Disclaimer: I don't make any money off of this. Inuyasha is owned by Rumiko Takahashi, which is not me. Due to research and thought to authenticity, real places, names, and things are probably going to show up. Oops.

Edited: 12/6/2020

Beautiful Moon

Things that Haunt and Horoscopes

Mizuki Kurahashi was plagued by the same question most teenagers were haunted by; what to do after high school.

Mocking her frustrations with that question was the overdue career sheet she furiously stuffed back into her bag, as if that would also shut out the phantom voice in her head that sounded very specifically like her parents rejecting her latest proposal. The sentence, "Your future would be better if you simply worked for the company," followed her like her own shadow. The paper crumbled unsatisfyingly under her hand.

"You're going to have to turn that in eventually," her best friend said as they left the hotel, and kindly informed her that she had a spare copy, perfectly undamaged, because that was the kind of person her best friend was. Mizuki was begrudgingly thankful, both for her friend and the spare.

The high school's second year class trip was two days into their exploration of Tokyo. It was perfectly overcast and mildly humid for a summer afternoon, which made the trek to their current shrine destination at least comfortable despite the mental weight of the crushed paper in her bag. The trip's purpose was a mixture of fun and educational, with the overall theme focusing on how culture survived through modernization and how new technology blended with old ideas. Observing this in various parts of the capital was their main goal and the reason for this particular stop.

The original destination had been Kyoto, and the theme much less enticing, but one off-handed remark had caused a flurry of action in the name of changing it. The student council prepared a proposal to modify the whole plan, and the entirety of grade two united under their class president's ambition. He and his two female counterparts presented the proposal to a board of teachers a few months ago, and their approval was the only reason they were in Tokyo now.

"I'm so glad we managed to convince the teachers to get us out here," her best friend, a chipper girl with cropped hair and an endlessly helpful nature, cheered happily to Mizuki. Riho's excitement kept her moving around, making the red and white uniform she wore dance with each turn. "You're a genius, Mizuki."

Mizuki shook her head, causing the cascade of dark hair she possessed to find its way over her shoulders again. She brushed it back in annoyance, having forgotten her hair tie back at the hotel, apparently assuming it was on her wrist alongside the band of her watch.

While the idea for the trip destination had originally been her own stupid comment (and she wouldn't lie, she was grateful that at least the proposals she made to people other than her parents weren't outright rejected), she was well aware that she didn't deserve the credit for the combined effort of the student council and her friends.

"It was mostly Kimura's doing, really," she said with a shrug and a nod toward the taller boy just a few paces ahead of them. "He is class president, after all."

The other girl giggled, causing said president to look back and his face to split into the charismatic smile he'd adopted since they'd entered high school. He slowed down a little until he was even paced with them.

"Still that excited about this, Inoue?" he teased her, and she giggled once again with an airiness that caused Mizuki to chuckle. Riho always laughed like that around Kimura, making it amusingly obvious to her that she had a crush on her best guy friend. "It's already day two!"

"It's not that," she retorted playfully. "Mizuki always comes up with the best ideas, that's all."

"Well, if she's the brains, then I'm the manpower," he said proudly, jokingly flexing his arms. They laughed together when he added that he wasn't trying to imply he was dumb. His test scores in comparison to theirs made that entirely unnecessary, but they giggled all the same.

"One day, I might be the brains and the manpower," Mizuki rebuked playfully, referencing her challenge for the position he currently held. She hadn't taken the class election all that seriously, having decided shortly after throwing her name into the pot that proving she had leadership skills wasn't the best way to convince her parents that she wasn't right for the job they wanted her to take, but it had totally fired Kimura up and made him work harder than ever (and earned him the role). She had a knack for awakening his competitive nature, which didn't always have the most positive outcomes when they got into it with each other, but it was interesting, nonetheless. It was incredibly tempting to challenge him for their last year of high school just to see how it would turn out.

It really was difficult to believe that she would be graduating soon.

Being a second-year left Mizuki feeling anxious about her future. She had absolutely no idea what career path to take, or even what ones she could, and the next year would be all about studying for and taking college entrance exams (and more career surveys that she didn't want in her life). She had thought the high school exams were bad enough, but they were already starting to cram the information down her throat like there wasn't enough time, and they were only a few months into the new school year.

