Chương 200: Chapter 199 - The Way of Life

Ayame walked hand in hand with Chika through the settlement. The girl's small fingers were warm wrapped around her own, a gentle pressure that felt almost foreign after years of holding nothing but weapons and the occasional grip of survival. They passed homes that she recognized from a life she had lived so long ago that the edges of the memories had grown soft and blurred. The wooden walls with their carved panels depicting scenes of battle and harvest. The small gardens where herbs grew in neat rows.

The paths worn smooth by generations of feet that had walked the same routes day after day.

'That is right,' she thought. The realization came slowly, like something rising from deep water.

'It was but a dream. All of it. The mission. The boy. The blood that tasted different. All of it was just a dream I had while waiting for something real.' She pulled her hand away from Chika's grip. The motion was gentle but final. The girl looked up at her with those dark eyes that held no judgment, only curiosity and a child's endless capacity for acceptance. They made their way to a shrine.

"Ayame, I have prayed to Sellenia and Morwen in your absence," Chika said. Her voice was light.

"Every day. I made sure of it. The elders said it was important." They found themselves in a small clearing littered with awkwardly shaped stones that had been drugged into the red-tinged dirt. The stones stood upright, some leaning slightly, others perfectly vertical despite the uneven ground. They were the size of an adult oni, tall and imposing, but they had small charms and bells attached to them that swayed gently in the breeze. The sound was soft, almost inaudible, like the whispering of ghosts.

Chika walked forward. She pressed one small hand to a statue nearby. Her palm lay flat against the cold stone, and she closed her eyes for a moment in a gesture that seemed too old for someone her age.

'This is where they rest,' Ayame thought.

'The ancestors. The ones who came before. The ones who made the choices that led to this moment.' She lowered her head to pray with respect, which was the norm here. The gesture felt automatic. Practiced. She had done it a thousand times before and would do it a thousand times again if given the chance. Together, they walked toward the small temple built for the two stone statues of two maidens standing together gracefully. One had a horn. The other did not. One possessed wings folded behind her back.

The other had something that looked like an archangel bidding its deeds with a demon carved into the side of her head. The craftsmanship was exquisite, the kind of work that took decades to master and centuries to perfect. Of course this was Sellenia and Morwen. The twin moons. The ones who had cursed her bloodline. The ones who had given gifts that felt more like chains. They both prayed their respect and went on. Ayame closed the distance as she took in her surroundings. She could not help it.

She really could not help it. A tense feeling of homesickness briefly overtook her body. It pressed against her chest like a physical weight. Her throat tightened. Her eyes stung slightly, though no tears came. Oni did not cry. They had forgotten how generations ago. But she did not let it show. She could have let it show. There was no one here who would judge her for it. But the instinct to hide weakness was stronger than the desire to express it.

'Most people believe that we eat our brethren,' she thought. Her gaze swept across the shrine, the statues, the offerings left at their feet.

'Which is false. We have never been that. Not once. Not ever.' She walked a bit more further into the settlement. As she went on, she saw buildings in the distance. She recognized the painful architecture. The way everything was laid out. Carved wooden fences with intricate patterns. Slanted roofs that sloped gently toward the ground to let the rain run off. Lanterns hanging from posts that had been there for centuries.

It was all so painfully nostalgic, a feeling that she had never ever felt nor registered until now. It was only after his quiet presence, after Lucid had entered her life, that she had let herself feel such emotion. Such emotion that was quite foreign, bizarre, but also fuzzy around the edges. She shook her head. The motion was small, almost imperceptible. Other kids had started to surround her. They appeared from between buildings, from behind fences, from doorways left slightly ajar. Their faces were young.

Their eyes were dark. Their horns were small buds just beginning to push through the skin of their foreheads. Stolen novel; please report. They bowed once, formally, and stood there. Waiting. Watching. A handful of kids the same height and age as Chika. They said nothing. They simply observed with the quiet intensity that oni children learned before they learned to speak.

"Do you guys want to play today?" Ayame asked. Her voice came out softer than she intended. They nodded. They started to play. Ayame was dragged along beside them. This was how oni kids usually were. Quiet. Reserved. They played without laughter, without the shrieking joy of human children. Their games were structured, almost formal, like training exercises disguised as entertainment. They never smiled. They rarely spoke. Until Chika came. Chika was a quiet but fierce presence in the village.

