Glossy like the finest lacquer, black like the hair of a beautiful lady, subtly cloaked in the sheen of mother-of-pearl and the scent of sandalwood incense. The poor merchant, keenly observant, knew his customer fell in love immediately with the luxurious inkstick offered to him, but still he wondered why the handsome young scholar hadn't ceased his scrutinizing. Every turn of the finely crafted black block in his palms shook the merchant in fear, every steely calm gaze up at him and back down at the inkstick not helped by the cold shine of that monocle made him shrink more and more away. As if racking him further, the scholar said, "As finely made as this is, I have no immediate need for more ink. I already have myself plenty. I wonder if you perhaps have…"

"What are you saying? An outstanding scholar like yourself, not having the finest ink anywhere has to offer?" the merchant interrupted, face pale, standing still proving monumentally difficult. "You have been painfully fortunate to encounter something this good. You need to buy this, or you shall be sorry. Even officials and aristocrats would give everything for it, and one even offered all his wealth, all his wives and servants just to have 'the best ink under the heaven'. Are you willing to pass up something of such value?"

The scholar's monocled stare continued to cut through to his spine like a cold, deadly sharp blade.

"I'm afraid I have but a hundred mon. I can't buy it even if I so desire." he said, and the merchant fell to his knees as if struck, clinging to the scholar's hakama with shrivelled hands, looking up at him with pleading eyes.

"A hundred mon, one mon, makes no difference to me. I will sell it to you even if you pay me nothing." he all but begged. "Please, you don't know what you are willingly passing up. Rather than wasting our time on fruitless argument, wouldn't it be much simpler if you just bought the dratted inkstick? Please, knowledgeable man, think this through!"

The scholar went from frighteningly calm to deeply confused, though he felt no inclination to peel the old man off his clothes just yet. He asked, "If this inkstick is so precious and of value so high, why did you not sell it to the man exchanging his entire wealth? Why is it me that you insist on selling it to?"

The merchant's face grew even paler and his eyes diverted.

The scholar sighed; not wanting to waste any more time, gingerly he placed one mon coin into the poor old man's wrinkly hands and left him behind, the best ink under the heaven in hand.


As the scholar found himself an inn that night, a tug of curiosity had him reach into his clothes for the treasure that cost him less than a handful of rice. The inkstick looked even more beautiful under the flickering candle light than when he bought it in the town, more luscious in its blackness and mysterious in its mother-of-pearl glow. He began to understand why that pesky merchant spoke so highly of its value, but still his utter desperation, that pleading look on his face remained a puzzle to him. The keenly scrutinizing look returned to his eyes as he examined the inkstick once more, and in him rose doubts over whether he had been the victim of a trick. With so many mysteries unanswered in his mind, he realized there was but one way to answer.

As inevitable as the sunrise, from his belongings he removed an inkstone, a porcelain mizuzashi, a brush and a slip of poetry paper.

The quietness filling the small room was quickly disturbed by rhythmic rubbing noises. Gently, but firmly, the scholar's willowy hand moved the inkstick back and forth, turning the tiny splash of water over the inkstone into a pool of luscious dark ink, the scent of sandalwood woven throughout – but alas, something was amiss. The more he ground, the stronger the ink, the less the noises sounded like rubbing. His eyes went wide and his hand slowed – there was no mistake, those were the sounds of human cries coming from the stone plate before him. Rub the "land" and painful growls echoed through the air, let ink run into the "sea" and agonized moans overlapped in his ears. Louder and more furious it grew into a full assault on his senses; every thick drop trickling down the inkstone's slope spelled a punch of cacophony against his chest, a squeeze of torment around his heart. His breath hastened and his head spun – all around him resounded screams of sorrow and howls of rage ever growing to a torturous intensity, crashing against his senses in tidal waves to the point of nearly exploding…

… until he set the inkstick down, and the voices faded. Regarding the brief torture he was just put through as no more than a dream, into the finished ink he dipped the tip of his brush. One, two graceful strokes he placed on the poetry slip, and soon a delicate verse came to form in a penmanship like wisps of smoke, dressed in the same calming sandalwood fragrance. It was indeed fine ink, flowing smoothly from the brush, glistening beautifully just before drying, dark against paper white. So preoccupied was he with his handiwork, unnoticed went the brush still in his hand, from whose tip just one drop of ink fell…

Then disaster struck.

Clacking went the brush to the floor and flying went the paper from his fingers; his hands froze and his body refused to move. He was taken by a shock so brutal and abrupt, a hellish heat started scorching his thigh like pouring hot oil. He realized to his horror too little too late – a drop of ink fell from his brush onto the thigh of his trousers, where the spot of black liquid spread hungrily, eating up the previously blue fabric into a hopeless black. Pain shot through him and he toppled backwards, convulsing in fits of agony; the patch of ink consumed his clothes without remorse, ruthlessly burning away at his skin with the heat of an inferno in its wake. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead, yet the heat scorched hot; the ink was wet, yet it was searing him alive all the same. He bit his lips and scratched at the tatami, desperately containing a shout so he would not wake up the innkeepers; the black splotch had spread to his torso and taken hold of his limbs, frying his flesh and boiling his mind, submerging him in a sloppy black mess, drowning him even further in an infernal sea. Eventually his head tossed back and he gasped out a helpless ahh; once again the screams and howls haunted him, surrounded him, laughed at his thrashing torment. He futilely struggled against the pain in one more fit of throes before he inevitably passed out, clothes fully black and soaked, grey hair sprawled over the floor, himself sent off into unconsciousness by the same chorus of ghostly voices and the smell of sandalwood incense.

He woke up the next morning well and alive, but to a devastating sight: his clothes all gone, burnt to black ashes over his naked body. A few coughs later from the ashes as he sat up, something else immediately caught his attention: the precious inkstick, the treasure that cost one mon, had vanished without a trace, leaving not even its ink in the suddenly clean inkstone. The poetry paper however remained bearing the verses he wrote, the graceful penmanship adorning its surface, but the flicker of relief did not last long. The innkeeper's wife slid open the door at that exact moment to the sight of a naked man sitting in a pile of ashes, and so with just enough grace to grant him a fresh change of clothes, the keeper and his wife shoved him out of the inn.


"I am sincerely and utterly sorry! It was all a lie!" cried the merchant in much the same way he did the day before, once again quivering under a monocled stare, "No aristocrat bartered his entire wealth for the inkstick, it was all a lie I made up! There is no excuse for what I've done, please feel free to punish me in any way you see fit!"

The scholar asked, still calm, "That is not what I am interested in. What exactly was in that inkstick? Since you were so adamant on selling it to me, I believe you have a reason for doing so."

The merchant darted his eyes around and swallowed a lump in his throat, then he said in a voice just above a whisper, "The inkstick belonged to no one other than the Kanke (*). In it lurked a fragment of his vengeful soul, looking for any victim to unleash his hellish rage. My family have been unfortunate enough to possess such a cursed artifact, and we have been trying every way to rid ourselves of it. We even threw it into the river and buried it to no avail. It disturbs our sleep every night with ghostly cries, and no one will ever be able to make ink out of it. Just the lightest touch against an inkstone and the vengeful spirit will burn you with his anger until not even your bone is left…"

He went quiet when the scholar handed him the poetry slip he wrote.

"You… you wrote something with it." the merchant said, fear briefly replaced with astonishment. "That surely is something unexpected. Would you enlighten me, knowledgeable man, as to how…"

The scholar cut him off slapping him across the face.

Speechless and reeling from the blow, the old man looked down at the fine piece of calligraphy gifted to him, while the scholar left, never to be seen again.

(*) Sugawara no Michizane