Mirage of Changes
by Karura
Second arc: The seventh bride
Chapter three
Long corridors were adding up. Naoe never thought that place could be so big. It would have taken them forever to find Masayuki's room by themselves! Fortunately, thanks to Kagetora's tenacity, a maidservant was leading them to the room, even though she was reluctant. She suddenly stopped before a door which was in no way different from the others and turned to look a them coldly and disrespectfully.
"My master is waiting for you," she said before turning on her heels.
"Wait," Kagetora called her back, "you're not coming with us?"
A grin stretched the girl's lips. "What for?" she replied with insolence. "You want to see him so much, so don't waste time!" She walked away briskly, even the sound of her footsteps seem to mock them.
Kagetora stayed a moment looking at the corridor she had walked along. "The household really doesn't treat us like before," he commented in a neutral tone.
"Our misfortune was to offend the hostess," Naoe said. "Aynyway, we're not here to make those people appreciate us."
"You're right, but still, it's strange." Kagetora shook his head before sliding the panel leading to Masayuki's room.
The first thing that strucked Naoe was the darkness. The room had no windows, and all the panels were shut. You could barely make out the silhouette in the center of the room. "I'm bringing a lantern from the corridor," Naoe whispered to his lord. He was reluctant to leave him alone, but a bedriden old man couldn't be a danger to Kagetora. Even so, Naoe walked quickly down the corridor.
Left alone with the master of the place, Kagetora screwed up his eyes to see through the darkness. He came closer to the bedridden man who didn't seem to notice their presence. "Masayuki-san?" he called out. "I'm Kagetora, an onmyouji priest." His only answer was a difficult breathing. Kagetora crouched by his side. "Masayuki-san, can you hear me?"
"I hear you," the man finally said. His voice sounded sepulchral, but not rasping with age.
Kagetora tried to make out the other man's face, but the obscurity was too great. "I'd like to ask you about the death of your wives..."
"No more... wives..."
"I'm sorry to remind you of such painful memories, but we have every reason to believe that Natsume-san, your current wife, is in danger too, and..."
"No more... wives."
Kagetora paused. Masayuki didn't seem to be able to follow the whole conversation. Natsume hadn't lied when she had said her husband was loosing his mind. So it was cruel and unnecessary to torment any longer a man already stricken by misfortune and unable to help them.
Kagetora was about to stand up when a hand fell heavily on his forearm. He felt a slight tingling and some kind of uneasiness. "Masayuki-san!" He cried out, trying to break free.
Naoe arrived at that moment and didn't waste time to understand what had happened. He dropped the lantern - luckily it didn't set fire to the tatami - and grabbed Masayuki by the arm, making him lose his grip. Then he violently pushed him away from Kagetora. The man curled up into a ball in a corner of the room. "Kagetora-sama, are you alright?" Naoe asked worryingly.
"I'm fine. Pick up the lantern before burning the whole house."
Naoe complied sheepishly. He straightened up the lamp to light the room. The two possessors turned to Masayuki and were very surprised to find a man in his thirties. His long black hair was tangled, a beard from several days was eating his face, but other than that, he seemed robust. He was very far from the scrawny and decripit old man they had imagined to meet. However, when their eyes met, they realised his mind was not completely sane. There was a disturbing light in those two dark eyes, the light meaning he had seen too much things for his sanity.
"Masayuki-san?"
"No more wives," the man whispered in a breath.
Kagetora tried to fit with his logic. "Alright, we're not talking about wives. One of my friends here is in great danger. Could you help us?"
At this word, the man returned his gaze. "Help?" He almost spat the word. "No more help." He shook his head. "I will never help anyone again. Help brings misfortune. We help, we wish we hadn't, but then it's too late."
Kagetora and Naoe exchanged a quick glance. What the man was saying had no meaning. It was a complete waste of time. Still, Masayuki was their last hope to get information about this so complicated case.
"Do you have regrets?" Kagetora resumed. "You wish you hadn't help someone?"
"No more help!"
"What do you regret, Masayuki-san? Just tell me."
