"Maybe we should've just kept gossiping over rice bowls in the room," Kayo stammered, still clinging to the medicine seller like a child.
He pried her off his shoulders, setting her back on the ground and watching the candle across the room intently. There was definitely a mononoke here, but what was it? He needed to put it to rest so it wouldn't suffer anymore. "Come." He took her by the hand and the two quickly left the room. As he slid the door shut, he placed a few ofuda on the door frame.
"What are you doing?" Tadasuke's sharp, disdainful voice jarred the pair.
"Th-th-th-the candles are moving!" Kayo stammered.
Tadasuke scoffed. "Don't be silly. Candles don't move! Get back to work, girl!"
"Don't act like you're better than me!" she hissed at him.
"Get back to work!"
Tadasuke reached forward to grab her but the medicine seller intercepted, stopping his movements with a single finger. No matter how hard Tadasuke pushed, the medicine seller's finger simply didn't budge.
Kayo stared at the back of his kimono. There he was, protecting her again. He always acted so cool and serious, like his only purpose was to hunt mononoke, but somehow he kept protecting her. Even if he did tick her off sometimes.
"Don't interfere." The medicine seller flicked his finger, pushing Tadasuke back a few inches.
"W-what are you?!" Tadasuke shouted, prepared to strike the medicine seller, but the sound of something heavy coming down the stairs drew his attention instead.
One step by one step, the heavy sound approached closer and closer. Thud. Thud. Thud. Kayo leapt forward, clinging to the medicine seller's arm. "It's them. The candles are walking again!"
"Nonsense," Tadasuke scoffed.
"What is all that noise?" Hidehiko emerged from the side room, pipe still in hand. "Ah, Mr. Medicine Seller. What brings you downstairs at this hour?"
"It seems you may have," he replied calmly, "a mononoke here."
"What nonsense is that?" Tadasuke hissed.
The medicine seller extended an arm, pointing to the stairs. It was easily the slowest moving mononoke he'd encountered, but perhaps it had a flair for the dramatic. The stairs creaked as it moved down them one by one.
"W-what is that?" Hidehiko stammered, backing up towards the medicine seller. "Is that a… candle moving?"
The medicine seller outstretched a finger, making a beckoning motion. A jingling sound rang out against the loud thud of the candle, followed by a streak of gold and white as he caught the taima sword in his hand. The attached bell jingled as he brought the sword down, holding it out before him defensively. "I believe we have a toudaiki on our hands."
The sword chattered in response.
"The form…" Kayo reasoned somewhere between panic and clinging to him. "But what's a toudaiki?"
"A candle borne of black magics and a human being," the medicine seller replied.
"Eeeeeh?!" Kayo yelped. "You mean those really could be the missing guests?!"
"I wonder," he replied vaguely.
"M-missing guests?" Hidehiko stammered. "Black magics?"
"Onmyodo is quite the art," the medicine seller commented. "The question is, who could've created them in a way that caused them to give them a reason to come alive?"
"No one knows that sort of stuff here!" the innkeep insisted.
Someone was lying here. The staff here was pretty thin, but the rumors ran thick within them. The toudaiki wasn't exactly the fastest moving mononoke he'd encountered, but it still could be a threat if its reason became too powerful. He glanced over his shoulder, hearing the movement from within the sitting room behind him. Those candles were walking as well. Just how many toudaiki were here? What was it with inns and massive mononoke problems? "Mr. Hidehiko, is there a room here which does not possess a candle?"
"J-just the front room here," the innkeeper stammered.
Tucking the taima sword in his obi, the medicine seller plastered the doors in the area with ofuda seals to keep the walking candles at bay. But the stairs presented a different problem. He could create a barrier of ofuda across the stairs but something that heavy could break through it, tearing the papers easily.
But as the medicine seller stood near the base of the stairs, the mononoke stopped moving, curling back up into the contorted position all the candles seemed to take. The medicine seller stared at it. It had reacted to him in a way that most mononoke did not. Was it asking to be put to rest? He peered up at the candle. It appeared to be crying.
Kayo peered out around the other two towards the medicine seller. The mononoke had suddenly stopped but the sword hadn't chattered again. She knew he needed the truth and reason to slay the mononoke and so far he'd only gotten the form.
