1916

Ubuyashiki was taken out to the patio of the estate, into the cold forest sun and the rising wind. A few soldiers there looked at him with shabby surprise: his surrender wasn't as magnificent as they had hoped. As he walked by with Yokota and the lieutenant, he felt for the first time a faint animosity poke him. One of the soldiers scrounged up a piece of the road and threw it towards his feet. It missed and rolled down the stairs: past the blanched courtyard sands, past the statue of an ex–emperor, ex–general, ex–human being, through the useless shadow of an exhausted tree, towards the forest and the hospital. Ubuyashiki looked back on Shinjuro and his son peering from the hall, and, even after recalling their subservient reactions as Yokota entered the home, could not imagine that he had been betrayed. He closed his eyes and let the roulette spin that either he understood them or they were righteous regardless. Ubuyashiki went on down the steps.

Yokota said, "I always knew you were in the house," and by the time they reached the hospital Ubuyashiki already huffed and walked with his belly arched by ache. But the rebels gave no sentimentality: they would receive victory and he wouldn't be helped. They passed the beds in the silent aired–out infirmary, the one–eyed patients, the re–lit censer, the clumps of flies on the walls, the buzz of them, and sat around a small round table by a window, and he noticed immediately the dizzying stench like old formalin but could not tell from where it came. He looked feebly up and saw Yokota wrinkle his nose and flick his wrist two times for tea. The lacquer tray came. Ubuyashiki held his nose in the misting cup so that he would no longer smell the formalin.

The lieutenant said, "It is a great joy we've been presented with today."

Yokota nodded. "And unguarded." But his eyes looked swollen and he trembled around the syllables. "What you did here was unnecessary, then."

"It hardly was."

"You should have asked for my confirmation."

The lieutenant said remorselessly, "They were Magase's orders. He is supreme to you."

He was a thin, washed–out man, barely more than an adolescent. But struggle had carved out of his face an appearance of indoctrination and malice beyond his age. An old man stared hostilely out of the beady eyes. Ubuyashiki watched them bicker: both with the golden wraps around their waists, they were not like allies. The men in the beds at odd intervals watched too, and because they talked casually with the guards, and hadn't demanded to kiss his hand, he knew they were rebels as well. He then realised the upended beds between them were meant to have contained those loyal to his father.

Yokota called him: "Ubuyashiki." Time dripped by very slowly; even the smoke of the censer seemed to remain stuck in air for unnaturally long. He took his nose out of the cup. "Ubuyashiki, you have been captured: the revolution is now over. Therefore," he went on, "I shall give you the directive for surrender. You need only sign this." The paper was slid in front of him. Ubuyashiki's condition came barraging down: it was only now that he felt arrested. All the patients turned their covered faces upon them in anticipation. The lieutenant rocked his chair: the stock of his gun grumbled across the floor. Behind his head two flowers entwined their pencilled petals on the whitewash. He gave Ubuyashiki a pen.

He sucked the inky nib – what to do now? It would have been easier for him if his situation was as concise as everyone dead and only him standing, but somewhere out there Tomita warred and his mother commanded, and Tsubone danced in circles of impermanence and grief. He made a dot on the paper – sign here – but he lifted the pen, listening to the incense sizzle on the windowsill.

"Only you will need to go," Yokota continued. It traced out of the darkness in his mind the question he held there. "Your mother and son and wife will be given an estate in Taihoku and ceremonious seats in the Government of the Colony of Taiwan … they will not be expected to carry out any discourse. We will guarantee their protection from demons and political dissidents alike; of course, they will not be allowed to return to Japan. I repeat, only you need to go. It will be an 'honourable death'. An honourable and worthwhile death…"

The lieutenant strangled a yawn against the wall. He said wearily, "Only if you sign."

"I am sure Ubuyashiki will find it near his best interests."

Ubuyashiki closed his eyes: and when he opened them again the world remained as it was; the lieutenant staring cruelly; the tap hovering over the malachite basin dripping in patterns of one–two–three … four–five–six … and on seven he still hesitated and realised it was a kind of indecision which drove him. He felt his stomach curdle for the moment he would confuse that indecision with courage. He was barely courageous.

"It seems like he is unsure," the lieutenant said. "In any case, there is one last thing for him to do."

Ubuyashiki looked at him.

"It must be done while the sentiment of death remains in the air," he said. "You are versed in Buddhist sutras, to my knowledge."

"…I am."

"Then, I want you to give the rites for Miyamoto Shō's cremation."

