necklace. Rihan had made it for her, but his metalwork skills had been...less that adequate. It looked more like a misshapen lump than a flower, but Yamabuki loved it and refused Rihan's offer to buy her a 'better' one.

"Mama loves you." She whispered, kissing her son for the last time "Mama loves you."

She returned to the house in the mountains, and died. The flowers for which she was named spread from her corpse.

~oOo~

The shrine maidens kept their word, raising Rikuo the best they could.

It fell apart one summer night.

He'd been feverish all day, and woken at some early hour needing water.

It was a miracle that he made it across the shrine grounds without tripping, disoriented as he was from what he thought was sickness.

Clumsy hands had lit a lantern, he'd drawn back the cover on the bucket, raised the lantern - and screamed when the face that looked back at him wasn't his own.

White hair, red eyes -

The shrine maidens had thought that he was possessed, and tried to exorcise him. This belief moved onto the idea that the Rikuo they had raised had been replaced, and then onto the realisation that he was a born youkai who had never been human. Much argument ended on the conclusion that it had not been his decision to deceive them, but he had to go.

The shrine maidens didn't want to kill the child they had raised.

Rikuo left the day after, carrying his few possessions in a bag that he had made himself.

~oOo~

So, he wasn't human.

Youkai.

Youkai.

Until very recently, that word hadn't meant much to him. Youkai were just myths, weren't they? Just stories meant to stop him from wandering off after dark.

White hair, red eyes.

Rikuo's hand went to the pendant tied around his neck as he looked to the horizon.

It seemed that he could only look human during the day. At night…white hair, red eyes.

I'm a youkai, he thought.

I, Otome Rikuo, am a youkai.

He would have to get used to that idea.

~oOo~

Alone in an unfamiliar world, Rikuo soon learned that there was safety in numbers. He found a group of children from fallen youkai clans, living at the foot of the mountains, near the coastal plains that seemed to stretch on forever.

They took him in happily enough.

There were two dozen or so, the youngest around four and the oldest being fifteen. Rikuo fell into the place of second-oldest.

They had their own little village, built crudely out of sticks and woven grass. They'd often fish in the nearby river, or head up the mountains to hunt for larger game. A memorable occasion saw several of the younger youkai practically flying down the mountain, screaming at the top of their lungs, with a bear in tow.

It was at this point that Rikuo discovered that he could set things on fire with a bit of alcohol, and subsequently started a forest fire.

Rikuo was mortified.

The snow apparitions put the fire out before it reached their camp, and the bear never came back.

In the end, no harm done. But the other youkai would hold this against Rikuo for years.

After a while, the group decided to move north towards the human city known as Tokyo.

All of them shrieked excitedly at the sight of a train, one of the younger fire apparitions setting himself alight in his joy and causing quite a panic.

With their dirty faces, bare feet and old clothes, they fit right in around the outskirts of the city.

~oOo~

As the years went on, they drifted apart.

Some tired of a monotonous life and struck out on their own, and those with unchanging faces moved to the youkai districts.

Rikuo found himself working in a restaurant belonging to the quickly-growing Bakeneko clan. He soon learned he looked a lot like the second head of the fallen Nura clan, and that many people took offence to that.

A youkai woman - Kuchisake-Onna - worked the same hours as him, and she was friendly enough once you got past her tendency to mutilate anyone who commented on her appearance. She helped him figure out a way to plait and twist his hair into something that didn't look too weird.

"Without the ridiculous hair, you don't look half as much like Nura Rihan." She explained, "I'd cut it, but then you'd just look stupid."

"Wow, thanks."

The end result looked feminine, but gender was a vague concept amongst youkai, anyway. It wasn't like anyone would really care. It was a small price to pay to be able to freely wander around without the constant fear of being mistaken for the dead second head and attacked.

~oOo~

He survived the firebombings of Tokyo, and fought against the western youkai that attacked alongside the humans. He became some mix of an infiltrator and a runner, able to easily slip past enemies undetected.

Rikuo remained mostly uninjured for the duration of the war, until the summer of 1945. He'd been far away enough to survive, but close enough to be struck with debris, burned, and thrown off his feet by the shockwave.