The medicine seller turned back to the innkeeper and his assistant. "I need to know everything about these candles and this inn."
"Like I'm going to honor demands from someone like you!" Tadasuke hissed.
"Talk." His voice was stern and strong as the medicine seller demanded answers.
"Why are you looking at me?" Hidehiko panicked.
"Mononoke are born of the ill will of humans and their actions," the medicine seller replied. "They carry on the ire of those who have been killed, possessing objects and animals and becoming things like walking candles. Someone here created them. A lot of them."
Kayo quietly slipped out from behind the innkeep and his assistant, edging along the room to stand behind the medicine seller. It just seemed safer there.
"I do recall that the candles were Mr. Tadasuke's project, were they not?" the medicine seller pointed out. In their conversation earlier, Hidehiko had pointed out that Tadasuke liked candles and had created many of them.
"Don't think you can blame this on me!" Tadasuke hissed. "He's involved too!" he immediately fingered Hidehiko in the involvement.
"Me!? The innkeeper hissed. He had opened his mouth to shout some more but quickly leapt forward as the sounds in the room behind him began to scrape and thump once again. The ofuda barriers lit up like red fire, flaring across the walls in an attempt to keep the mononoke at bay.
"Those barriers will not hold forever," the medicine seller warned them. He could feel Kayo clinging to his kimono behind him as the barriers behind him also lit up. The mononoke on the stairs still hadn't moved. "I can slay them if I know their truth and reason, how they were created and what has caused them to become so angry, but you must tell me what that is."
"It was his idea!" Tadasuke confessed in a panic.
"You were the one with the onmyodo scroll!" Hidehiko shot back.
"They were all greedy upper class, what did it matter anyway!" Tadasuke attempted to reason with the situation. "You're beneath them. We're all beneath them!"
The medicine seller calmly listened to them shout. The pressure of the situation had caused them to start talking, but they still hadn't said enough. The sword hadn't reacted to confirm this was the toudaiki's truth. "Why did you turn them into candles?"
"For money, of course!" Hidehiko nearly bragged about the work. "Those upper class keep all the money for themselves while we lower class have to suffer. Why should they keep all the wealth when we can extort it from them and share it amongst ourselves?"
It made sense. Hidehiko's insistence of favoring the merchants, his overzealous attempts to shower the medicine seller with more lavishness than he ever cared for. The food was well worth it but that room was far too extravagant.
The medicine seller remained silent, his attention focused on the innkeeper and his assistant across the room.
"That's crazy!" Kayo shouted. "I mean they're all stuffy and rich and sometimes rude, but they're still people!"
"How can you still say that with how much work you do for them but they do nothing for you!" Hidehiko shouted back.
"Because I've seen how terrible people are!" Kayo hissed before clamping up. She had seen how horrible people were. Lord Yoshiyuki was a terrible person, and the things he did to Tamaki were things so bad even her nightmares had nightmares. That whole family turned out to be terrible. "Sure people can be bad, but people are capable of good too. I've served some good people." Though those good people did get nervous about her involvement with the bakeneko rumors, they'd sent her off to travel with yen in her pocket. They didn't necessarily abandon her without any money. She'd talked about them sourly before, but they weren't bad people.
"Sympathizer!" Tadasuke shouted, reaching behind the front desk. He pulled out a large hot bucket, hurling the contents at the medicine seller and Kayo. The former was quick, removing the seals from the door behind them and pulling Kayo into the other room and then shutting the door. The hot wax from the bucket sizzled on the paper door.
Kayo clung to him. She wasn't certain how this was better than before. Instead of being surrounded by people who made the candles, they were now surrounded by the actual mononoke candles instead. She swallowed hard, just hoping that she would live through this.
...
Author's notes:
Toudaiki are kinda terrifying. They're made of wax and a living person. The origin of this yokai seems to come from a legend of a government minister who traveled to China then disappeared. His son later traveled to China years and years later to look for his missing father. He found a human-shaped candle that intrigued him. It started to cry and he realized the candle was his missing father.
Seems kind of fitting for an inn that attracts high class clientelle then extorts them. Terrifying.