But the man had once again curled up, his back to the wall, staring into nothing. Kagetora sighed; there was nothing more they could learn from him. He signaled to Naoe that they were leaving.
"I should have let her die." Masayuki whispered, just as they were at the doorstep.
Kagetora turned quickly to him. "Who are you talking about?" He asked, trying to sound neutral.
"That filthy beast. Mustn't help animals, let them die! No more wives! Enough!" Burying his head in his hands, he began to moan softly. The possessors left the room without a word.
Once in the corridor, Naoe commented: "That was.. strange."
"Just a waste of time!" Kagetora fulminated. "We have learned nothing more about the spirit, while Nagahide is getting weaker every day!"
"If we want to help him, we have to keep a cool head. Masayuki-san can't be useful, that's a fact."
"But I'm sure he has all the aswers." Kagetora persisted.
Naoe gazed at him with interest. "So you're still convinced he had killed all his spouses, helped by some spirit? But what for? Just look at him, does he really seem to rejoice in what happened? He looks more like a victim than a culprit."
Kagetora smiled wrily. "According to you, everyone is just a victim. Yet it has to be someone's doing. Those women didn't die by themselves!"
As far as Naoe was concerned, things were crystal clear. "The culprit is the spirit. Somehow, Masayuki-san incurred its wrath and the spirit takes revenge by killing his wives.
"That sounds a little far-fetched, even for a revenge. Why doesn't the spirit simply hurt Masayuki-san directly?"
"Because it could kill him only once. It may prefer him to suffer slowly."
Kagetora shook his head. "If you are right, Masayuki surely knows about the revenge. So why does he keep on marrying women when he does know they are going to be killed anyway? Is he so furiously determinated to have a family?"
"The old servant told us he wants to have children."
"Why? For his son to be cursed also? No, it doesn't make sense."
Naoe sighed. "Really, I understand Nagahide's frustration here. There are so many possibilities and so few clues..."
"Excepted that Nagahide got a hint at least," Kagetora reminded.
"A hint that endangered him."
"Well, it's still better than what we have now. It's really frustrating!"
"For the moment, we have no other choice than waiting. I know you don't like it," he added when he noticed his master ready to retort. "But you must admit we have done all we could. The spirit is good at hiding, so we have to wait for it to leave its lair."
"It'll leave it only to kill Natsume-san."
Naoe spread his arms. "What else can we do?" The question was rethorical. Kagetora knew perfectly it was the ony right thing to do, but that didn't mean he liked it. However, complaining would be useless so he didn't reply.
XxX
The two men had been walking down the corridors for a while. Kagetora was lost in his thoughts, so he was quietly following Naoe. The latter began to slow his pace, then stopped completely at an intersection. "Uh... my lord? Do you know where we are?"
Kagetora was distracted from his thinking and looked around him. The corridor they had been pacing down was splitting in two. Since all those hallways were similar, there was no way to tell where precisely they were in the house.
"Didn't you remember the way?"
"A bit, but not entirely," the vassal confessed.
"Let's go this way." Kagetora indicated the right corridor. "It'll lead us to somewhere."
"We might also wander for days," Naoe quipped.
Kagetora chuckled. "Come on, this house is not that big."
"Moreover, it's always dark. It makes impossible to count the days we've been staying here..." This last remark was devoid of irony.
Kagetora turned to the other man, surprised by this display of pessimism. That was so unlike Naoe. "Is something wrong?" he asked.
Naoe looked silently at him for a moment, as though his own behaviour surprised himself. "I don't like this place," he suddenly said. "And I really don't want to stay here another night."
"Did something happen this night?" Kagetora inquired. It was unusual for Naoe to complain so loudly, and it took Kagetora by surprise.
"Why are you asking?" Naoe suddenly burst out. "You know something, don't you?" Taken aback by this sudden outburst, Kagetora didn't say a word. Naoe recollected himself and adverted his gaze. "There was something," he confessed," but it has nothing to do with our current case. I... I just had a bad dream, that's all."
"And what..."