Resisting the urge to sigh, Mizuki looked up at the dwindling number of advertisements as they walked into a more residential area of a Tokyo suburb, trying to focus on the class trip. She'd been to Tokyo plenty of times, and Kyoto, for that matter, which was why she thought the capital city was more interesting. Getting the class out here was great and all since she was actually with her friends and not her family, but it was far from the excitement of a trip to somewhere she knew nothing about.

"You could travel working for the company," her mother's voice echoed, and she left the idea behind as they crossed the street, where it could haunt someone else.

About ten minutes later, Riho nudged her excitedly. "Hey, Mizuki, we're here!"

They began their ascent of a large staircase marked by old torii gates. This shrine was supposed to be really old, having some connections to the feudal era and famous for its little 'Four Soul Jewel' key chains. She hadn't read the pamphlet much past that - shrines weren't really her thing as far as interests go. A carved stone declared it Higurashi Shrine, if she were reading the kanji correctly.

They were greeted immediately by an old man with a small, pointy beard and a balding topknot whose wide smile suggested he was far too excited about his job. A young girl stood next to him, dressed in traditional red and white shrine maiden garb and wearing an embarrassed expression. Whether it was because of her get-up or the old man's excitement, Mizuki wasn't sure, but she passed a message on to the man before leaving in another direction. Apparently she wasn't intending to stick around for the introductions.

Mizuki watched her disappear off to the right, her gaze lingering while the man welcomed them and began a long-winded explanation of the shrine's history. Following her would be far more interesting, she concluded. Might as well make the most of her time here.

"Earth to Kurahashi," Kimura said pointedly as he waved his hand before her face. "You're going wandering again, aren't you?"

Mizuki blinked, then smiled knowingly. Kimura and Riho never really liked it when she went off on her own to explore things, and they had learned to notice when she took an interest in something. It was one of her things, though, and her friends accepted that, however reluctantly. They even covered for her, much to her appreciation.

"I swear, it's all because of your eyes that you go off all the time," Riho said with a hint of friendly annoyance.

It was not the first time she had blamed her eyes for her wandering tendencies, and it wouldn't be the last. Rather than the natural dark brown she should have been born with, she ended up with what her doctor referred to as a genetic mishap, which was to say a mutation but with a kinder connotation. While her parents had fussed over her ability to fit in, aside from the odd peer who thought she was wearing contacts to stand out more than she already did given the circumstance of her birth, she didn't have any real issue. The odd, blue-green coloring was, admittedly, pretty cool.

Riho was the kind of person who liked looking into the deeper meanings of things, even if those were very loose associations and rarely worth knowing. It was the girl's quirk, and much like Kimura's need to win, Riho had a need to know and understand. Apparently she had researched a lot about her friend's unusual eye color, and boldly claimed that its relation to matters of mystery often compelled her to search them out (never mind that it was traditionally associated with purity and calmness, neither of which Mizuki would use to describe herself, or that her friend conveniently left out the green hues in her assessment).

But, hell, if mysteries were her thing, then maybe she should go into the detective business.

"I won't get into trouble," she reminded them. "I always come back, and I have you two to back me up in case something does go wrong. You know how it always goes."

They nodded reluctantly, complete with an eye roll and a crooked smile, probably thinking about both the good and bad times they'd covered for her.

"Are you really going to head off before we even get to free time, though?" Riho asked quietly. "Never mind that you always go off alone when free time rolls around anyway."

"I'll be fine. Besides, free time isn't for, like, ever, and the old guy will probably put me to sleep before then. I want to see the rest of this place," she said with a laugh. "Don't worry, you two. Just have a dandy time together, okay?"

Her wording got the mad blush to run across Riho's face like she intended, but Kimura had yet to notice how much the girl really liked him. He still wouldn't call either of them by their first names despite their closeness, and she had yet to convince Riho that calling him Shinya wasn't going to kill her, but she was certain that one of these days she was going to hook the two of them up. She just needed to do little things like this for now.

"J-just don't wander too far, okay?" she managed to say while suppressing the redness in her cheeks. "And your horoscopes said to keep within your own affairs today and to listen carefully, so don't butt into anything you find!"

"Don't worry," she repeated, slowing so that she was trailing back a little behind the large group. With that, she offered a quick wave while the chaperone's attention was diverted, skipped behind a building, and waited until they rounded the corner before she headed off in the direction the shrine maiden had disappeared to.

