A bleak sun was rising over Hidden Grass. Its pale face shone weakly through the oppressive fog that clung clammily to the approaching dawn, feebly illuminating the silver meadow that encompassed the village. On the lip of the meadow stood a lone figure, shrouded temporarily by the ephemeral wisps of mist now dissipating in the effulgence of the dawn.
It was a young man. He was a forbidding figure, tall and gaunt and wan. Half of his face was obscured by a clinging black cloth, but one could clearly see his icy blue eyes and unkempt fawn hair. He was clothed in a yukata of scarlet and gold and he bore upon his back two rather cumbersome-looking katanas.
Slowly, he began to make his way down towards the village. The wisps of mist had nearly all dispersed now and the sun shone ever more brightly. The man finally came to the outskirts of the village. From there, he headed towards the inn. Upon his arrival, the innkeeper, a scruffy man with a surly look about him, glared at him warily.
"And who might you be?" he questioned the young man.
"One who seeks lodging within this inn," replied the young man calmly.
The innkeeper scowled at his reply. "If you will not honor me with a name, I should like to know your business," he said irascibly.
"My business is my own."
"Very well, very well…so long as you bear me or my lodgers no hostility, you are welcome here, quite welcome…"
And so, the young man strode up the stairs to his lodgings.
That night, there came a scream from the street below the inn.
"My child! My child!" shrieked a woman, her face white as a sheet in the darkness. "He's taken my child!" She wrung her hands and took shuddering, shallow breaths as she flew in a nervous frenzy up and down the street. In her anxiety, she tripped over her own feet and fell sobbing to the ground.
Suddenly, at her side, was the young man.
"Who? Who has taken your child?" he asked of the sobbing woman.
"I don't know!" she cried. "It was so dark and—"
"Which way did he go?"
"That way," she replied, gesturing in the direction from which the young man had come. He quickly stooped to help her up and then ran in the direction which the woman had gestured towards, his scarlet yukata billowing out behind him.
He quickly reached the culprit and thrust his black-clad form upon the ground.
"I know your kind," he said venomously. "You are one of the Yuurei, the Specters, the child-snatchers. You take children from their villages and give them to other villages who hold them for ransom in order to collect secrets from the child's village, while you collect the bounty." The man said nothing. The kidnapped child had scrambled off to one side.
"And I know you," the man said fearfully. "You are the one they call Maboroshi, the Phantom."
"I am indeed. Were I in my right mind, I would kill you." He paused. "However, I am not in my right mind, and therefore, I shall leave you here to be dealt with however the authority in this village decides best."
So he trussed up the Yuurei and left the village.