She stirred, trying to figure out why there was dirt in her ears and a stick in her hair after taking a bath. Everything had been a blur. Something about tanuki and eating strange things and magical testicles. It felt like someone had been in her head.

The screams of the nightly chorus filled her ears, trying to awaken her. She opened one eye, finding that she was laying on top of the medicine seller outside near a rather large river. Gasping, she scrambled to her feet, which made her gasp even more. The medicine seller lay motionless on the shores, his ofuda scattered about on the ground flanked by broken branches and leaves. His kimono was torn and bloodied, his face and arms bruised and scratched.

"No no no no no!" she panicked, dropping to her knees. What had happened that they ended up outside in this predicament. She attempted to move his shoulders. "Wake up! Just wake up, please!"

He wasn't moving. She wasn't sure if he was even alive. Did supernatural beings even have heartbeats? Did they need to breathe? Her hand shook as she attempted to feel for a pulse in his neck. Fortunately whatever being he was, he still had a heartbeat.

She stood up, searching for anything that could help them. She could feel her breaths getting more and more shallow, aware of what panic was, but that really didn't help. This wasn't what she wanted to do at a hot spring. She wanted to soak her feet, make a big sale, and go to the next place. Instead she was standing here in a bathing yukata and sandals on the side of a river in the middle of the night with an unconscious whatever-he-was that likely needed medical attention.

She placed a hand on her head. What made matters even worse was the thoughts and feelings going through her mind. They definitely weren't her own. Betrayal, anger, revenge. She could feel that pit in her heart like someone had stabbed her in the back, yet no one had.

She smacked herself on the forehead. She had to concentrate. She'd been with the medicine seller for some time, learning about remedies and medicines. They were in a forest where many herbs naturally grew, but she didn't want to leave him lying there helplessly. A forest creature or even a yokai could come along and try to eat him like a snack.

She paced for a moment before reaching down and scooping up water to splash her face. She did have a natural resource right here. She could use strips if yukata to bandage anything up and there were branches for splints if they were needed. "Good thinking, Kayo!"

She turned, gasping. For a moment, she was certain she saw a dark-skinned man with flowing white hair kneeling next to the medicine seller with a hand on his head. Yet as soon as she blinked, the person was gone. Had she just imagined it?

Whoever that was, it was enough to cause the medicine seller to stir. "Mr. Medicine Seller!" she practically slid across the dirt on her knees. "Thank the kami. I thought you weren't going to make it!"

He placed a hand on his head, feeling it pound and scream at him. He could barely make out the lights of the onsen up the cliffside. They had fallen quite a distance before impacting the ground and tumbling to the river. If it hadn't been for the ofuda and his other self protecting them both, they wouldn't have survived the fall.

He pushed himself up to a seated position, rubbing at his shoulders gingerly. "You are you again."

She sat back on her knees. "I feel like someone was in my head."

"The mononoke," he informed her. He left out the part that when possessed, she was the one who pushed them both over the balcony railing. She didn't need that weighing down her heart. It wasn't her fault.

Kayo placed a hand on her head again. "That explains the feelings that aren't mine. I feel… betrayed. My heart just hurts. Is this the mononoke's reason?" She looked at him for confirmation but noticed he was missing something. "Wait, where's the taima sword?"

He pulled it from his sleeve. The bell had become knotted and the fuzzy hair matted, but the sword was unscathed. It also hadn't chattered a confirmation that the reason was fully revealed. "Perhaps a piece of the reason. We do not yet know the full story."

He stared up at the light of the onsen above them high up on the cliffside. Given the full possession of all the guests at the onsen, he wouldn't be able to glean any information from them at the moment.

"You think it has to do with the sake?" Kayo wondered.

"The trigger, perhaps," he reasoned. "The mononoke's truth occurred recently, within a week."

She felt at odds, finding herself outside a mononoke's haunt without information to put it to rest, but it wasn't the first time. The hinnagami had locked them out of the tea house, but they had still been close to resources and a medicine chest full of supernatural oddities to help them out. Right now, they were cast out of the onsen and into a river.

He sat up, leaning over and digging something out of the dirt.

Kayo watched him brush the dirt off, quickly realizing what he'd found. "A hair ornament! I wear those all the time!" She felt her hair, expecting to have lost an ornament but recalling she'd let her hair down for the dip in the springs. "It's not mine."