Along a muddy bank in the middle of a muddy forest, Sanzu, a stream named after the mythological river of mortality, dashed through a rapid of nestlike stones and sputtered. Ubuyashiki crossed it and saw appear from mist the still darkened hut of cremation in a clearing, attended to with rakes and fans by two men in religious white clothing, and by them was the pump to incite the fire and the table which kept atop the body wrapped in linen and doused with fragrant oil. He held his nose high and recognised the scent as that of extract of apple – and instantly, death became conspicuous.

"Is Morinaga here?" Ubuyashiki asked.

Yokota answered, "No, we are doing this on behalf of him. It would've…"

"It would have been disrespectful to Miss Shō to let her body sit on ice for a moment longer," the lieutenant said. "That is what Mister Ryo wanted to say."

Keeping to the hatched shade of the cedar trees, he and the lieutenant went to the men without disturbing the silence. They talked covertly. Ubuyashiki watched the sun's descent after its noon high and tried to imagine that he was in another place: and that the blue jays among the trees were blue ribbons on the chests of benefactors, and the clouded pools in the ground were pocket mirrors of wives that refused to reflect his pallid image. He crossed his arms over each other and listened to the flow of Sanzu become a crash among the rocks, and through a break in the canopy saw the faint noble pattern of Libra in the sky that was forever waning, and then the soldiers emerging from the trees, unjustly, with guns and swords, and torches, to lay them down and kneel. The buttons on their jackets looked like medallions, and when they bowed their chins downward they jangled: and the light of Libra became a sparkle against their brushed domes. With charcoal smears across their noses, their rebellion looked warlike and inglorious – but the radiant scent of apples soothed like a placebo, and once Miyamoto was placed onto the stake, Ubuyashiki realised with complete clarity that he was going to die.

The lieutenant pointed his gun to the sky, un–cocked it and let the cartridge fall, and made the announcement in a sorrowful voice:

This wake has been called
To commemorate the life of this woman
Miyamoto Shō
The foster daughter of the General, and one of our Hashira
May she be blessed when crossing the Sanzu.

The fire ascended in dark branches of smoke to the sky; the linen around the body fizzled and out of the holes Miyamoto's flesh crumbled. After saying the rites Ubuyashiki was overcome by nausea and looked sideways, covering his nose against the detonated scent of melons, and he continued to pray silently. He prayed no longer for the dead Hashira: he thought of his old life, the velvet–plush cushions in the armchairs, the nannies balancing medicine trays on their laps and cooing him after he swallowed the too–bitter cups … the blue spines of the Dutchmen's encyclopaedias glittering in bronze inlay on the shelf and the times he would kneel towards them, fantasising over the freedoms and ruggedness of those explorers. How he adored those stories – even if at some point he became mature enough to know he could never emulate them. Once, he had an uncle something–or–other, who ran away and lived his life unfetteredly. He travelled, kissed girly–interests on the banks of beaches, and existed with the explosiveness a healthy body provided…

Ubuyashiki heard a bang in the distance and opened his eyes again. In a meadow opposing, a prisoner wearing a hospital gown faced a rifle before a ditch. His face bloated and yellow, his eyes bloodshot, he had obviously been beaten before then, and weakly he confronted the gun with a gaze that twitched with the pulsation of a wound on his leg. But when he was shot, it was before Ubuyashiki could realise that he was one of the few yet alive.

"Damn it!" Yokota said. "You're meant to be done with that. You'd dare disturb a funeral!"

Ubuyashiki began to run.

Yokota ordered, "Wait! Don't shoot yet!"

He ran past the lieutenant, the soldier with the rifle, the two bodies, and to the ditch. Nobody attempted to stop him. At the very end, he went onto his knees and looked down.

The flies already beginning to gather on them, the remainders and half–remainders stacked like pelts in a market net, there in the rectangular hole were the corpses of all those sorted out of the hospital the hour before. Some faced down into earth with the ashamedness of death, others were piled so that their still–open eyes glinted with the reflection of the sky, and life oozed out of their bullet–holes like steam. But heaven was suddenly shy for the demon slayers, and would not grant them mobility to a better world.

His betrayal and his own childlikeness and powerlessness raining down on him then, Ubuyashiki crumpled onto gloved arms, and once again began to cry.

"Why…?" he sobbed. "What could justify such a thing…?"

"Yobusake Iesato ordered the execution of six of our men after the attack on Seventeen Heiseigahama. This is Magase's retaliation."

"But – that was Yobusake. Moreover, these are injured…"

"Yobusake Iesato – you – your mother – Tsubone Endou – nobody at all – what's the difference? Who is your leader? One cannot tell. Even in crisis, the Ubuyashiki administration remains disorganised."

