"You mean Momiji's madness was due to Orochi?"
"Yes. Orochi's evil thoughts dominated her. If I hadn't intervened, she would have been one of Orochi's minions by now."
"So you told her that eating humans would make her more beautiful...?"
"Correct. What's the problem?"
- Ch.22, Seimei and Dark Seimei
She hears the noise all the time now: a trickle of water which never goes dry, or a leaking vat of sand that weeps as its contents run away. Like her mind runs away, dripping out her skull and out her ears and pooling in sticky, waxen trickles down her skin. She is a candle melting. An expensive, indulgent candle, an expendable luxury turned to waste once the flame is done.
The darkness gives her no peace. Like flower petals shriveling endlessly into rot, it shuffles off its skin in patches, leaving fragments of shadow behind for Momiji to wade through. It mixes with the dried leaves around her ankles, hissing in time with each of her steps.
She has been walking in circles. She does not know for how long.
With a sudden spasm of force, her cheeks split open as her teeth try to scramble out. She can feel the corners of her mouth ripping apart, the skin of her lips flaking and bleeding in paper-thin scales. Her jaw struggles to unhinge itself; Momiji clutches at it with a panicked whimper as the bone presses down against her palms like a frantic animal, fighting with a life of its own.
It snaps open past grip at last, triumphant. She feels her mouth stretch into a leer. Her tongue unfurls, heavy and elongated, a ribbon of mottled muscle coated with the film of decay.
She is so glad to be alone now, abandoned by the world, unseen and forgotten. Her body has not begun to rot in earnest yet. If she is already turning this hideous so soon, then the final stages of her decomposition will be a portrait of true horror.
She is so glad that Seimei is not here to see her, not as the monster she will become.
Tear a kimono once and it will never have the same value again, Momiji's mother liked to say: a favorite warning, used on everything from pottery to the rice cooked for dinner. No matter how careful the stitches, or how masterfully you layer the other colors, something will show. Even maki-e cannot cover every flaw. You can never afford to be ruined, Momiji. Only death will want you then.
As a child, Momiji memorized the words devoutly out of homage to her aunt's ruined chances: the blotched, gnarled scar tissue on the side of the woman's face, the legacy of an accident that she hid whenever possible, turning it away from the light. It had ruined her aunt's hopes for any union of merit. Even with her face disguised behind fans and silken screens, whispers of the woman's affliction had encouraged rumors that she was cursed. Their family could not sell her to even the most discreet merchant, for fear of discrediting the family name.
Ugliness, Momiji knew early on, was shame.
"Beauty is what we are valued by," her mother would lecture her fiercely, working sanekazura juice into her scalp and hair to keep the strands glossy and long. All of Momiji's childhood memories were shellacked in the reek of seaweed and magnolia. "Your mastery of aesthetics will be the only thing to save you from the gossip-mongers. The world loves us only when we are beautiful, Momiji. Lose that, and you will have nothing. You will be nothing. And no one, no one, will lower themselves to save you from it."
Obsession formed the backbone of each lesson. At her mother's side, Momiji learned eagerly how to paint her skin with painstaking care, studying it in her pitted copper mirror. Her fingers massaged her cheeks dutifully, patting them over and over in hopes they would round out and puff like clouds. Each morning, she masked her eyebrows with her fingers as she tried to imagine how they would look shaved and repainted higher, her teeth blackened in the noble fashion. She was not as pretty as she could be; her figure was not soft enough, her eyes were not small. Her hair was measured daily as she grew it out, and she fretted with how it hung around her face, practicing each pout of her lips as she wished relentlessly that they were thicker, plumper. Better.
Beauty made its owner a target as well. After the gift of a particularly fine container of oshiroi from Heian-kyo, Momiji discovered dirt mixed into the rice powder the next morning, ruining the entire batch. Jealousies festered between all of her cousins, gleeful lies fattening themselves like ticks to bursting. Grudges were passed down through each generation, layering poisons behind each simpering, overly-polite word. One of her father's political connections caught her in a hallway during a family gathering, breaching every rule of decorum. He backed Momiji against a wall with only a few shuffling steps, voice smug as he told her how nicely she had filled out since he had last seen her as a child. His fingers stroked her throat possessively. Then they dropped to her thigh, giving it a hard squeeze through the layers of her kimono before the man had guffawed, and turned back to the tearoom.
He was not the only one.