"It is not," he agreed. Curling his legs around, he pushed himself to his feet as he felt the effects of the fall pull at his body. Glancing around, he found no paths nearby. It didn't seem to be a common area for anyone to travel. The river was harsh with eddies and rapids. The trees were dense and uninviting. This hair ornament wouldn't be here without a reason.

Something within the brush moved about. Kayo yelped, leaping onto him in surprise. "The mononoke's back!"

"Miss Kayo," he grimaced a bit.

She gasped, quickly jumping off and hiding behind him. "Sorry!" She cautiously peered around his arm, unable to make out what was making noise.

The medicine seller could easily see the culprit. It wasn't making many attempts to hide completely from sight. He could see the small snouts visible in the bushes. "Miss Kayo, it's a group of tanuki."

Kayo ducked behind him. "Noooo! I don't want to eat soap!"

"They're not possessed, Miss Kayo," he smirked a little bit before returning his attention to the brush. They were ordinary tanuki that hadn't shown any signs of aggression. Normally tanuki were pretty friendly, only resorting to tricks if their home was disrupted or they were bored. At the moment, the brush visitors seemed pretty docile. "Did we disturb your den?"

The small tanuki heads shook in response. One reached out, beckoning them to follow with the crook of its finger.

"They wish for us to follow them," he interpreted.

"W-what?!" Kayo yelped. "What if it's a trick?"

"I do not believe so," he shook his head. "They wish to show us something."

She gripped the back of his kimono.

"Miss Kayo, they will not force you to eat soap," he reassured her, wedging his kimono free of her grasp. "Come, we should follow them."

He watched them dart from the bushes, following the river downstream. They weren't the largest of tanuki, about the size of dogs wearing makeshift kimono and yukata that fluttered as they ran. He wasted no time following them, ignoring the sharp pains up his right leg.

The tanuki halted at a tree covered in ivy so thickly, it hung down like a curtain.

"It happened here," the tanuki samurai informed them.

"Th-they talk?" Kayo stammered in surprise.

"They do," the medicine seller seemed hardly fazed. He crouched down to level himself with the smaller guides. "Last week?"

"About seven nights ago," a tanuki in a green scarf nodded. "They fell much as you both did."

The medicine seller tapped his chin thoughtfully. "From the onsen up the hillside?"

"That's right, but they didn't survive," the samurai tanuki shook his head. "We think they were already dead when they fell."

Kayo watched the exchange, her hands gripping her yukata nervously. The medicine seller was so friendly to the small yokai, much friendlier than he often was with humans. Sometimes he was this friendly with her as well, though other times he was just a mysterious jerk.

She released the death grip on her yukata. There was nothing frightening about actual tanuki at all.

"It's not a pretty sight, but there's some of them left," the tanuki added. "The okuri-inu picked them clean."

"I did hear the yosuzume warning they were nearby," the medicine seller recalled the bird's shrill cry earlier that night. Okuri-inu were a wolf yokai so aggressive that even other yokai avoided them. The yosuzume bird cried out to warn those around it that the okuri-inu was nearby. The wolf yokai tended to consume travelers that stumbled or stopped to rest, but even a hunter like that wouldn't turn down a free meal of discarded humans.

"I'll give you something important from them," the tanuki informed them, ducking behind the ivy curtain. He emerged with odds and ends, mostly jewelry. He handed it to the medicine seller. "When we scavenged, we found these hair ornaments in her hand. They might mean something."

He stared at the jewelry in his hand. It was a handful of hair ornaments that had a very familiar look to them, and he knew exactly why. "The same jewelry that Miss Ama wore. This was hardly an accident. It was a murder."

...

Author's musings

I had long debated if Kayo would ever see the other self. He always tells her to shield her eyes or battles the mononoke in another room or concealed. Even in the Ayakashi or Mononoke, Kayo never actually sees the other self. Those possessed by mononoke have, but Kayo has not. But what if she even had the slightest of a glimpse of the other self? Under any other circumstance, perhaps it would've brought more questions, but this is a stressful situation. She's more concerned with him that what she thinks she saw.

I am also intrigued by the idea that the other self is the medicine seller, but at the same time he also seems separate. Particularly during the Umibozu story where he starts handing things off to his other half. They interact instead of just change places and it's done.

So the question perhaps is how the two interacted here? I do wonder. I'll leave that up to you to decide.