Intermission:
Where Revenge Leads
1
ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a wicked demon. This demon would grow stronger the more it consumed, and it ate both humans and its own kindred. With its great strength, it did as it liked and ate others, day in and day out.
The one who rose against this demon was a young girl. She tricked the demon to get close and attacked it unaware, defeating it. The demon was sealed away, peace was restored, and everybody lived happily ever after.
But what came after “happily ever after”? These were a number of events that took place some time after the wicked Demon Eater was sealed away.
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THE YOUNG BOY AND THE PRETTY LADY
August, Showa 51 (1976 AD).
“I’m heading out!”
South of Asakusa Station, near where the Sumida River flowed, was the ordinary house Takamori Keito lived in.
It was the height of summer. Keito, a fourth-grade elementary school student, skipped doing his summer homework to play all day. He was known as a bit of a free spirit, so much so that if anybody saw him actually studying, they would think it so unusual that they would suspect he’d caught a cold. He liked to move his body, hated hard work, and got middling grades at best. He didn’t care, though. So long as he could make people laugh at his jokes, he was happy. He didn’t study at all in the summer, played until the sun went down, and stayed up late every day.
However, he had been waking up earlier in the day lately. Not to do radio calisthenics like many his age did, but for a different purpose.
“Oh no! I overslept!”
He’d made the mistake of reading a book of ghost stories he borrowed from a friend. Every little bump in the night had kept him awake until the wee hours of the night, causing him to sleep in. He would be late if he didn’t hurry, so he ran even harder than he did on the day of his class’s fitness test.
“Hey, Keito! Keep it down, will ya?! Some people are trying to sleep here!” a middle-aged man yelled.
“Oh, shush it, old man! Nobody’s a bigger nuisance around here than you after you start hitting the bottle. Agh, wait, I have no time for this!”
The folks in this downtown neighborhood all got along well. Keito ignored the angry shouts of the middle-aged man and ran. The people who saw him probably thought he was up to his usual antics again, but this was serious.
“Yes! I made it!” He reached a small shrine whose name he didn’t know, located in Asakusa. It was part of his daily routine to visit this shrine in the morning. Not that he was particularly devout or anything. His reason for coming had nothing to do with the shrine itself.
He caught his breath, wiped his sweat, and entered the shrine grounds with as nonchalant a face as he could manage. The noisy chirping of cicadas was everywhere, as was the overwhelming scent of greenery. He walked along, the place feeling keenly of summer, and broke into smiles when he saw that she was still around. He had made it in time.
“Oh? Hey, what’s up, Keito-kun?” She greeted him with a warm smile. Her way of speaking was a bit odd, but she was beautiful and had a calm air to her. She looked to be around twenty-one or maybe twenty-two years old, and the way she gracefully smiled was the very image of a mature woman. She was Yunohara Aoba, a woman who ran an antique store in Asakusa.
“G-good morning, Aoba-san.”
“And good morning to you. You’re kind of early again, huh? Isn’t it tough coming to the shrine every day?”
“N-no, this much is nothing! Nothing beats the clean, fresh air of the shrine in the morning, yup! Refreshing!” He combed his hair back with his fingers and tried to act cool. Aoba smiled warmly at him. He continued, “Wait, you come early every day yourself. We even meet every morning. Talk about a coincidence.”
It likely needn’t be said at this point, but the reason Keito came to the shrine so early every morning was to see Aoba. The young boy had a crush on the pretty older woman.
“Ah ha ha, well, in my case coming to the shrine is part of my daily routine.” She laughed cheerfully, then looked toward the main shrine building. Her focus was on what was past its wooden lattice—the sword enshrined within. “Yatonomori Kaneomi…”
“Huh?”
“That’s the name of the sword they keep here. It was used to seal away a demon a long time ago.”
With eyes full of wonder, the young boy looked past the wooden lattice himself to try and see the sword. She watched him with a heartfelt smile.
She said, “It felt better to keep it here than at the store, so I entrusted it to the shrine. It’s been a quick seventeen years since then…”
“You had it at the store? Like, for sale?” he asked.