Those dangers were no different from the other warnings she had been raised on. Since childhood, Momiji had been sung to sleep at night by tales of spiders hiding between shelves, centipedes in drawers, anything that might leave a mark to blemish her appearance. To not allow too much sun on her face, to not eat anything that would irritate the accumulation of yin energies in her body. It had cost her family each year to keep her raised well. If Momiji did not make good on their effort, then all of it would have gone to waste, like an ox bought from market with a tumor already hot in its belly, to sicken and die before it could coaxed to calf.
Like her aunt, she would be regarded only as a burden. Momiji would not know how to farm or tend the fields; she would not have the same thick callouses and stamina built from long hours hauling water and manure. Her life would amount to little more than a poor purchase, gold thrown into the mud.
If she could not become beautiful, then she would be completely useless, a creature worth nothing to anyone.
She met the spirit by accident in the maple woods, early in the summer when the weather had not yet turned the colors to red and gold, and most leaf-hunters were hoping for the last dregs of late-blooming sakura to comfort them instead. It was a betrayal of protocol for her to be out on her own without a larger escort, and only a single handmaiden nearby. Unwed, Momiji was too young to begin her appropriately discreet affairs, taking on lovers to entertain her while her assigned husband was away. Bitter tongues could weave entire epics out of a stray smudge of dirt upon her geta.
But she went anyway, painfully aware of how little time was left for her to indulge in the outside world. Soon, Momiji would not have the opportunity to set foot outside her home without a retinue and some social affair to justify her presence, lest she cheapen her reputation by appearing too eager to come to any hand that beckoned. Her reward for such dutifulness would be minimal: after she had been successfully married out to be bred like a field beast, Momiji would have to endure an endless boredom of waiting in stuffy rooms, and finding new ways to disguise barely-veiled insults in the form of poetry.
She was just starting to slink into one of the more remote glades when a sudden, nearby rustle of leaves froze her immediately.
"Ah, how annoying," drifted down from the nearest tree; irritation laced every word. "No matter where you go for a moment's peace, there's always some sort of human pest around, eh? Can't you find somewhere else to entertain yourself?"
Bandit, she thought, for only an instant before she plucked out the details of the figure lounging on one of the branches. The man's clothing was richly colored; his hair was wild, spilling out in red tufts like a bonfire around his skull. The massive gourd balanced beside him was moving, champing its jaws as it angled itself eagerly towards her, as if hoping to launch itself off the branch and swallow her whole.
Pointed ears. Pointed teeth.
Yōkai.
Training alone saved her; Momiji straightened her shoulders instinctively, falling back upon the long hours spent pretending she was already at court, facing down other nobles intent on insulting her calligraphy. "How rude," she retorted, as flawlessly as a fan snapped open at the perfect angle to show all its colors in a sneer. "Though I should expect such boorish behavior from someone uncivilized enough to sleep in a tree."
She saw the effort pay off when the spirit lifted his eyebrows in surprise; then he smirked, swinging his legs over the side of the branch to peer down at her better. "That's some arrogance from a creature fragile enough to die from the wrong handful of berries off a bush." His grin was very wide. "Humans have no common sense. But that's what makes you so entertaining, right? Like a maple leaf, your brightest colors come right before you fall."
"A fitting comparison," Momiji declared, refusing to let herself be disgraced by the urge to shriek and run. "I was named for these very woods. And you, my lord?"
With a deliberate, languid stretch that flung his arms wide - muscles flexed and taut, clothing spreading even further open across his naked chest and stomach - the man finally clambered to his feet. He sprang down to land with ease on the ground beside her; his heels hit the earth with no recoil from the impact, no staggering needed to regain his balance. On his shoulder, the gourd grumbled and hiccuped. "You stand before the great demon, Shuten Dōji! Count yourself lucky for this chance, human." With a grunt, he unslung the hefty vessel, setting it beside him even as it clacked its teeth. Momiji glanced towards it with a nervousness she could not suppress, but the yōkai merely unlooped another jar from his belt, no bigger than those from her own family's kitchens. "I'm in too good a mood to leave here just yet. Pour for me, maple-girl! I could use more than just the scenery to enjoy today - if you have the time."
It was not, purely speaking, an order. Not directly. The wording made no difference. Like her father's business associates, the request had been made by someone in power, and Momiji knew that meant it was no request at all.