The cyclonic warmth arose once more in Ubuyashiki's gut and he thought he was going to vomit. Somebody grabbed him to standing by the fabric between his shoulder–blades, and he turned around, remaining by the ditch's edge, watching the damp grass, unable to bear the eyes of the rebellious, unable to bear the cruelty, unable to bear his entire failed and childish condition. The nausea seethed up to his teeth and he retched. But what came out of his mouth was, instead of a projectile:

"You are less than human."

Yokota ignored him, coming forth with the slip of surrender again. "Tsubone has been captured by Morinaga. Magase has secured Tokyo and is advancing into the north of the country. We have moved into the information office. Rengoku has betrayed you. Ittōsai is crippled. Our agents are near to unravelling the location of your family."

"Ubuyashiki," the lieutenant said, "admit that you have lost. That is the final act of dignity you can perform for your dynasty. By signing this, you can at least guarantee your family's safety."

"And – it's as you said – only I will have to go?"

"Yes," Yokota said, and the men holding the Murata rifles instantaneously aimed at him. "Only you."

Ubuyashiki's tears went away. No matter what he did or could do: it all seemed to be lost. So he began embracing his demise with dignity, as his lineage embraced everything: standing erect, looking into the eyes of the enemy, grasping the paper and making to sign…

Crumpling and tossing it to the rebels' feet.

A dangerous glitter entered the eyes of Yokota and the lieutenant. The onslaught, Ubuyashiki expected any moment now.

"Tsubone," Morinaga said in the dance hall of Hotel Kawabun, "can you point to the exact moment that our fates became unhelpable?"

She had been all but denatured by the news of Shinobu, remaining with him in that half–tango pose, without replying. Youma stood with his back towards them and gazed upon the swirling couples in the same silence. Morinaga went on.

"Was it when we became Demon Slayers? Was it when we killed out first demons? Was it when we invaded the Great Nation of Yan? Was it when you fell in love and were wed? Was it when your husband passed? Was it when you lost your children? Was it when I gained mine? Was it when Miyamoto was killed?"

He paused.

"Had it been from the moment we were born?"

He paused again.

"Or had it been from the very beginning, when we first met, you the immigrant on that dusty street from China, with no memory of herself, with no name?"

Like his, her sense of time was muddled. The more Tsubone thought of Shinobu, the more her throat welled, the more fatigue drooped her body, the more the spirit of fighting that gripped her on the first day of the revolution waned. The memories of her life played out like a fragmented novel in her imagination, the memory of all Morinaga had mentioned, but every single one clawed retrospectively and forcefully back to the image of the butterfly daughter, in their initial moment, by a rainbow–coloured lake, becoming connected as mentor and mentee: I can swim now. I'm free! Shinobu in beaming, the instinctive maternity that bloomed, the ruthless glare of the sister when they returned. The years together, the styling of hair, the begging for Final Selection, and the innocence…

Everything becoming for naught at this very moment.

The realisation fully becoming sediment within Tsubone, the first tear galloped down her face and onto Morinaga's shoulder, in that dance–pose. That was when he decided to make his confession.

"I am sorry for all of your sadness, Tsubone, and for that which I've caused. But the revolution is something which must happen."

His arm moved away from her, and went someplace else.

"Not for the sake of revolution, but for the sake of striving, which we are all obligated to!"

She barely perceived the frenzied vanguard's voice from behind. The voice, waveringly beautiful underneath, came to breaking and shook her shoulder. Tsubone, it said. She placed her hand on top of theirs. Tsubone, watch out. She asked what was wrong. Tsubone, you must get away. You have no weapon…!

It was looked down, saw the dagger in Morinaga's hand poised to arc through her midsection, and dodged within a millisecond's leeway of time just so that the fabric on her elbow was shaved off by the swing. Instinct trickled back to her before she realised the confiscation of her own sword, and she retreated into the gasping crowds, Morinaga lunging forward, misty breath suffusing like a cloud.