She didn't really put much stock in horoscopes and color readings, but Mizuki was always amused by what advice Riho had to offer. Sometimes the little things were dead on, though most times it was a complete miss. Riho had said a lot of things were generalized, and that Mizuki should keep an open mind to it, especially because she was on a 'cusp' (whatever that meant, she couldn't remember), but she could never take it seriously. Most of the readings she forgot, though she wouldn't tell Riho that.

Planning wasn't her thing. That probably contributed greatly to her inability to figure out what direction her life would be taking in another year and a half, but going into a situation blind was much more interesting. When things did go sideways, she reacted well enough, and it didn't take much to talk her way out of the more precarious situations she landed herself in.

Maybe not a detective. A… martial artist?

She laughed to herself at that one, not quite sure how she had connected mental reflexes to the physical kind involved in martial arts. She didn't know the first thing about any fighting styles outside of the occasional kendo lesson she participated in with Kimura, and those were verbal exercises more for his benefit than hers, since coaching the sport was his dream job. She didn't have a future in any form of martial art, anyway, not since that idea had been rejected several years ago.

Sometimes she found herself jealous of her friends. They knew what they wanted out of life; for Kimura it was coaching, and Riho wanted to teach language one day, though Japanese or English, she hadn't made up her mind yet. Mizuki didn't really have much going for her; wounds made her squeamish, she couldn't act (the one-act play festival her class put on in middle school proved that one), she wasn't all that artistic or beyond average in athletic skills, and when she mentioned once that she might like working with animals, her parents turned the idea down flat, saying it would basically render the extra schooling she was going through obsolete, and they weren't going to give that up.

Her grades were good because they had to be, and her reactionary tendencies helped her deal with situations fairly easily when they arose, but thinking long-term always left her feeling like she was drifting in the middle of an ocean on a tiny raft. Riho figured she didn't know herself well enough yet to see all of the islands that existed in that ocean, but it seemed strange to think that she didn't know herself when she had been herself for nearly seventeen years. How could she not?

"Careful with that!"

The accusatory voice brought her out of her thoughts and caused her to freeze for a moment before backing up against the structure she was next to. She hadn't realized she'd walked so far, and her target of interest was just around the corner. The shrine girl was arguing with a strange-looking teen with thick, long, white hair topped with a simple, purple bandana. He was dressed in all red, the clothing looking far too outdated to be comfortable, and barefoot to boot. There were many more objects than a guy should be able to carry at once in his hands, but he seemed to be balancing them perfectly, as if he hardly had to put forth much effort to support all of that weight. She couldn't tell if he was very muscular beneath his haori, but he had to be to be carrying that load.

"Grandpa wants these things laid out carefully so the students can look at them and ask questions for their research," the girl reprimanded him. "If you break anything because you're being reckless, so help me, I will use it so many times, you'll be six feet under."

It wasn't very descriptive, but the guy seemed to know exactly what she was talking about from the way he paled.

"Keh," he barked after a moment of contemplation. "S'not like any of this stuff actually works the way he thinks it does."

"He got the Shikon Jewel mostly right, didn't he?" she retorted smartly. "And there was that noh mask, too; for all we know, more dangerous things are still sealed up in here."

He made a show of taking a whiff at each item, an action that he somehow made look natural, and snorted when he took in dust.

"Just smells like it hasn't been outside for too long," he grumbled, closing his golden eyes in disgust.

…Wait.

Golden?

Mizuki was used to the weird eye color she possessed, but gold was pushing it. Adding that to his white hair, and the guy really struck her as strange. Was he part of some gang or something? Or maybe a really weird branch of the yakuza… But what the heck would a yakuza guy be doing following some kid's orders and helping at a shrine?

Her thoughts drifted back to whatever it was again.

She had missed what the girl's comment might have been to that statement while she had been flipping weird explanations around in her head, but the two started moving again toward what she assumed was the area where the items were going to be displayed. The girl walked with a brisk pace until she was enough out of her sight that Mizuki had to peer out further to keep an eye on them, and the guy following her was managing to find his way without really seeing where he was going, at least for several feet. His foot caught a bit of uneven ground a few moments later, causing him to lurch forward. Mizuki was certain he was going to drop everything in that moment, but he adjusted his load quickly and caught his footing in time to keep his precious cargo from hitting the ground.