She took a deep breath, lowering her gaze by the appropriate degree as she kept her face forward for inspection - as if she were merely being judged by her family again, trapped in a dozen different tearooms where she had been called out for display like a doll. "As you wish," she murmured, purposefully demure. "I am here to await your leisure."
Shuten Dōji's rough chuckle almost broke her composure; she wanted to glance at him to see how much of it was mockery. Instead, Momiji merely arched an eyebrow, refusing to play the part of an underling so freely. "Though you realize you must be seated first, my lord."
The sudden slap of noise felt like a blow directly against her spine, and she did startle after all, yanking her head up in wild terror - but Shuten Dōji was only clapping in slow, lazy beats, like a drum in no hurry to play its final note. He grinned again at her, as if her fear had been noted and deemed momentarily amusing. "So bold. Hah! I could snap you in half like a brittle twig, and yet you still keep your pride before me." Folding his arms, the man made a show of measuring her with his eyes, gaze frank as he ran it all the way down. After reaching her feet, he looked back up towards her face, and then finally made a considering nod.
"You are very pretty, you know," he informed her, with the directness of a man who believed he was paying a woman a compliment.
Her silence must have been sufficient incentive for him to soldier on. "I think it might take some time before I've had my fill of you. Will you come back to these woods again?" The question was light, playful - and then the demon leaned in, his voice lowering in a purr as he caught her hair with the sharp nails of his fingers, toying with the strands. "Or should I come to find you?"
In his mind - Momiji was certain - the man must have imagined the flirtation to be charming. She was not naive enough to ignore the underyling threat. Her clan was far from weak; even so, against this creature's power, their defenses might not last. Enough enraged, drunken outbursts had exploded in her family's home for Momiji to be wary of giving offense. Humans were dangerous enough. A yōkai would be even worse. If Shuten Dōji felt sufficiently insulted, he might tear down every building and set the storehouses on fire, murder all the guards, tear gashes in her face to prevent her from ever being loved by another. He might do it anyway, all under the delusion that he was somehow wooing her, showing off his power in a manner that might make him more attractive, instead of utterly terrifying.
"I'll return in a few days," she insisted, and tried to make it sound brave - as if it truly was her decision in full, and within her rights to refuse without being punished. "As long as you're capable of remaining well-behaved, that is."
Luck was with her; the spirit looked more intrigued than angered. He tilted his head towards her in slow agreement, the scarlet of his hair swaying with the motion. "If that's what my pretty lady demands, then so be it. Now, don't keep me waiting any longer. Pour."
Shuten Dōji was there again when Momiji returned to the maple woods. Then the next time after that. Then the next. He was never brutish towards her directly; his confidence had all the brashness of someone accustomed to being the most powerful person in a room, and who had been that way for so long that he had forgotten what it was like to be anything else.
Still, it seemed to entertain him to reach down to her level anyway, for reasons Momiji could never tease out. He laughed enough at the small jokes she used to relax the conversation, and smiled often, clumsily eager to impress her. There was less bragging than she expected. Despite all his bravado, Shuten Dōji spoke little of himself apart from a few recent tales of besting lesser yōkai, and nothing of epic battles from years past. At times, he seemed uncertain, becoming suddenly reluctant to continue the conversation; these were the days when he would lapse into steady drinking, offering nothing save one-word replies to any of her questions.
He did not pressure her a second time. She filled cup after cup of sake for him, allowing him to caress the trailing edges of her sleeves, his words turning slurred and maudlin the longer he drank. Sometimes Shuten Dōji would fall asleep before the afternoon had begun to slip into evening, showing no caution for his surroundings as his eyelids would droop lower, and then shut completely.
But each time the man demonstrated the easy, casual use of his strength, Momiji remembered. His massive gourd was no heavier than a pebble in his hands - yet Shuten Dōji slung it around carelessly, not caring what it drooled at next. Smaller spirits would creep close to watch as the two of them spoke idly together in the woods: little things that cringed and cowered, scrambling away in desperation at the merest wave of Shuten Dōji's hand, as if they feared that the gesture alone might incinerate them.
I could snap you in half like a brittle twig.
She remembered.
Momiji rationalized each visit to herself with all desperation of a miser counting his storehouses. She threatened her handmaid into silence, and watched the demon grow tamer over time - not reckless as she had feared, though she never stopped being aware of his power. It could be her power, too, if she could only trust him not to hurt her with it. If she could keep from burning herself alive in the process.
