Someone is calling my name.
Shino Tatsumi attempted to wake from his shallow slumber and stopped just on the brink of consciousness.
It was silly.
There was no need for him to respond.
Since when have I started considering it “my name” anyway? I…am a specter. I don’t need a name. My presence and my power are more than enough to make me who I am.
“…No.”
While his eyes were still closed, the corners of Shino’s mouth curved up into a crooked smile.
“I’m not like that anymore.”
His faint murmur, barely audible, was terribly bitter and full of mockery toward himself.
A little over a thousand years ago, he had been a ruthless, man-eating demon that instilled fear in the citizens of the capital. But he’d been beaten by a spiritual medium.
It hadn’t been a fair fight.
In a normal battle, the demon would have ripped apart the spiritual medium’s scrawny frame in less than a minute and devoured the human’s flesh and blood, leaving not even a single bone.
But the beast was ensnared by the medium’s cleverly crafted plan.
He had been forced to submit to a human whom he had taunted and looked down upon as weak and helpless.
“We humans are indeed weak,” the spiritual medium had said and laughed. “That is why we use our wisdom as a weapon, which enables us to defeat even a formidable opponent like you. Wisdom is sometimes greater than physical strength.”
The medium’s smile wasn’t triumphant. It was gentle and somehow conveyed pity and compassion.
Shino could still vividly recall the confusion and unexplainable irritation he’d felt when he saw it.
The spiritual medium…Tokifuyu Tatsumi was the one who’d named him “Shino.”
Tokifuyu had not attempted to kill the specter.
By naming it, he bound it, stripped its power, and enclosed it in a “vessel” of human form that’d been molded with a spell, then made the specter his shikigami.
He then went about patiently persuading those who insisted the dangerous specter be killed to spare the creature’s life and decided to keep Shino on hand to work for him.
“To work for him”… Though I still can’t figure out if it’s accurate to say I worked for Tokifuyu, Shino mused.
As Shino sank deeper into the sea of sleep, his cynical smile relaxed.
Memories of days long gone suddenly started coming back to him.
“Shino! Wait a minute! Do not run away. You must stop instantly when your master commands you to wait!”
A man’s voice and the noisy footsteps of two people running echoed through a mansion. The building was quite spacious by today’s standards but hardly vast for the Heian period.
It was more or less an open structure, and as such, there wasn’t much soundproofing. Although it had a garden, the residents living in the neighborhood must have heard the commotion loud and clear.
Shino could never forget the residence of his late master, Tokifuyu Tatsumi, or the man’s voice.
The rooms were dimly lit, the wooden floors were cold and smooth to the touch, and the scent of incense and old paper wafted throughout the house.
Am I dreaming? Is it possible to experience such vivid sensations in a dream?
Mildly surprised, Shino realized something:
Tokifuyu would appear sooner or later if he continued to dream.
It would be unpleasant to see his face again, even in a dream, so I suppose I should awaken. Oh…wait.
“Who the hell would stick around for you?! Go ahead and bind me with a curse if you want me to stop!”
The loud voice that shouted back at Tokifuyu was Shino’s—from long ago, but not the least bit different from what he sounded like in the current day.
Such exchanges were commonplace back when he had been made Tokifuyu’s servant apparition. He didn’t know why Tokifuyu was chasing him in his dream, so curiosity welled up inside him.
He decided not to wake up yet and just looked at his bare feet as he ran down the hallway and listened to himself yell.
The inability to see himself objectively made it all strangely real, even though he knew he was dreaming.
It seemed that Shino was reliving memories from the distant past.
The ragged hunting robe he wore in the dream fluttered, and his long, disheveled hair clung to his face.
The tactile sensations and the urgency of his actions were awfully vivid.
In reality, he was lying down and sleeping, but it was as if he was really kicking down the folding screen with vigor, pulling out scrolls from a shelf, and flinging them around forcefully.
Even now, the sound of Tokifuyu tripping and falling behind him gave him immense satisfaction.
“This is meaningless— Ow… I slipped on a scroll you threw and hit my bottom pretty hard. Shino, this is getting us nowhere.”
The young man appeared in the hallway, clad in a hunting robe with a sash across his shoulder, rubbing his buttocks and wincing.
He was Tokifuyu Tatsumi, a midlevel master of yin and yang at the Bureau of Spiritual Mediums.
Tokifuyu turned toward Shino, who had just reached the end of the corridor and was about to flee into the garden. Then he held up the index finger and middle finger of his right hand and placed them over his mouth.
He muttered something, and Shino’s body jerked and stiffened.
Tokifuyu’s breathing was ragged, and he shook his head in resignation as Shino froze in place, unable to move a single finger, just as he’d been preparing to jump from the walkway onto the ground.
“You are impossible, Shino. I ask you to do things because I do not want to get rough with you like this.”
Tokifuyu ran a hand over his head, noting that his hat was missing. He must have dropped it somewhere while chasing after Shino. He casually combed his fingers through his long hair as Shino complained somewhat unintelligibly, desperately struggling to move his numb mouth and tongue.
“Hey, you’re playing dirty, binding me with a curse!”
Had Shino been in his original form as a specter, the air around him would have crackled with electricity. But Tokifuyu had sealed him in a human vessel, making him no more dangerous than a barking stray dog.
“You are the one who said to put a curse on you. Your memory seems a little lacking,” Tokifuyu retorted with a cool, if sweaty, face.
“You dare mock me?!”
“I am treating you with the utmost courtesy. It is extraordinary in the first place for a master to see to all the needs of a worker under him…”
“That is what I’m saying I don’t like! I can’t take it anymore. What’s with this robe that is so hard to move around in? And this hair. It’s much too long and useless! Talk about a hindrance. Never mind how I look—shave my head this minute! I don’t need anything to wear. A pair of underpants will suffice, if you insist!”
Shino went on and on with his complaints as he remained glued to the spot, his arm and leg still raised for takeoff.
Hey… My behavior is far too unsightly. Was I really that uncivilized back then?
Shino was a little flustered. He almost felt sorry for Tokifuyu, but then he focused on the scene in his dream.