Mizuki let out a quick breath of relief, until a single bound object on the top of the pile rocked precariously backwards, finally falling from the stack. She sprinted off from her hiding spot; the guy had no means of catching it, and the girl couldn't even see what was happening. It bounced roughly off of his head, enticing a curse to slip from him. Mizuki dove for it, sliding between it and the ground just in time.

At that moment, she figured she had saved his hide from whatever it was that the golden-eyed teen would suffer from. She sat herself up quickly, fear of revealing anything beneath her uniform at the forefront of her mind, until she heard something snap.

Her eyes darted to the bound item in her hand. There were seals around the packaging, with an emphasis on were, because each one in turn was exploding into a blue flame that somehow wasn't burning her and she somehow wasn't entirely stunned by that. Should be, should definitely be, but wasn't. When none remained, the packaging unfolded of its own accord, and she could hear something. It was like white noise in her head, except she could feel what might be emotion in it. It was overwhelmingly… happy? Or maybe she was. She couldn't tell.

Then everything calmed. What was revealed in her hand was a simple leather-strung necklace with a small stone pendant at the end of it. The stone, hardly bigger than her thumb, was a polished piece of blue-green turquoise that gleamed with a life no stone had a right to have. Looking at it was strangely like staring into her own reflection.

A long breath escaped her, and she blinked away tears brought on by the dust she must have gotten in her eyes. Damn, that was weird.

Maybe she should listen to those horoscopes more often.

Loud crashes and bangs broke her staring contest with the pendant, and she snapped her gaze up to find that the guy in red had decided addressing what had just transpired was more important than the punishment for dropping his load. He reached for his side, though he seemed surprised when he found nothing but empty air where whatever it was he was going to grab might have been. Instead, he balled his fists and let out a growl, and a really convincing one at that, before addressing her in words.

"What the hell was that?! Who are you?!" he yelled, causing Mizuki to shrink away from him in worry.

"Inuyasha, calm down!" the shrine maiden demanded, grabbing his arm.

…Inuyasha? That was a weird name. Maybe he was a yakuza.

When he didn't listen to her, she called his name again, with a slightly more menacing tone than she had before. She seemed to panic when he failed to heed her, and Mizuki scooted back a little when Inuyasha pulled his arm from her grasp. The girl grabbed his shoulders instead.

"Get your act together and sit," she said with a push. That push was not enough to have had the effect it did, and Mizuki suddenly felt like she had discovered what it was, and precisely why the guy had paled at the mention of it.

Inuyasha was pulled forcefully to the ground by what looked like some power the beads around his neck possessed, judging by the glow and the way they stretched downward like something had hooked them. The shrine girl had tried to cover that up, but she could tell it was her words, not her hands, that had caused that. Mizuki couldn't believe it though. Magic? To her, it was a lot like astrology; it was real in theory, but barely demonstrable in practice.

"I didn't just see that, right?" she thought carefully. "Of course, there was also the burning seals around this thing…"

She glanced down briefly at the stone and then back up to the girl, who seemed to realize that her cover up was largely ineffective. A nervous bit of laughter escaped her for a moment before she came up with an explanation.

"Guess I don't know my own strength," she said, unable to contain her panicky tone.

"What the hell was that for, Kagome!" the guy yelled up to her when he was able to pull his face out of the dirt. "And what do you mean-!"

He was silenced by the package she dropped quite deliberately on his head.

"Uh, whoops?" she said quietly, before turning back to Mizuki with a smile fit for an anxious teenager. "I'm sorry. Some of this stuff can be weird. Not really sure what that was all about, but I'll make sure my grandpa wraps that back up nice and good."

Mizuki nodded slowly, though she was now thoroughly convinced, however improbable it was, that she knew exactly what had happened just now. Between the disappearing sutras and the beads around the guy's neck, she couldn't just explain it away as coincidence. It was obvious the girl knew what was happening around them, too, and didn't think she should know.

"I'll just go ahead and take that," she finished. "Thanks for catching it!"

There was an unexplainable part of her being that was suddenly very uncomfortable with handing the stone over. Something about the way it felt in her hand was right. That noise she had in her head couldn't have been anything but what she was holding, even if all logic said magic and spells didn't exist. It was supposed to be with her. She couldn't begin to explain it, but that was how she felt to her very core.

Feeling that about what should be just a necklace was difficult to reconcile, though, so she handed it back, and tried to ignore the feeling that she was making a very big mistake.