Maybe then, she would finally have control over what would happen to her own life at last.
But the stakes of what she risked was never far, and Momiji was reminded of her own vulnerability each time she glimpsed her aunt, sullen and neglected in the corners of their family estate, the scars curdling her face like the bark of a tree. The demon had given her no cause to trust him, and more than enough hints towards a temper. Not once had she ever dared to tell him no. Not even whenever Shuten Dōji leaned towards her with his breath perfumed with sake, and exhaled the same stinking words as any human nobleman: your radiance is beyond compare, I must have you for my own. I will not allow you to belong to another.
"Tell me why exactly you love me," she challenged Shuten Dōji one day, sick of teetering on the edge of it all, secretly hoping for the choice to be taken out of her hands. If the yōkai recognized the temporary nature of his affections, then he might move on now, before he could hurt her - or, perhaps, he might give her something real she could own, something she could keep entwined in her fingers as a leash stronger than any ox-hide. Something more than a beauty she knew would only fade with the years, transforming her inevitably from prize into prey. "Can you even name a single reason?"
Again, she saw a flicker in his eyes, a sour blister of uncertainty before he recovered enough to bluster. "You interest me," he repeated again, plain and meaningless. She had heard it a thousand times before from other nobles already bidding her family for her hand, hoping to buy her bride-price cheaply.
But then he added something new to it, something hesitant enough that it stood out starkly against the background of all his platitudes. "You remind me of someone I think I once knew. Someone stubborn. Someone who also refused to bow their head in humility." One of his fingers traced the rim of his sake cup, the long nail of it clicking against the porcelain. "You don't beg and grovel before me, flattering me in hopes of a favor. You know you're outmatched, but it doesn't make you any less determined to be my equal. I like that. Only a few creatures have that much courage, in this world."
For the first time - sake jug heavy in her hands, the weight of its liquid cool against her belly - Momiji watched Shuten Dōji's eyes flickering away from her. Somehow, she had been forgotten, however briefly. Something else had captivated him instead, a whisper of memory far more potent than any liquor. There was another person out there, one who might have a stronger hold on the yōkai's interest. A better one.
She wasn't beautiful enough. She was already losing her allure.
It should have been a relief - and yet it was terrifying too, watching her influence crumble away as quickly as dry clay into dust, eroding her value with each moment of the man's distraction. "It's impolite to dream of another when someone else is already here, pouring your liquor for you," she retorted, spiteful enough to be fickle about her bid for his attention, but Shuten Dōji only extended his cup expectantly for more.
It was Shuten Dōji who killed her in the end. Shuten Dōji's liquor, more specifically: the scent of its drops clinging to her skin, to the slender hands she had prized so much and kept safe from any calluses. Like gangrene inching further up her body from an infected wound, each stray drop of liquid had coated her while she poured, until she had been suffused in it.
The smell of that sake had been the poison which led the imps to her. Their rough knives had found her belly with the same precision of a court gossip, equally jealous and equally cruel.
"She stinks like his alcohol," one imp had growled, snuffling at her wrist. "If we eat her, maybe we can absorb some of Lord Shuten Dōji's power."
Another one snickered, lifting a fistful of Momiji's hair up and yanking it back and forth like the reins of a horse. "An appetizer before the main course! Yes, yes! Let's have her first!"
She tried to crawl, her palms scraping across the ground. But one of them latched its clawed hand around her leg, and then another was screeching madly as it danced before her, breath rolling out in foul belches. The grip around her leg yanked her back easily, her face skidding across the dirt. She could taste blood already on her teeth from where her teeth had snapped shut, the sting of her bitten lip barely rising above the rest of the pain.
As their giggling descended upon her, all she could think of was how her mother was right: her beauty would never, ever be the same.
They started with her fingers first.
Death, too, is a failed promise. Rather than wake up in the clasp of an indifferent Underworld, the pitiable remains of Momiji's own corpse wrap around her instead, like a cold, shredded kimono that hangs on her bones. She is chained to the same maple woods that watched her be devoured within their boughs, their lush branches reaching up to the sky in a mimicry of how she had clawed at the sun.
