**Hi, readers! This story is progressing pretty slowly and I apologize about that; I'm super hella busy with my classes atm, but thankfully I haven't completely forgotten about this story! Now then, this chapter's gonna be pretty rough. Same trigger warnings (rape 'n gore) as the last one because there will be flashbacks to it, and also this has super duper dark sad angst. As always, I own neither Vocaloid, the song, nor any of the characters. Enjoy!**

Chapter 3

The paper lantern was swinging, casting black shadows across the room that darted to and fro, twitching and convulsing. Gumi cried out as she was forced down harder onto the dirt floor, and her clawing hands left long gouges in the ground in front of her. Hatsune-sama was poised above her, pinning her face-down onto the floor as he clutched her hair, giving it vicious yanks to keep her still. His knife was two inches deep in her skin, ripping through the flesh and splattering blood over the blade as he carved a crude likeness of a fox into her back. With every twist and turn of the knife, Gumi shrieked with her rapidly-weakening voice. "I like this feistiness in a woman," he panted, tugging the blade from her skin and tossing it aside. Saliva and sweat were dripping from under his fox mask, pooling onto her back and mixing sickeningly with the fresh crimson blood. "Here, dear. Open up for Daddy." He tugged her legs apart with his free hand, the other still holding tightly to her hair. She protested weakly, trying to struggle against him, but he only chuckled as he loosened his robe. "Len, come here." He barked, and another figure stepped out of the shadows. At first, Gumi assumed it was a woman, but her hope quickly sank as the figure dropped its robe to reveal a slim male figure with a thick, twitching cock that made her quiver with fear. "Do you like him?," Hatsune-sama whispered into her ear, caressing her shoulder with a gentleness that made her shudder. "He's the most well-endowed one of us, I do believe. And he was taken with you the moment he saw you."

For a moment, Gumi was confused. How could he have possibly seen her before? Her stomach then sank like lead when she remembered the young, shy servant with the yellow hair that had served her tea here so many times. "N-no…" She mumbled, "Not you…" The boy behind the mask only giggled as he walked around, out of her line of sight. She felt Hatsune-sama move aside and the boy take his place, keeping a hand on the small of her back as he spread her legs apart. "No..! Please!" She struggled against his hands, the dull throbbing of her wounds feeling like fire on her back. The boy giggled again, and she felt something warm and slick poke at her entrance…

"Hold her down! She's seizing!"

"No, her eyes are opening! She's waking up!"

Gumi's eyes snapped open when she heard the voices. She began to jerk violently, kicking and clawing at everything in front of her. Her arms, legs, and lower back flared with pain as she was yanked back down. There were two people on either side of her, clamping down on her arms as she strained to get free. She opened her mouth, trying to scream and only hearing a scratchy whisper of a scream that made her throat burn like fire. 'Help me,' she wanted to cry out, 'they're going to hurt me again! I have to get out!'

"Megpoid-sama! You're not well! Please, lie back down!" One of her assailants pleaded. The woman had a comforting, lined face, not unlike that of Gumi's mother. But the girl knew better. 'No! You're another one of his tricks!' Gumi tried to scream, but the pain and that wispy screech were all that she threw back at them. The woman with the lined face put a cloth over Gumi's mouth, and she struggled to scream as everything faded into an inky black.

"Kaito-sama, I don't understand. What happened to her? Where are my son and daughter-in-law?" Gumi's grandmother asked the man across from her, wringing her small withered hands as she stared up into his calm face. He adjusted the sleeves of his kimono with a quiet sigh, shaking his head. "I don't know, Obaa-san. I've served as the Megpoid family's physician since before Gumi was born, but I've never seen anything like this. It's as if she's been possessed by demons..." The old woman let out a weak cry, clutching her chest. "That can't be possible… Are you sure it isn't the fever?"

"I don't have a fucking fever."

Both Kaito and the old woman looked up to see Gumi leaning heavily against the frame of the sliding door. Pale and bruised, she looked at them through dead eyes. Her green hair hung limply in tangled ropes over her shoulder, and her sleeping robe was torn, practically hanging off of her small frame. Her face had slimmed and sharpened considerably since he Kaito had seen her last. He jumped up, making his way to her with his arms outstretched. "You shouldn't be out of bed, my dear. Come with me, please, I'll escort you back to your room." She stared at him, swaying in place as she chewed her lower lip. 'She's eaten the skin,' he realized as he noticed the crusted blood over her lips, the shreds of flesh stuck between her teeth. Those teeth… there was a sharpness to them that was unnatural. "Megpoid-chan? Can you understand what I'm saying?" He asked again, taking a cautious step toward her.

"I don't have a fever." She spat, swaying forward as she pointed at him. "You're just.. one of them… one of the people trying to trick me. Trying to hurt me." She stumbled in place slightly, her eyes never once leaving his. Kaito shook his head. "I don't understand, Megpoid-chan. Who's trying to hurt you?" Gumi's lower lip began to tremble as she started to rock back and forth in place, her bony arms encircling her small torso. "No no no no no no no…" She repeated over and over, mumbling wildly and rocking even faster. Kaito hesitated before reaching out and placing a gentle hand on her arm.