"I tell you, it has nothing to do with this case!" Naoe interrupted him. "So please, don't ask me any more about it."
Kagetora nodded. It was his first time seeing Naoe showing his emotions so much. He always thought of him being cold and distant. So it was unexpected to see him like that. However, those were somewhat particular circumstances, and Kagetora suddenly realized the reason why Naoe had lost his self-control. "You are worried about Nagahide, aren't you?" He asked.
Naoe stared blankly at him. "Yes, of course I do," he shortly answered.
Kagetora smiled secretly. There, he had understood. He shoud have realized it for a long time, but he wasn't one to speculate about his men's privacy. Naoe was upset because he deeply cared about Nagahide, and now he was in danger. Although Kagetora had never been into Shudo, he had no prejudice against those who practiced it, and he was rather glad that two of his men were able to be happy together. So he patted Naoe's shoulder to comfort him. He didn't like to touch other people, but since Naoe had found his someone, Kagetora had nothing to fear from him.
"Don't worry, we'll save him for sure," he assured him.
Naoe didn't say a word, only staring at the hand resting on his shoulder. Then Kagetora withdrew it and resumed his walking. Naoe watched him, still feeling the warmth of his hand. Now he was sure he was going to have another strange dream tonight, and that he would dream of this very moment, except that his unbridled imagination would put a completely different complexion on things... His shoulders started shaking slightly. "I don't want to spend another night here," he whispered sadly.
XxX
They wandered for a while. It was not that they didn't know the way, but several times they thought they did find it, only to realize they were wrong. All those corridors looked the same, and certainly they had been taking the same path several times without even realizing it.
"We have yet to find stairs," Kagetora noticed. "This is not right!"
"Nothing is right in this house, I told you so!"
Kagetora glanced irritabily at his vassal. He was also starting to lose his composure because of the long forced walk through this endless labyrinth.
"We could make some marks on the floor," Naoe suggested. "It could help us to get our bearings."
"Except that it would be terribly rude to damage our hosts' floor. Or their walls," he added, seeing how Naoe's gaze was drifting to the close sliding panels.
"Why do you still care about what those people are thinking? After all, we are unwanted guests now, since we insisted to meet Masayuki-san."
"It's not a reason," Kagetora snorted. "Whether our hosts are polite or not, that's their problem. As for us, I will not accept that the Yasha-shuu behave like boors, final point."
Naoe smiled amusedly, despite the gravity of the current situation. Kagetora would never change, but he was right in insisting on that kind of details. It gave a strict line of behavior to the possessors, a sort of safeguard that helped them to remain sane in spite of their two-hundred-years life...
"What about focusing on Natsume-san, or even Masayuki-san's presence, to get our direction?" Naoe suggested.
Kagetora sighed. "Well, I've already tried, but I couldn't sense them."
"And you still refuse to believe that we are trapped in an illusion?"
"I told you, it's not the same. Last time, the air was filled with spiritual presence. This time, it's the complete opposite; we don't sense anything. It's as if we were the only living one here."
"If we really were, we could mark the floor to our heart's content," Naoe grumbled.
"Forget about the marks. Here, let's turn to the left. I'm sure we haven't already taken that way!" In Naoe's eyes, that corridor looked exactly like all the others they had already walked down, but he didn't reply and merely followed his lord.
A sparkle on the floor suddenly drew Naoe's attention. He walked near it and crouched to pick the thing. Great surprise broke into his face when he recognized it. "Kagetora-sama," he called out. "Look at this."
Kagetora wlaked to him and stared at the object with as much perplexity as the vassal. "What is it doing here?" He mused aloud.
The thing they were watching with so much surprise was the little golden key Natsume-san had talked about. She was supposed to keep it in her bunch; therefore it was surprising for them to find it in a remote hallway. Naoe run his finger along the red part of the key. He didn't feel any difference into the touch. "The blood still won't go," he noticed. "Perhaps Natsume-san had enough of it and tried to get rid of that key..."
"By throwing if away to the ground? If she really wanted to get rid of it, she could have dropped it into a well, or bury it into the garden's ground."