Mistakes, Mizuki would acknowledge later, are relative.

"No problem," she said as she stood, attempting to drown out the very loud voice in the back of her head currently overtaking her parents' constant whispering of disapproval. "Will it still be laid out with the other things? I'd like to look at it better when I get the chance. It's very pretty."

She played up the oblivious act as much as she dared, because despite not wanting to contemplate her strange possessiveness of the item, she still hoped to get a good look at the artifact later. If she could convince her to lay it out, she might be able to ask innocent questions of it later to someone who had no idea what had just happened. Considering the way she acted about this Inuyasha character, she figured the girl would try to keep him out of everyone's sight but her own, which likely meant neither of them would be present.

The girl was taken aback by her attitude for a moment, before smiling brightly and saying she would see what she could do. Mission accomplished; those were the eyes of a very relieved person. Mizuki bowed before she turned to head back in the direction she came from, but not without a final glance over her shoulder just after she turned the corner. The girl, Kagome, the guy had called her, was fussing over Inuyasha once again. He was rubbing his head, shouting back something about being a bit more cautious of people like her, until she told him to put his bandana back on and pray that nothing broke when he dropped it all, or she would say it again.

His ears flattened against his skull at that, and Mizuki had to wonder just who she had met, because ears like that aren't supposed to exist on a human's head.

About ten minutes and an absurd amount of thinking later, Mizuki had found her way back to the group. She snuck right in, catching up to Riho and Kimura as she did time and time again, and tapped both on opposite shoulders. She amused herself with making them think someone to either side of them had done it, until Riho figured it out and turned in the proper direction.

"You're back!" she said almost too loudly before catching herself. Kimura turned back as well, surprised that the blue-eyed teen was among them once again.

"That was quick," he added, and then took note of her clothes. "What happened?"

Mizuki glanced down, annoyed that she had forgotten that of course she would be coated with dust after that dive. With a roll of her eyes, she began brushing away as much as she could.

"Helped catch something," she stated vaguely as she worked, distracted for a moment by a particularly tough spot before continuing. "Anyone asks, I was clumsy and tripped over my own two feet."

Riho gasped lightly.

"I told you about your horoscopes, Mizuki!" she reprimanded her. "You weren't supposed to jump into anyone else's business!"

"It's alright, guys, nothing happened," she lied smoothly. Definitely wasn't going to tell them about the strange encounter with the necklace. Not here, anyway. Back at the hotel, possibly. It depended on whether she figured out if she was insane or not in the next three hours or so.

"This could get you into a lot of trouble, Mizuki…" Riho said slowly, concern filling her eyes.

Mizuki blinked. Riho apparently had more to say about her daily star predictions, though the summary she provided hadn't really warned about anything that seemed like trouble, so she couldn't imagine what. Something big would have been the first thing out of her friend's mouth.

"I didn't think too much about it since it was your other horoscope, but…" Riho explained before she paused, and then moved her bag around to her front, pulling out the little book she kept notes of astrology and the like in. After flipping to her most recent page, she continued, "Your Scorpio horoscope said meddling in the affairs of others can throw you right off track today. Keep to observing unless you want trouble. As much as you are curious, you'll want to think before you act. But you're on the cusp, so Sagittarius applies to you, too. You have a great skill of listening. Use it. Someone's telling you something very important, and if you don't heed their words, you'll end up wishing you had."

"Cusp meant two horoscopes," Mizuki found herself remembering, before taking in the somehow more concerned expression of her best friend and forcing herself to take this a little more seriously.

"I'm worried it's referring to me telling you about your horoscope, Mizuki," she finally said. "If it is, then the last part of your second horoscope has relevance."

If magic was real, Riho's horoscopes probably weren't completely improbable despite their numerous attempts to prove themselves otherwise. She reasoned that there were a number of things the words could be referring to, though. Sure, the first one seemed to apply to her encounter, but she wasn't in trouble. Someone could be anyone, too, not just Riho.

Mizuki plastered a smile on her face, both for their benefit and her own, and shook her head. No need to be getting worked up about this. She'd already talked her way out of things, at least with the girl.

"And if it doesn't?" she asked, stretching her arms over her head. "You've always said to keep an open mind about my horoscopes, Riho. Don't forget, you have to follow your own advice to make it useful advice in the first place."