How many scenes in history were like this? How many adolescent spars in Urokodaki's yard; how many mocks in the rectangular training pens on their Hashira estates? "Mist breathing so–and–so,": Morinaga took a rapid step of three and brought his blade upwards, past Tsubone's nose, and after orientation from her cartwheel she saw the crumbling gash into the ceiling dug with the cannon–esque power through which the luxurious sky began to shine. For Hashira of their calibre it didn't matter: any edged item could act as a vector for their powers. The chandelier had not yet fallen when the next attack came, "Mist breathing so–and–so," after which it dropped into a plankboard ravine on either end of which Tsubone dribbled in her continued attempts to dodge; parrying thrusts, using her palms and her forearms. Morinaga's horrific power pushed the dancers to the walls and out the entrance scrambling, but apparently her martial prowess was enough – gradually, sadness re–overturned surprise. Eventually he got rash, just as he always did in those past sessions, and in precise mimicking of his twenty–five–year–old self, his thirty–five, his forty–five, dove for the ribcage under her left arm, but she caught him – as she always did – and released an all–powerful punch with her free hand into his abdomen. His expression tightened and he stumbled backwards. The flurry of attacks was done.

"Tsubone," he said with admiration. "You truly are the strongest of us all."

"Are you mad!" She came to her senses. "With people here!"

"If we sent you alone to Shikoku, you would be able to retake it."

"Shut your mouth."

"Indeed, you are also capable of stopping this war single–handedly," Morinaga said. "Isn't that why you came to Nagoya? To stop it?"

Tsubone stared guiltily and wilfully into his eyes. Then, when he realised she was going to say nothing, shouted with incinerating temperament:

"I'll never surrender. The only chance you have is to destroy me: so fight, nameless girl!"

Angered, Tsubone's hand moved to under her haori, and that was when she noticed the pistol no longer dangled there. She looked up and there it gleamed in Morinaga's hand towards her, alongside his own revolver. There was no intermission before he said, "Finally, some resoluteness."

In fact he looked confused with himself as to why he pointed the deadliest weapon of the modern era upon the singular woman – person – that had accompanied him through the modern part of his life. He was confused even possessing the conscious knowledge that this was wartime. All rumination was blasted away, however, when a shoe thrown by a leftover civilian Tsubone recognised as the mother who greeted her at the entrance hit Morinaga, nudged his arm just enough that one of the pistols was activated, and it was the revolver that penged! whose projectile burrowed into her intestines.

The woman, in shock, fled screeching. But just even from how much pain there was, Tsubone knew immediately she could take it. She kept herself from looking, flexed the muscles below her ribs using kinaesthetic mastery, and did what she thought was contain the bullet and the gently oozing liquidity.

Every part of Morinaga's body jerked forward besides his feet: he dazed her and himself, but in the end his only tangible offerings were the sorrow in his mint eyes and the cryptic offering: "I'm confident that Baoyuan wants you to live, Tsubone, so you will live." He then hopped into the ceiling gash and vanished.

Tsubone staggered to chase when the demonly holographic presence held her back: you're in no state, until it was sure the assailant had ventured far enough to be unlocatable, and he let go. She turned to scold Youma with the vitriol she used for the serious offences of her own children, but he extended a finger to her gaping wound, where flecks of her gut jangled in the open air, like bouncing berry bunches. The hullaballoo of pain and exhaustion came down upon her, for Shinobu and for all, and she fell to her knees.

1905

The rickshaw dropped Magase off at night next to a closed printing office. By foot he continued through a covered alley into a dark cul–de–sac. He arrived at a poorly lit door and joined a group of slightly older guys waiting in the cold.

"Sake time!" One of them exclaimed, pouring out a bottle into a wooden goblet and holding it to Magase. He took the goblet but did not drink: disinnocence would have to wait. For the next few minutes, he milled about nervously for Tsutako, hand in his pocket, jittering with the others.

Just as he was about to give in to dissent, she appeared out of a break in the mist, solitary as a statue. A velvety red capelet with golden trimmings around her shoulders was all on her figure illuminated by the shadowy half–light. She took a step forth and she had on black, lacey gloves as well.

He glanced at the other guys in the queue, but the snatching of his attention was not the same as theirs, for that was when he noticed the lovely little ladies they bungled with beside them, their arms wrapped together, lauding all concentration onto only each other – that, and the waiting.

Suddenly, he was no longer thinking of Morinaga and his own fears. The thirsty little Demon Slayer was cheerful: up in his heaven, rattling his Nichirin, ready for battle.

Eight o'clock struck and the door of the discotheque was opened from the inside, and Tsutako and Magase found themselves carried through the entrance by an already–spirited stampede. They were pushed together and into a corridor lined with mirrors, at the far end of which a heavy door throbbed with loud music. As they approached, his heart sunk into his bowels, and he was taken aback by the dizzying stench of parfum and marked down youthly alcohol.

The door was pulled open and they were beckoned in – and Magase was temporarily stunned to find the music stop. But the dandily–dressed manager trundled over and slipped a yen coin into the jukebox at the centre, and at once it resumed.