Naoe looked around him. "You don't mean... the room she dreamed about could be somewhere near?"
Kagetora met his gaze. He had not thought about that, but it was very likely. "Let's try to find it."
Naoe gazed at him for a brief moment. "Wouldn't be terribly rude to use this key? After all, we are going to trespass our hosts' intimacy, and I wouldn't want to shame my lord."
"Naoe..."
"My lord?"
"Open those doors."
"Yes, my lord," the vassal complied with an amused smile.
He had to try several doors before finding the right one. Then he slid the panel and Kagetora hurried inside to see that famous room. Natsum-san had only talked about the disemboweled corpses of the six wives, not really describing the room itself. The bodies were not here anymore, there wasn't even a single blood drop on the tatami. But the room, it was...
"A nursery," Kagetora said. Indeed, there were a little wooden bed and various toys, rag dolls as well as wooden horses. They didn't seem to be used, and the room was very tidy, as if recently cleaned.
"I thought Masayuki-san never had any child," Naoe wondered aloud.
"It doesn't mean he didn't get ready to have one. Look at those toys, they could be either for a boy or a girl. One of the spouses may have become pregnant, hence this nursery ready to host the baby, but she died before giving birth."
Naoe reached out and took one of the wooden horses. "Then it must be recent," he noticed. "No dust on it."
"It may be the former wife."
"Or may be not." Naoe went on examining the toy. "This horse is crudely sculpted, not the kind of toy a rich merchant would buy to his child."
Kagetora leant on to look closely at the toy. "Masayuki-san would have carved it himself? It couldn't have been done by a servant?"
"There is no male servant here, from what we have seen until now. Besides, it's not the kind of task you give to someone else, that's why I'm sure it has been done by Masayuki-san. And given his actual state, it's not something he may have been able to do recently."
"But that room has been recently cleaned... Could it mean that another wife could have been pregnant?"
"And she would have died also before giving birth too..."
Kagetora suddenly stood out. "I'm done with speculating! Let's meet Masayuki-san one more time and question him about this room!"
"We can't worm out any answer from him, my lord, you have seen it. Talking to him about this room will only made him plunge into another delirium."
Still, Kagetora wasn't willing to renounce. "What about that old maidservant, the one who told us she knew Masayuki-san since his tender age? She had served all the other wives, so she must knew something about it!"
"You're right. But first, we have to find our way back. May I remind you we arrived here by mere chance after getting lost in the corridors?"
"It is of no..." Kagetora suddenly froze and lift a hand to his chest. His face tensed, then he slowly collapsed.
"My lord!" Naoe cried out, rushing to his side to support him. Kagetora's breathing was laborious, sweat run down his face. Anguished, Naoe could do nothing but to support him and pray for this fit to pass. After what seemed to be an eternity, Kagetora's face eventually relaxed and his breathing calmed down. Naoe breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "How do you feel?" He asked his lord.
"I'm fine; it's only an annoyance due to my old age."
A thought crossed Naoe's mind. "Wouldn't it be rather because of Masayuki-san?"
Kagetora looked at him questionningly. "What do you mean?"
"Didn't he try to assault you earlier?"
"Well, no, it has nothing to do with it. It's not the first time I have this kind of seizure. I'm only getting on in years, nothing that can be cured."
"Are you sure?"
"I just overworked today, that's all. But it's over now. Those fits are usually only occasional.
Still, Naoe looked sceptical. "Maybe you should get some rest here, and I should look for someone to help us."
Kagetora's smile got tinted with amusement. "Really? You would let me alone in this room where Natsume-san saw the dead bodies of six women?"
Naoe immediately thought better of it. "Alright, but we are walking slowly!"
"It's alright, Naoe, I'm not crippled yet. We should rather focus on getting back on the right track." Naoe nodded but he would still keep a check on his lord.
XxX
They finally found stairs that led them to the first floor. From there, they were able to find the way to their room quite easily. Kagetora sat down with relief, giving pause to his exhausted limbs. How could a house be that big? There was surely an explanation. Kagetora accepted a bowl filled with water that Naoe presented to him without being asked.