“Not quite. It was passed down in the family—though not for many generations, I guess. We’re an antique store, so most of the old things we have are for sale. Keeping the sword around our wares just didn’t feel proper, like it was being lumped in with them.”
She was using oddly ambiguous phrasing. Keito was too young to pick up on the subtleties of her heart, but he at least understood that the sword was important to her. “So you’ve been coming every day since you left it here?”
“Not quite. It was stolen once, you see. Er, maybe not stolen, but ‘borrowed’ by an acquaintance. It was missing for about ten years, longer than it’s actually been at the shrine. I didn’t come by much during that time.”
That ten-year void was a tale for another time. Aoba knew of the encounter between the timid, bookish boy and the sealed demon, but their story had nothing to do with her and even less to do with Keito. She saw no reason to bring it up.
“Is that so? Good thing it got returned then, huh?” he said.
“Ah ha ha, no kidding. But I’m sure it was fated to come back.”
“Say, this sword’s a family heirloom, right? Is it, like, crazy expensive?”
“Good question. It was made by a swordsmith in the late Warring States period, so I’m sure it’s somewhat valuable.”
“Ooh, that’s so cool. Can I touch it?”
“Ah ha ha, you’re such a boy, aren’t you?”
The details of how the sword came to rest here were of no interest to the elementary school-age boy, but the fact that it was a family heirloom and from the Warring States period excited him. He wanted to touch it and draw its blade out if he could. He looked at Aoba expectantly, but her gaze was on the sword and her eyes were sad. The young woman he had a crush on stared at the sword as if it was someone she felt an unrequited love for.
“Wouldn’t it be better if you kept the sword at home after all?” he suggested. Even as an outsider, he could tell the sword was terribly dear to her. She had said she didn’t want to feel like it was being lumped in with the things she sold, but he still thought it would be better if she kept it close. She cared about it enough to come to the shrine every day. Wouldn’t she rather keep it herself instead of entrusting its care to someone else?
But she shook her head and smiled. “I think about it sometimes, but I always end up leaving it here. I think it’s better for me to put some distance between this sword and myself.”
“Why?”
“So I can keep thinking about thoughts that lead nowhere, I guess. That’s what I’ve been doing for more than a decade now.”
The smile she made then caused him to inadvertently blush. He was still too much of a child to understand her feelings.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“Ah ha ha, I don’t get it either, to tell the truth.”
“So you’ve been coming here every day just to think about things?”
“That’s about right. That, and for my revenge.” Despite her peaceful expression, she said something rather unsettling.
Keito’s eyes went wide. He hadn’t expected such a pretty young woman to use such a disquieting word.
“My grandfather’s revenge is over, so this time it’s my turn for revenge. It’s probably what I’m living for now.” She ended the conversation there and stretched her back. Now that her body was more limber, she patted Keito, who was frozen stiff out of shock, on the back. “See you later, Keito-kun. I’ve got to head back. Nanao’s waiting for me.”
Hearing something even more alarming than “revenge,” his mind began to whirl again. “Um, who is this Nanao-san? Is he your boyfriend…?”
“Huh? Ah ha ha ha! Oh, Keito-kun. You’re so funny,” she replied.
He let out a sigh of relief before being broadsided by cold reality.
“Nanao is my adorable little daughter, who takes after my husband a lot. She goes to the same school as you, so I kinda assumed you knew each other.”
He was in disbelief. A woman as youthful-looking as Aoba had a daughter and a husband? “Um, Aoba-san? How old are you?”
“Oh, dear. You shouldn’t ask a lady her age. Not that I particularly care! I’m thirty-two.”
He had completely been under the impression she was in her early twenties. He froze stiff for a second time, while she started walking home with some extra pep in her step. Left alone, he could only stand there, dumbfounded.
There existed a saying in Japan: First love bears no fruit. On this summer day, at the ripe age of ten years old, Keito learned how oh-so-painfully true that was.