It was Riho's turn to blink. She hadn't expected that, obviously, and took a moment to process her own advice.

Mizuki had a point, and her best friend knew it.

"I suppose you're right," she admitted, shutting the book firmly. "But still, please, please don't wander off again today. My intuition is saying something bad will happen if you do."

Mizuki would also later acknowledge that, unlike her horoscopes, Riho's intuition was usually correct.

She lost interest in what they were touring until they finally looped back around to where they had finished laying out the old items. Immediately, her gaze set on the necklace further down the line, and she was taken aback at the strong sense of relief she felt in seeing it, and the echo of longing it sent back. It was unwrapped, and like each of the other pieces, there was a placard with information about the artifact set next to it. Surprisingly, none of the items were broken, though there were a number fewer than she remembered the odd-eared guy carrying.

Riho elbowed her lightly, drawing her attention back to her friends. They both fixed her with a look as a reminder of their agreement, and she smiled in reassurance.

"It's the thing I caught for them," she explained, pushing aside the feelings. "That necklace, down toward the end."

Kimura and Riho both blinked, and turned to the direction she was pointing.

"…It's hard to see that far," Riho commented after a moment.

"Yeah," Kimura agreed. "You sure have good eyesight, Kurahashi."

She wasn't going to say she felt it more than saw it, because she had just noticed that herself.

"It's the turquoise part of it. I guess since I've seen it before it just kinda stands out to me."

Her friends seemed to leave it at that, and she was thankful she had reached a sufficient conclusion before Riho thought too much on it.

The old man, Kagome's grandfather if she wasn't mistaken, walked them through a short bit about observing the items. They weren't allowed to handle them at all; apparently body oils could greatly damage some of the ancient artifacts, and Mizuki caught herself chewing on her lower lip at that. She quickly replaced her obvious displeasure with a look of disinterest instead, concerned by her own unexplainable distress.

Finally, he let them free to observe, and Mizuki went straight for it.

Riho and Kimura followed right behind her, so she took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself down. Riho would be all over her if she did something to cause the pendant to do weird things again, and she couldn't let that happen. Not with a crowd of people around her to witness it. She would just have to restrain herself for a while, and ask minimal questions.

If she didn't get where she wanted to today, she would sneak back here tomorrow. Harajuku was crowded anyway, and Mizuki wasn't a fan of crowds of that caliber.

She stopped right in front of the pendant, kneeling down on the edge of the blanket to get a better look at the information set next to it. Her friends leaned over it behind her, observing her with a concerned look and the object with one of curiosity at the same time. She wanted to reach out for it - she could hear that emotional white noise again - but she stayed her hand. She felt very strongly that she couldn't afford to do something that would prevent her from getting close to it.

All the same though, she had to wonder why she was hearing what she was hearing, or why she was drawn to the necklace at all. Nothing like what happened when she caught the thing should even be possible. Magic shouldn't exist at all, and yet she found herself caught up in what could only be explained as magic, and she couldn't dismiss it as easily as she might have wanted to.

"Yanagawa's Artifact," Kimura read off, interrupting her thoughts. "An ancient stone pendant said to have been passed down through generations of priests in the Yanagawa family. Each possessor was rumored to be able to wield strange powers."

Mizuki nodded absentmindedly. The name didn't ring any bells in her head, but the idea of powers felt somewhat comfortable to acknowledge now. The noise was still humming along in her ears, and while she couldn't follow how she could interpret the feelings behind it, she did at least know it was coming from the stone. If it could do something like that, strange powers wasn't really that far off, she supposed.

"Ooooooh! You've spotted something very powerful!" a voice rang out cheerfully above them. The three looked up to find the old man standing before them, a huge smile stretching his beard wide across his chin. He opened his mouth to continue, but stopped short on something.

Mizuki blinked. He was staring right at her.

"…Do you know the secret of this necklace, child?" he asked slowly, making Mizuki nervous. Did he know what had happened with his granddaughter and her friend? When she shook her head, his smile brightened up another twenty watts, and she had a sudden sense that the man was infinitely excited and eager to tell a story.

"There was a secret way of deciding how the necklace was passed down!" he bellowed loudly, far too into his story to have a care as to what those around thought of him. "And if you were a part of this ancient family, you'd have been its inheritor."

All at once, she felt herself freeze on those words. What did he mean she would have gotten it? Was there some reason she could hear the thing after all?