She had sparked a joy in the clan that no one had expected. Something about her half-human blood, perhaps, or simply her nature. She laughed openly. She smiled without restraint. She hugged people without asking permission. The elders had been scandalized at first. Then slowly, one by one, they had softened. However, the clan had its sharp ways. Its ceremonies. Its harsh lessons. Chika was almost eight. In her tribe, eight was the age when training began in earnest.

There would be a common practice to train their younger kids as soon as they could grab a sword or a weapon. As she looked at the kids surrounding her, she could see them playing awkwardly, throwing a ball back and forth while Chika was the one with the most enthusiasm. The ball was made of woven reeds, light enough not to hurt when it struck someone. Ayame had stopped pretending to play a long time ago. The game held no interest for her. It was a distraction. A waste of time. This was an act. A useless act.

A waste of time. Until finally, one kid started to smile. It caught Ayame by surprise. The expression was small, barely a curve of the lips, but it was unmistakably a smile. She had not known they could do that. She had not known her people could look so... young. So unburdened. It was not impossible, but usually her people did not do such things. They kept their faces neutral, their emotions locked away where no one could see them. Her interest was piqued. Chika looked back after being engrossed into the game.

She caught Ayame's gaze and grinned wider. The girl's joy was infectious in a way that made Ayame's chest ache. This was not how they acted. They were normally fierce warriors, people who had been shaped through long battles for survival. This was not the way of the oni. But this was a future. A possible future. One where children could smile and play and throw balls made of reeds without worrying about the next raid or the next winter. She winced. It absolutely hurt. Images supplied themselves to her mind.

A cold, desolate, harsh landscape. There was snow everywhere, piled high against the sides of huts, covering the ground in a white blanket that reflected the pale light of a sun that never seemed to warm anything. The red grass of her memory was replaced by a red tinge on the snow, as if something had bled beneath the surface and stained everything from below. The purple sky she remembered was gone. In its place, a frigid wind that cut through clothing and skin and settled into bones.

The wind carried scents she did not want to recognize. Smoke. Ash. The copper tang of blood. There was a fence. A wooden fence surrounding a small hut. Through the gaps between the planks, she saw her kind. Her people. They were eating human flesh as a source of sustenance. Their faces were painted with symbols she did not recognize. Their eyes were wild, hungry, desperate. They wore necklaces made of human skulls, small ones, the skulls of children.

They wore the fur of their prey draped across their shoulders, the pelts still wet with blood that had not yet dried. The cold ice wind did not affect them. They had become immune to it through generations of suffering. Through generations of adaptation. They weeded out the weak of the clan. Banished them to the forgotten woods where the Unfaithful wandered. Many who were sent there had perished. But some had come back. And those who returned were stronger. Harder. More brutal.

More willing to do whatever it took to survive. She thought bitterly about the path that had led her here. About the choices that had been made for her and the choices she had made for herself. She pieced together the facts as the images supplied themselves to her mind. These were not fantasies, these were not nightmares. These were the truth. The truth of a distant past. The truth of what her people had been before they had been forced to change. After they had been exiled.

After they had been scattered across the scattered realms like seeds thrown onto infertile ground. This was a future that could have been. This was a today for another's tomorrow. A world where the oni had not softened. Had not adapted. Had not found a way to survive without becoming monsters. And it absolutely hurt. The red tinge on the snow spread. It soaked into the white like ink into paper, spreading outward in tendrils that reached for her feet. The skulls on the oni's necklaces turned toward her.

Their empty eye sockets seemed to follow her movements. She smelled the flesh cooking over fires that burned with wood that cracked and popped and sent sparks up into the dark sky. The smell was sweet and savory and wrong in a way that made her stomach turn. One of the oni looked up. Its eyes met hers. There was no recognition there. No warmth. Instead an endless, bottomless hunger that would never be satisfied no matter how much it consumed. The oni smiled. Its teeth were stained red.

Ayame snapped back to the present. The children were still playing. Chika was still laughing. The sun still shone with its purple tinge through the red-tinged air.