She has little energy to resist this fresh disappointment. Exhaustion is the only virtue left to her now - exhaustion, and a sense of unsurprised outrage, so old and weary that Momiji feels she's been carrying it around for her entire life. This disgrace was always meant to be her final fate. Born and sold and bred, allowed only the narrow windows of aristocratic fashion to peer through before some disease or the other devoured her: Momiji's destiny simply arrived earlier than intended. She is useless to the world now that she is dead, another woman that has thrown away like the rest. One of Shuten's withering maple leaves, crushed underfoot once its color is gone, pulverized into the dirt.
Now that Momiji no longer has human eyes, she sees shadows everywhere she turns. The woods are filled with undulating tendrils, misty riverweeds which dance with no current to stir them. Branches clatter like giggling bones with every rustle of the breeze. And in her ears - always, always - there is the slither of some heavy mass hanging just on the edge of her senses, whispering about countless daughters which have been sacrificed by their families to be fed upon, their bodies left to rot. The purest souls. The most delectable fruit. Left to leak the putrefying remains of their organs across cold stone, their vitality squeezed out like ripe peaches forced to give up every drop of juice. Each word the darkness speaks is a word which echoes in the growing fury of Momiji's own heart, and she goes to her knees on the ground and paws frantically at the oozing softness of her face in hopes of quieting it.
There is a wailing in her mind that will not stop.
She writhes against the fallen leaves in agony, unable to escape the anger which echoes all the way through her soured flesh, as if it has already been festering inside her bones and they are now free to scream back in open sympathy. With a nauseating series of pops, she hears the clicking of her spine as the joints loosen. Each vertebrae slides out of place like a wooden puzzle half-dismantled, the line of them deforming into a twisted string.
The silken hissing around her grows louder. It cackles with a thousand forked tongues. The world threw us away. They threw us away, they used us up and fed us to the darkness and they deserve everything we will do to them once we are free, everything everything everything.
They threw us away, and now you are here as well, now you are here with us.
The fact that Momiji's bitterness is shared is the sole comfort which remains to her. Soon - if she is fortunate - the rest of her spirit will truly begin to rot away, trapped and unable to drift safely to the Underworld. No guides have come for her. They have abandoned her, too.
As she sinks further into decay, convulsing in the hollows of the forest floor, only one thought remains intact as the rest splinter away. She clings to it even as she loses everything else, everything save the agony of betrayal and despair:
At least Seimei is not there. At least Seimei.
At least.
Even that kindness is robbed from her, in the end. Seimei finds her in the woods before death can drag her away completely, smuggling her into the moist earth where no one can find her again. Momiji barely remembers how to stand by the time he comes to her, her legs withered and weak. Her belly is filthy from crawling along the ground. Her teeth flex like needles in her jaws.
Her own surprise shocks her awake; the foreignness of the emotion feels like a vat of ice water poured over her body in winter, leaving her shuddering and scoured of all distractions. It feels so long since she has felt anything save resentment - resentment and fury and spite, everything that the whispers have been pouring into her, nibbling her away from the inside like a thousand swarming ants. Her vision is clouded; she can smell better than she can see, these days. Even her hearing is fading away, every noise radiating like a muffled vibration through her skull, nearly drowned out entirely by the litany of malice which has hounded her since death. With a nauseating effort, Momiji pulls herself together, remembering the proper way to stand, to hold herself poised when all her bones want to make her lurch like a cart with four broken wheels, hissing boiling over in her throat.
But she is not fully gone yet, and that gives her the strength to be grateful for this final meeting despite her own grotesqueness as she reaches out to latch onto Seimei for one last time, before she loses the rest of herself forever.
Around her, a thousand snakes are screaming.
But Seimei demonstrates once again that he is different from everyone else. He looks at her without snarling in disgust - he looks at her the same way that he did upon their first meeting, and tells her she is not wasted, that she can stitched whole. Whole and beautiful, as no one else in the world has ever dared to suggest before, not in their ranks of courtly aesthetics and backbiting poetry. She can be better than she was. Young forever, radiant forever, lovelier than any living human could dream of being. If Momiji merely shows that she has the determination to follow Seimei's instructions, then her beauty will be increased tenfold - and after that, once she has proven her strength of will, then he will welcome her gladly. Seimei will accept everything about her. He will love her back.
She is afraid of believing him - except, she is afraid of so many more things now, as well.
Beauty, he reminds her, a hint of impatience seeping through.
Yes. Beauty is the only thing that matters. How foolish of her to forget.