The dim electric light: the dozen girls and boys cramped into that breathless noisy room: the hazardous interlace of joined hands: it all rose onto the Earth at once. An ugly kind of music blared from the jukebox – something British, or American – with shouting, and guitars. It was the greatest contrast to the castle balls that existed in his imagination, and he looked to Tsutako, hoping she would be sympathetic, but she had already gone some distance away without taking her eyes off him. He watched back with a widening gaze.

She stomped the floor. To the rhythm, with hands for emphasis. Then she dislodged her shoulders and shrugged them up and down, with a touch of deadpan dread, to the beat too. The capelet left much to imagination, but he couldn't have imagined it when, with gruesome flexibility, she flung back her whole upper half, extended her arms languidly in either direction, and began to shuffle.

It was like an interpretative dance of the macabre, in total contradiction to gravity. When she came back up her bangs boogied dramatically across her nose and brows. She reduced the distance between them with wormlike throws of her arms, but then changed direction, tossing scoops, before she flitted into the crowd and the cheap vaporous theatre smoke, to tap on his shoulder, and reappear behind him. No time left for eeriness, that was when they took up stance and danced.

She remained expressionless throughout, but Magase was making every possible effort to keep her from noticing how the blood was flooding into his face. They danced led on by her, in their dimension between eagerness and death, tracing the eternally rising crescendo of the vulgar jukebox song, until it came to the climax, and their routine ended with them parting and her having finger guns towards him, half–an–hour having passed, the music dissipating instantly.

The electric light was on again and the manager moved to insert the next coin, and the gumminess of the half–shattered vibe hang in the air. But just as Magase found the courage to re–initiate the tangling with Tsutako in preparation for the next round, he saw that she was on her way out, and he tripped over his adrenaline–filled feet in following.

Had he disappointed her with his mildness? Every variation of that thought hurried through his mind in parallel as he caught up to her quite a ways from the printer's office. It was by the sea. She was resting her hand on a patinated lamppost, beside the cold black line of the water, that expanded and lapped without a sound.

He said totally genuinely, "I'm sorry."

"No. It's not you. It was just so hot in there – I couldn't bear it."

Why did intuition need to come forth and tell him she was lying? Nevertheless, she took the velvety capelet off and bunched it in her hands, to reveal underneath the innocent sky–blue dress with poofy shoulders, a low–cut chiffon chest, and skirt bunching frilly above her kneecaps. In Magase's recollection later on, he termed it wistfully, 'the fairy dress'. In it she looked entirely different from the girl that had groped for his hands and flung his body around mere minutes before.

She began to speak, by herself.

"Magase, do you think that our lives are determined from the moment we are born?"

"I haven't given it any thought," he replied quickly. "But I suppose not. Unless you believe in an all–powerful god, that's planned everything out."

She smiled, compressing the big bulbous azure eyes. "I believe in an all–powerful god that has planned everything out."

A moment passed between them, which Magase bore only because of the streaks of affection that were beginning to claw into his heart. Tsutako stood straight and took her hand off the lamppost.

Magase said, "Why – do you ask such a thing?"

"His name is Sun Baoyuan. The name of the god."

"You told me about him."

"Not quite," Tsutako replied. "Did I mention to you that he was also a demon?"

Discomfort and stillness entered the atmosphere. Then he realised for the first time: "Tsutako, I thought you were a civilian."

"That doesn't matter. Let me continue my story.

Baoyuan was an old compatriot of Kibutsuji Muzan, in even his early days, about one–thousand years ago. He was a general in the army of the Zhou Dynasty in China and established a relationship with one of the great families in the corresponding Heian Japan.

That was the Ubuyashiki family. He wished to usurp the then Emperor of China's position, and succeeded, after recruiting the assistance of a member named Ubuyashiki Kaemon. That member later came to be known as Muzan.

He was a fine ruler of the Chinese people. But he neglected the swathes of demons he had created with Muzan during his conquests. They were regarded as – I think, suitably – sub–humans, within their own country, and his discriminatory policies enforced this. Eventually, Muzan himself betrayed him. He assassinated Baoyuan, and took up his position briefly, before returning to Japan."

"Muzan was of Oyakata–sama's family?" That was the greatest question, in his state of astoundment, that Magase could ask. "Tsutako, is what you're telling me true?"

"Yes. I know for myself."

"How do you know?"

She repeated with more force, "I know it for myself."