The screams would haunt him for decades to come.

He lost part of the sight in his left eye; a flying piece of metal had hit him in the face. It made a long cut, slicing down his face like the mockery of a tear, and scarred. It was improving, which he was glad for.

Returning to the job at the Bakeneko clan, he found that Kuchisake-Onna was still there. She never asked about what had happened, but she did brush back his hair to look at the still-fresh wound on his face.

~oOo~

Rikuo attended human school for the first time as a result of a lost bet, and was surprised to find the company of humans well worth the effort it took to sustain a human appearance. He was unable to stay longer than a year or two – courtesy of his unchanging face. Still, watching his human friends pass on had hurt him more than he'd expected.

It was surprising that he ended up confessing this to Ryouta Neko over a friendly game of Koi-Koi.

It was even more so when Ryouta Neko offered to get him paperwork to register himself in the human world, as well as someone to act as a parental figure.

Several days later, he was meeting Nura Wakana for the first time. A human woman somehow involved in the world of youkai, whose smile seemed brighter than the sun.

"I could act as your family," she offered. "I lost my own son a long time ago, and I've heard that you never knew your parents. Maybe we could help each other…fill that void, a little."

He stared at her for a long time, and she never once flinched under his piercing red gaze.

"I think…" He said, stopping to order his thoughts. "I think I'd like that, yes."

And that's how he found himself in her care. She gave him a small room and told him to make it his in any way he wanted, short of knocking down the walls.

Wakana kept a small memorial altar to her son and husband. He avoided that corner.

Ryouta Neko soon presented him with the documents that would cement his existence in the human world. When Rikuo nervously asked what the payment would be, the head of the Bakeneko clan waved him off with a laugh, and told him that continuing to work the rush hour would be sufficient.

Kuchisake-Onna nearly fell over laughing when she found out that he was going to be attending human school again. He threw a tea towel at her, which she caught and immediately hurled back.

~oOo~

He met one of his future classmates while fighting with a vending machine. He'd tried to buy an inarizushi, but it had gotten stuck. The human boy had walked over and bought a can of corn soup with the hope of knocking the inarizushi down.

The corn soup also became stuck.

The next fifteen minutes were spent shaking the machine and screaming their frustrations when the food didn't budge.

A shopkeeper eventually came over, and whacked the top of the machine. Both items immediately fell into the slot, and the shopkeeper laughed at their expressions as she left.

They ended up sitting together, and chatting.

"I go to Ukiyoe middle." The blond boy said "You?"

"I've been homeschooled." Rikuo lied "I'm starting at Ukiyoe middle next term."

"What year are you going to be?" He asked "Maybe we'll be in the same class."

"Second year of middle school."

"Cool, we'll probably be in the same class! I'm Shima! What's your name?"

"O-oh, Nura."

That was weird to say. He'd spent so long trying not to be mistaken for the dead second heir, and now he'd ended up with the name. He would have to ask Wakana how it was spelled.

"Do you play any sports, Nura?" Shima asked.

"Not formally." Rikuo replied "I'll play ball games with the other kids in my apartment block, stuff like that."

"What kind of ball games? Do you think you'd join a sports club? We're always looking for more members!"

"Um...cricket, soccer, basketball...I wasn't very good at any of them. I don't think I'd join a club. I don't like competing."

"That's a pity." Shima said, glancing up at the streetlights as they flickered on. "Anyway, want to swap numbers?"

"Sure."

He caught himself before he handed his phone over - most of his contacts were saved under the sort of names that would definitely raise some eyebrows. Instead he copied Shima's number, and sent a brief text.

XXX-XXX-XXX: Hi

"Cool." Shima said, copying the number into his contacts.

"I gotta run now. It was nice to meet you!"

"Nice to meet you, too." Rikuo echoed, watching the human boy jog away. He bit back a snicker as the blond tried to throw his empty can into a bin and missed.

Overhead, the streetlights flickered on.

~oOo~

Thanks to Maydaylily for beta-ing, I never would've gotten anywhere without you!