There was an abrupt knock on the sliding panel. It was the young maidservant. Her chilly demeanor didn't seemed like it had warmed since the last time. "Lunch is ready," she briefly informed them.
"Is it already midday?" Naoe was really surprised. They had gone to see Masayuki just after breakfast, so they would have spent the whole morning wandering in the convoluted hallways of the mansion? Well, now that Naoe thought about it, he wouldn't have been surprised if the whole day would have passed in this fashion!
"After eating," Kagetora suddenly said, "we'd like to have a talk with the other maid, if possible. I don't know her name, but she's rather old and..."
"Ah, you mean Baba-san. Your kind obviously enjoy tormenting old people."
"Masayuki-san is not that old," Naoe retorted.
"If you say so. I'd inform Baba-san about it as soon as I see her."
"Thank you."
The servant didn't answer and led them silently to the dining room. As usual, she left, letting them wait for the house mistress.
Still, when the panel slided open another time, it was not Natsume-san but the old servant who entered. "You wanted to talk to me?" She sounded rather abrupt. Maybe the other maidservant had told her how they had been tormenting their master.
"Indeed, Baba-san," Kagetora replied. "In this house, I think you are the one who knows Masayuki-san and his past the best. Could you please tell me if one of his former wives had ever been pregnant before dying?"
Kagetora's compliment cheered the old woman up a little. "You're right, I'm the one who knows my master the best. As for his wives... my master is a grown man, and he has impregnated all of them rather quickly."
Kagetora glanced at her with astonishment. "You mean they were all with child?"
"Indeed," she prinned herself as if she was the happy mother-to-be.
"That's why the nursery is so clean," Naoe understood. "You had cleaned it every time a pregnancy was announced."
"I told you, my master really wished for a child, in order to carry on his name. So he rejoiced every time... until the fateful outcome, every time."
"I thank you for your help," Kagetora said.
The old servant rose up and left the room without excusing herself, but the two possessors paid no attention. They had more important things to consider.
"I think I know when the spirit does the attacks," Kagetora said.
"When the wife is pregnant," Naoe completed. "What a cruel spirit. It waits for the very moment when Masayuki-san harbors again the hope of having some offspring.
"Or maybe it's Natsume-san who couldn't bear the thought of another woman giving a child to him," Kagetora argued. "Don't forget that we have yet to know who controls the spirit."
"I'm still convinced that both Masayuki-san and his wife are victims." Naoe was obstinated.
"We'll soon find out which of us is right." He looked up at the sliding panel. "It's the first time Natsume-san is so late," he noted. "I'd like to speak with her about the key and the nursery. I'd very interested to hear what she knows about them."
"Will she even come?" Naoe ventured. "She's terribly mad at us for our insistance on seeing her husband. Unlike me, she doesn't have someone who constantly reminds her about politesse." Kagetora shook his head.
Eventually, the panel slided open and a bit wan Natsume made her entrance. Kagetora and Naoe stood up immediately, worried that she had another dream, but the woman smiled at them serenely.
"Please, excuse my tardiness." She suddenly seemed to have find her courtesy again. "I will not be able to share your meal." Her gaze fixed upon the food already on the table, and she lifted up a delicate hand to her mouth.
"Are you alright, Natsume-san?" Kagetora asked.
"I am. But these times, the mere sight of food makes me unwell." She gently rested her other hand on her belly, and the two possessors suddenly had no doubt about the cause of her inconvenience. "I am pregnant," she boasted. "Surely my husband will rejoice."
The two men exchanged a meaningful glance. Now the spirit would soon attack. In the following days, they would have to be very watchful in order to prevent the murder of the woman who was rubbing her belly with a secret smile, like she was already cradling the growing child inside her.
To be continued...
Crazy people, crazy house, pregnant women... (not to mention a lazy author!) But the answers are coming in the next chapter. Hopefully, the translation will be faster!
Thanks to the people who are still following this story, despite the gaps between chapters.