A rustle brushed through a manicured bush behind them. Magase snapped around. "Don't worry," Tsutako said, continuing to speak. "But though Baoyuan's physical body was now gone, his soul remained. The soul of the human being, the demon. As an act of rebellion against Muzan's tyranny, a spectating subject had snatched it away from his deathbed and took it far away within his body to a land no demon king reached. He even inherited the feature which Baoyuan was famous for."

"Which was?"

"His rainbow–coloured eyes."

The bush shook again, and what he suspected was at once confirmed: the demon rose its head out of the hedge and bounced into the open when he noticed him back. Magase swiftly moved to in front of Tsutako, but his hand passed smoothly over his belt, and he remembered, with terrifying acumen, that he was without his sword.

The demon was salivating. It was to attack at any moment now. Magase stormed through a cacophony of possibilities on what he should do, and he decreed to combat it the best he could with his limited martial ability: I shall kick its chin when it jumps and use the chance to run with Tsutako. When it did pounce, he leaned back and waited for the moment to strike.

But "Stop," he heard commanded from behind, and the demon stopped. It had been midway through the air, and yet it extended its claws to the ground, and pulled itself still. Then it stared wolfishly up: but not at Magase.

He looked back at Tsutako. That was her voice. She was returning the demon's fixation, the roiling lamplight bouncing off the water casting the vestiges of other colours into her eyes.

1916

Yokota picked the wrinkled paper up. He unkinked it futilely, before looking into Ubuyashiki's eyes: "Are you serious?" Before he could answer, he was seized by the collar of his oversized kimono and lifted into the air.

"One–thousand years under the Ubuyashiki. One–thousand. Yet we haven't a single victory to our name. Only destruction. Don't you see it? We haven't even a presence on all our home islands. We live at the financial whim of a hidden group of benefactors. Even Kibutsuji Muzan himself was birthed from you. But still, you wish to continue with your foolishness…!"

"That's not true. We fund everything out of our own pocket. And it was my forefathers who pioneered the use of breath styles and adoption of the Nichirin sword, who spread the weapon to the world and enabled the fight against demonkind–"

"Yes, yes, feel free to believe your own history!" Where Yokota was bunching the satin in his hands it was tearing. "You'll get to share it with your men, in just a moment!" But the lieutenant placed his hand on his shoulder. Their temperances then re–exchanged. Ubuyashiki was let go, and the pair walked several metres away.

Yokota put up his hand and without a moment of hesitation let it drop, and the six or seven bangs of the Murata rifles struck out in unison.

But Ubuyashiki had vanished. The soldiers scurried to look within the ditch, and he had returned lying amongst the cluttered bodies, absolutely motionless, and the sight brought into them the first throngs of huzzah. But that was before they realised the furiously alive glint in his open eyes, and before they remembered their bullets had not hit him and that it was because he tumbled purposely into the ditch before they shot, and that, in the scattered moment between the shooting and his defiance, the name of Gyoumei Himejima had been hollered for, and there was now a bulwark presence projecting a shadow over all of them.

Himejima, with the lingering bandage around his arm, stood at the other edge of the ditch with his flail drawn and called his master's name. "Oyakata–sama: do not give a word of permission for what I am about to do. You need not sully yourself!"

The dance that ensued, even for Yokota, was inequitable.

So that the night before, when Tsubone Endou lay dishevelled amongst crumbs of bamboo and glass across a moonlit floor, the weakness seemed to flow out of her open gut at a rate that was as uncharacteristic as it was voluminous. She had minutes before been carried across the city by Nisegami Youma and thrown through the window into the building denoted by a silvery and immaculately scripted sign outside: Something–something Western–Style Clinic. Now, when she slowly awakened, she observed the holograph attempting to contain her overflow with two cupping palms pressed against the site.

"Tsubone," he said when he noticed her. "This is all I can do. But I haven't taken you to a doctor, because, I doubt a decent one is awake at this hour."

He was correct. She requested he locate all the materials while she gained some hold of herself, and then she stood.

After wheeling a stand over to the only examination bed in the little monochromatic office, she activated a burner with a pot of water filled from the sink, and dumped within there without care for their clattering the syringe, the needle driver, the scissors, the Adson and Kelly forceps, and then careened for the others. Youma used one hand to hold in her guts and another to point out what she'd requested while she retrieved the various bottles of procaine and Dakin's solution, before sitting on the examination bed fiddling a mirror between her thighs to do the impossible thing of capturing both the moonlight and her own image. Youma then shooed himself, too aware of the ways of women, and she took off her jacket and shirt, the blood fortunately not having dried too much.