It is her attendant whom she devours first, already dead by the same yōkai which killed Momiji herself. Directed by Seimei's hand, she hunts through the woods until she stumbles across a scrap of her handmaiden's kimono, and drops to her knees so she can paw through the rotting leaves. Mud and mushrooms smear through her hands, until she hauls the woman's corpse up to the light.
The meat pulls free in sodden, stringy wads, filled with worms and other creatures which have taken up a new home in the corpse. Muscles spasm in Momoji's chest as the memory of bile tries to heave its way up through her ruined throat. She chews as little as possible, forcing the meal down - only to vomit it back up again the first few bites, spattering the fluids all over the ground as she sobs openly at the thought of having to eat that a second time. Desperate, she mixes the flesh of her attendant's corpse with dirt, with handfuls of leaves, anything to fool herself into ignoring the texture of it, to pretend that the slickness of decay is the fine, sweet jelly of an overripe plum.
Eventually, enough of it stays down that the weight of it presses like a fist into her belly, and Momiji rolls away, too nauseous to stand as she cries into the bones of her hands.
But the sickness passes. The worst heaves of her gut subside, and allow her to sink into a fitful rest, making tiny, twitching heaves against the ground. There are fresh bodies nearby too - more gifts from her beloved, surely, that was how he knew to guide her - and she works on them next, limb after limb, until there is no room left in her for more.
As she gathers herself to return to where Seimei waits, Momiji lifts her fingers to wipe them clean, and discovers that the small scraps of flesh that remain have stopped oozing. The skin is pink and new again. The gaps are already knitting together.
This time, Seimei smiles when he sees her coming back through the clearing towards him, and the pleasure of it warms his eyes like honey.
The spasms of her body gradually quiet. Momiji scours the clothes of her victims until she can find a thin-enough cord, and breaks it into two lengths. She uses it to put her face back together carefully, stitch by stitch as she strings the flesh of her cheeks shut, tightening the fibers as much as she dares until she can no longer feel the chill of the air whistling freely against her tongue.
Her teeth bristle at their new prison. They gnash at the insides of her mouth, angry until she feeds them something else to chew on, their edges grudgingly dulling until they are blunt and immobile again.
The process is horrible to endure. More than once, Momiji doubles over, wailing and retching and clinging to Seimei's voice in her mind - the only thing which remains clear for her, even when her own thoughts join the cacophony. She gasps through the nausea, trembling against the dirt. As long as she follows Seimei's guidance, he will lead her forward out of the mud she is buried in, drowning in an oily pit of whispers that would drag her back down with them forever.
She cannot stop, now that she has begun this course. Whenever Momiji goes without a meal for too long, her stomach begins to twist again, cramping and bloating as if preparing to burst. She curls as tightly around herself as she can tolerate against the pain, hoping that her bones will not spring out of her body, that her organs will not rupture through her own hands. Acid seeps up her throat. She can feel her own tongue undulate against the roof of her mouth.
Yet with each new bite, each additional recitation of Seimei's words - you were beautiful, you were meaningful, you can be again, I will be waiting for you when that day comes at last - the whispers slowly ebb, trickling back into the corners as if they cannot recognize her anymore after her transformation. There is less space in her for darkness now, not when Seimei's promise is there to grace her days instead. She will not allow it to be sullied.
There is nothing more important than him.
One day, when Momiji hesitantly peeks at herself in the river, she makes a small, unrestrained shriek of delight. Her hair is glossy and thicker than ever before, hanging straight like a laquered curtain. The stitches on her cheeks are small bumps, sinking deep beneath the softness of her skin. Her face remains docile when she runs her fingers along her jaw, tracing the outlines of her restored mouth with glee.
It is perfect.
She is perfect.
Seimei's touch has healed her.
Become beautiful, become powerful, and then you will be worthy of me at last. Momiji recites that promise over and over again at night to help her sleep, giggling like a child into her hands. Her beloved's teachings will protect her. The method itself is repulsive - but its potency is undeniable. The slow death of age cannot claim her anymore. Injury, disease, accidents: none of them have the ability to lessen her again, not permanently. She can refuse another person's hand upon her, if she wishes. She can laugh at what her cousins might say, what her family might think. Momiji is free from fear itself now. She will never wilt.
As long as she remembers Seimei's words, she can hold herself together. The stronger she grows, the more brightly she shines - and with each fresh, wet mouthful of flesh that slides down her throat, Momiji knows she has finally become the person she has longed to be at last.
All she has to do is eat.