Gumi let out a guttural shriek, swiping at Kaito and running vicious scratches down his face. He yelled and jerked away as she continued to claw at him, a hysterical laugh escaping her lips. Kaito grabbed her wrists, yanking her close. "Answer me, Gumi. Who's trying to hurt you?" Tears ran down her cheeks as she laughed, her head lolling back and forth on her shoulders. "Gumi-chan!" He barked, giving her a vigorous shake. The laughter stopped, and the green-haired girl went rigid in his arms. Still as a stone. Her head slowly tilted back until she was staring into Kaito's face. Her eyes were almost inhumanly wide, the pupils so dilated they made her eyes look black. "Kitsune…" She hissed, her lips curling into a sickening smile before she slumped forward, unconscious, in his arms.

"Gumi!" Her grandmother wailed, running forward and pulling the girl out of Kaito's arms. She sobbed, holding the limp figure against her chest. Kaito stood frozen with shock, unfeigned by the trails of blood still dripping down his face. He remained there numbly as two servants rushed in, escorting the unconscious Gumi and her grandmother out of the room.

'Kitsune…'

Her room was dark, pale moonlight pooling on the floor through the open door. The courtyard outside the door was shrouded in shadow, save for the calm shimmering of the moon on the small pond in the center of the courtyard. Gumi gazed out at the scenery from her futon, her heavy blankets keeping her still and secure. The night was still warmer than most, and sweat pooled under the small of her back, stinging at the cuts under her bandages. Her grandmother's deep, quiet breathing and the whispering of cicadas were all she could hear.

'They won't give up,' the voice inside her head murmured. 'They'll act like they're taking care of you, but they'll never give up. They killed your parents. They aren't to be trusted.'

"I won't trust them," she whispered. Her hand slid underneath the blankets to her robe, pulling it aside to claw at her thigh. "I won't forget. I can't trust them." She mumbled to herself in a quiet mantra, the sharp pain of her nails digging into her thigh keeping her free from the clutches of sleep. "I'll kill them. I'll kill all of them."

Kaito sat at his table, the dim glow of his lantern illuminating the scroll he was poring over. He hadn't slept, nor had he eaten, since the incident with Gumi two days ago. His eyes were dry and red, and he rubbed at them repeatedly as he struggled to focus on the paper in front of him. One word kept catching his eye: "Ninko".

"Ninko Kitsune… The fox yōkai that can only be perceived by mortal humans when it possesses them. A form taken by the evil Nogitsune to aid in their malicious intentions for humans, the Ninko Kitsune can drive a person mad, making them believe that even their own families are trying to kill them."

Kaito read back over the lines a few times, rubbing at his aching eyes as he shook his head. "Is that possible…?" he asked himself, sighing as he continued.

"Strange is the madness of those into whom demon foxes enter. After possession they become kitsune-gao, their facial expressions changing to more liken that of a fox, and they become increasingly more violent, sometimes yelping and laughing as a fox might. "

As his eyes passed over the next line, his blood turned cold.

"After possessing a human, a Ninko Kitsune will attempt anything to get back to their master."

A loud creak echoed from the hallway outside of Kaito's room. He jumped, jerking away from the scroll and craning to look over his shoulder. The sliding door to his room was open a few inches, revealing the impenetrable darkness in the hall beyond. "Hello…?" he called out, the fear in his voice making him shiver. The silence stretched through seconds that felt like hours before he heard another creak. Like someone was standing still, adjusting their weight. "Obaa-san? Is that you? You may enter." He said again, his voice oddly high-pitched. He heard the pad of a slipper against polished wood, then another. The old woman's familiar withered hand slipped through the crack of the door, beginning to slide it open. Kaito felt a momentary sense of relief, wiping his brow to calm himself.

A figure fell through the partially open door, landing on the floor with a sickening 'thud'. Kaito's relief was replaced with a slowly-dawning horror as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing. The old woman's jaw was stuck in her throat, blood still pouring in fresh rivulets from where the skin of her cheeks had been ripped open. Her head had been completely twisted around on her shoulders. The empty, dead eyes were staring in two different directions; one nearly rolled back into the woman's head, and the other fixed on Kaito. He began to tremble violently, tearing his gaze away from those awful eyes to look up at the now-open sliding door.

Gumi's white sleeping robe was stained with a horrific mixture of red and brown, thin lines of liquid dripping off onto the wooden floor. 'It will stain,' Kaito thought hysterically, his body frozen with fear. The green-haired girl was smiling, and now he was able to see how sharp her face had really become, and how her eyes were now slyly resting on him, like a predator upon prey.

"P-please…" he whimpered, slowly crawling back from the demon before him. She tilted her head, and his eyes settled on a thin trickle of saliva dribbling from her lips. It was faintly red. "I can help you.. J-just don't hurt me, please…"

With a keening giggle that made icy dread sink into Kaito's stomach, Gumi stepped into the room. She kicked the body on the floor aside before squatting down on her haunches and leaning in to stare at the man, close enough for him to smell the metallic tang of blood on her breath. "What.. what do you want from me…?" He asked, his voice a haggard whisper. She paused as if to consider the question, her gaze slipping away from his eyes for a moment. But before he could feel any sense of relief, her thoughtful expression transitioned into a cruel smile. "I want… my master…" She murmured, her voice lilting musically as her smile stretched far too wide to be humanly possible. Kaito only had a quick glance of her sharp canines before, with incredible speed, she struck.

End of Chapter 3

**Hooray, finally done with Chapter 3! Sorry for the length, but there was a lot to incorporate. All of the facts in the scroll Kaito was reading can be sourced via the 'Kitsune' Wikipedia page. Hope you guys enjoyed, and I'll see you all in the next chapter!**