"Mother of God," she said to herself, because the greatest challenge was to come first. She gave herself the littlest time to meditate on the location, then grab the forceps and invade her own body with the intention to extract the bullet. To her surprise, she found it after only several excruciating seconds of rummaging. She tossed it away like a coin.

At the end of the dark tunnel was the relieving light, however, for she confirmed with some inspection that her intestines had remained magically unpenetrated. She used the syringe to apply procaine to the surrounding skin, waited forever till it was numb, and then lay back and went on, pouring a dilute of Dakin's solution from a teapot until it overfilled her, sopping everything, without caring for much. The bleeding was simultaneously slowed and the wound was irrigated – rudimentarily. Then she was prepared to use the two forceps and the needle gun to begin the process of stitching, and that was when she remembered, damningly, she had gone through the entire clinic without discovering a line of suture, and she was forced to cut ribbons from the edge of her haori and use that to thread into–and–out–of herself, tremblingly, hurriedly, with all the imprecision of a mosquito aiming for a nasal pore. Yet when she had finished, she observed her wound had closed in exactly the pattern of a star anise, and she sighed at its masterful completeness. She lost consciousness on the bed immediately after.

Nisegami Youma, in another part of the clinic, reading without touching the front page of a document notifying a change in some Taisho medical law, was notified by a signal in his conscience of her falling asleep and went to observe her without reason in the dappling post–effect of the moonlight. She appeared as a convalescing sick lioness in the position she took up; still, temporarily liberated from the mortal memory of Shinobu and the revolution. Then, without warning, she murmured it to no–one, remaining adrift in her dreams:

"Who is Baoyuan?"

Youma, already anticipating her thoughts, had prepared for her the answer excavated from his own fossilised archives. They were not his own words, but the words of Nisegami Douma, who he had long tried to extinguish from his memory:

"He was an old emperor of China … his accomplice was a member of the Ubuyashiki Family who later became Kibutsuji Muzan … he made his domain a paradise for demonkind … he treated the Chinese people poorly, as he 'rightly should have' … he was the greatest demon who ever lived … Muzan ended up killing him in a bout of betrayal."

Still asleep, Tsubone replied, "Can something so biased be true?"

"It doesn't matter," answered Youma. "There's nobody left from that time to say what's what."

But when she drifted completely off, he rebutted himself for the scale of his lie. There were those who remained from that time, and they were as one–sided as his brother had been. The moment flashed through his mind of when he was taught to identify them.

"It's an inheritance," Douma would say. "And it's all in the eyes."

It was the same line his distant fiancée recited at identical frequences.

"It's an inheritance," Tsutako would say. "And it's all in the eyes."

Youma looked out to a flickering lamppost set outside the shattered window. He recounted each and every detail about everything in existence, because he could and because he was told so, next to Tsubone until the growing dawn.

1905

She took off the contact lenses and lay them delicately within a cushioned gilded case, and let it be known to Magase and the crouching demon – the two of them the microcosm of their small world – the universe within her eyes: that there, spinning relentlessly like nebulae in the crosswinds of time, were the anise–shaped clusters of rainbow, so mercilessly bright as to put even the stars to shame. Magase was so astounded that for several minutes he forgot to breathe, and then, when he regained his breath after an ambush of sputtering, he could only ask her:

"Tsutako, are you human?"

"Yes, I am too human," she replied. "Human enough to have inherited the humanity within Sun Baoyuan's soul. Though – I may still do this…"

For Magase, not even the vicious way she told the demon come here could put the spark out, in her eyes, in his heart. It prostrated without being asked to as if having received the order via telepath, and Tsutako sat on its back, the millions of years of ladylikeness radiating from her like the vapour in the discotheque they had seemingly so long ago occupied as equals. Now, nobody was her equal.

"I still don't understand," he said phatically.

"Long ago, when the vagabond who observed Sun Baoyuan's assassination snatched his soul and fled, it manifested itself as a power, which has been passed down through a dynasty of chosen ones, throughout history. Among that dynasty have been both humans and demons; emperors and peasants; whichever contrast you can think of. But each member carries the rainbow–coloured eyes and the knowledge of all who came before them. It has all led to this moment: where the power has manifested itself in me."

"Is that it?" Magase stammered. "You just 'have' this power?"

"No. With it I am compelled towards a divine mission: to wipe demonkind from the world."

She extended her milky hand outward, and it on its own demanded a subjugated, subservient kiss. But when she requested with the familiarity of old friends, "Magase, will you join me in doing this?" he could only shake it and nod his head in assent. Was her power covertly influencing him too, or had this fate been divine predisposition? He asked it in a different way.