Was that why this felt right?

"What do you mean, sir?" Riho asked with her typical curiosity, unaware of her friend's racing thoughts. "Why would Mizuki have inherited the necklace?"

He smiled, and then simply said, "She has blue eyes."

"…You mean the priests of the Yanagawa family had blue eyes?" Kimura questioned, an eyebrow raised by the same thought Mizuki was fighting with. Her blue eyes were simply a mutation of DNA. Nothing more.

And yet…

"How long ago did the Yanagawa family exist?" she questioned suddenly, urgency coloring her tone in a way she didn't intend for it to. "How did you come into possession of this stone?"

"Why is it that I can feel it?" she didn't ask aloud, but pleaded, nonetheless.

The old man smiled as if he were entertained by the idea of having someone interested in his collection of old things and stories, oblivious to her world making less sense the longer she remained here. He explained, "The Yanagawa family disappeared about five hundred years ago, according to our ancient scrolls," and urged them and the small crowd of their classmates that had gathered to follow him with a gesture of his hand. "They state that disaster befell the family and that the artifact was lost after a great and terrible battle, but I myself found it here almost twenty years ago."

Here was apparently where he now proudly motioned with his whole arm. Behind him stood a structure that looked like a large shed.

"The Bone Eater's Well," he continued. "Legend states people once dumped the bones of demons down this well, and after some time, the bones would vanish. If people wanted something to disappear, the well was the perfect place to hide it. Some of these things have shown up at our beloved shrine! Our ancestors kept careful record of everything they found within the well."

He paused, as if thinking or trying to add some kind of dramatic effect, before finishing, "Some have said this well connects the present with five hundred years ago."

Mizuki was hanging on every word, and glanced back at the stone in interest. How could something that was lost five hundred years ago have found its way here through…

Her thoughts were interrupted when her gaze turned back to the wellhouse.

"…No way."

It was as though the wellhouse were resonating with the noise from the necklace, like they were connected. There was a call and response – the stone pulsed and the well returned the pitch – like they were communicating with each other.

"There are a lot of things connected to five hundred years in the past here," Kimura commented under his breath, though loud enough for Mizuki to hear him.

"…What do you mean?" she asked. The well and necklace were just two things; that didn't exactly constitute a lot in her book.

"You were away during the story of the goshinboku," he explained. "That really tall tree in the middle of the shrine; there's a large scar on the trunk, like bark won't grow there. Mr. Higurashi explained that five hundred years ago, there was a half-demon boy pinned there by a spell for fifty years, until a young priestess released him."

Without warning, the two she had met earlier jumped to the front of her mind.

"Yeah, and the Shikon key chains that are so popular here are connected with an ancient, five-hundred-year-old legend of a priestess who battled hundreds of demons to keep the jewel safe. Apparently it could give demons more power," Riho added.

"He got the Shikon Jewel mostly right, didn't he?" she retorted smartly. "And there was that noh mask, too; for all we know, more dangerous things are still sealed up in here."

"It all sounds far too coincidental," Kimura commented with a laugh. "People will do anything these days to make someone believe their stories."

Mizuki laughed along with him, but withheld any comment. She might give away her thoughts on that matter, because the white noise that echoed in her head now haunted her much more effectively than her unknown career path ever had.

This fan fiction started way back in 2008, and had very…cringy beginnings, to say the least. It wasn't supposed to survive after I realized just how bad it was, but about ten years after its original start, I started rewriting it, and now we're here, with a much better story.

Yes, it is an OC-centered story, and I hope you'll bear with Mizuki all the way through it. I try to stick close to canon (I pull mostly from the manga, but the anime sneaks its way in through backdoors when I'm not paying attention). This should play out somewhat in the vein of the games Secret of the Cursed Mask and The Divine Jewel, in the core sense that the introduction of a new character from the future doesn't change the overall course of the series.

That said, when you think Mizuki needs some advice on how to be a better character, send it my way, along with any other notes of correction you think I should take into consideration. I won't ever be offended. I don't rely on a beta, so this community of editors both amateur and professional is incredibly important to me.

As a final note, this story evolves and changes as I write it, so I will periodically go back and make changes, both major and minor. You'll be warned of these at the beginning of new chapters when they impact the story quite a bit, or you'll otherwise see the date it was edited listed at the top.

Thanks for reading!

-sf