"What was all that about whether our lives are determined from the moment we are born?"

"That was about what it was about," Tsutako answered. "Don't worry: everything is happening the way it's meant to happen."

Then, Magase knew he cared so little that he resigned himself to whatever it was.

1916

Yokota writhed yellow and beaten under the knee of Himejima. His men, including the lieutenant, peppered the miniature clearing in the forest motionlessly. He struggled for a few minutes as a bull in a lasso might, before relaxing, and tracing up and down with his eyes the shards of his broken Nichirin before him.

He spat to Ubuyashiki standing there, "You stupid boy. Do you intend for history to be a circle?"

Himejima sensed, not watched, for that was all he could do, the rebellious force beneath him, and yet tears were rushing down his face. "Oyakata–sama, I'm sorry. I realise this was not in our plan."

He was right. Ubuyashiki remained in stupor. They had considered everything; they had predicted somebody's betrayal, they had pinpointed the date of his discovery, they had visualised the method of his summoning; they had indeed established the most critical thing – no one will die, we are better than they are –and yet, it had been that solely most sacred detail they had broken.

"Whatever," Yokota said. "Regret it as he may, the dog's killed for you now."

In an unexpected rush of benumbing, Ubuyashiki whispered in his own mind, oh well. He did not know what came over him. Even looking at the dead bodies, he felt very little.

"I myself believe that history, no matter what period or mask it undertakes, shall always remain a circle. But that does not mean we should never strive."

"Strive?"

"Just five years ago, the dynastic system that ruled China ever since the beginning of time was overturned by a populace seeking revolution and the common man's betterment. And yet, one can predict forevermore that it will remain authoritarian, and basically influential, and return to being prosperous, just as Imperial China most of the time was."

"That is just a miniature," Yokota said.

"It is the human race in miniature. No: the earthly race."

Ubuyashiki glanced upon the dead on their sides. Himejima's tears dried.

"And yet – is that any reason for us not to strive? Did Baoyuan, eventual successor of the Zhou, give up his quest, knowing that if he had succeeded in creating his dynasty, it would eventually have crumbled, like all the others?"

"What you say is useless! Some dynasties were more successful than others, and Morinaga shall be more successful than the Ubuyashiki–"

"Do not gainsay me!" Ubuyashiki bellowed. Yokota's entire voice seized within his body. "Even if the entirety of our existence has been pre–chartered by some all–knowing god, we strive, until we break through!"

Ubuyashiki stamped his foot on the ground. It then occurred to him that, above the day of his father's funeral, above the day of his hushed inauguration in a somber shrine, above the moment he felt succumb to the sudden betrayal of Shinjuro Rengoku and above the moment of his birth, that was when he felt he was finally succeeding the throne of his lineage.

"I, Ubuyashiki Kagaya, say to the world, thirteen days since the passing of my father, Ubuyashiki Kanata, that I accept into my hands formally the title of Oyakata–sama, and am now the 97th incumbent, since the day Kibutsuji Muzan departed my family and began his evil and illegitimate insurgency against everything that is good."

He raised his voice, so that it would reach the entire universe.

"I have nothing grand to say, except that I make one promise to all of humanity: that in my tenure, I shall see demonkind wiped from the world!"

A million years ago, a beautiful, glittering girl said the same thing in his stead. But now he felt as if it were finally true. Shaken by his newfound conviction, which he considered as being poured onto him from the braziers of heaven, he did not perceive Yokota slip his arm out from beneath Himejima's pincer, grab the digits on the walrus's sandaled foot with his quarter–sized hand, and snap them all with one twist of the palm. His captor fell to the side convulsing and he took the instant to flee into the bush.

Himejima's pursuit was halted by the shout, "Stop! It's me who sinned. If I could have, I would have taken your punishment one–thousand times over."

Ubuyashiki caught up to him, and they gazed together onto the field of bodies and the fragrant dying smoke containing the ashes of the already impermanent Hashira. Somewhere out there the war stormed on. Yet it must have been heaven which finally opened its gate for the demon slayers and allotted this intermediary of silence.

"We're to photograph the ditches as is, and distribute it once Tomita has retaken the information office as an example of Morinaga's cruelty," he said. "And then, we are to give them a proper burial."

Gyoumei nodded his head, his spirit illuminated by the strength of his master's words. But then he attuned his senses and realised the at–once sanctious glade was permeated by the vibration of hiccupping and youthful uninhibited tears. "If only – there were another way for all of us," Ubuyashiki said quaveringly. "But alas, somehow, I believe we can make disinnocence wait!"