“Feelings a person wants to bring to fruition even at the cost of their own humanity turn people into snakes. However, once transformed, they can never change back. What such women have in common is a destructive obsession, the antitheses of self-preservation. This was true of Mayuka as well.”
His eyes were on a serpent sleeping in the coffin. Like a deep crimson snake, the obi was wound around the girl’s throat. In his book, Toriyama Sekien had drawn the jatai as an obi taking the form of a snake yokai lunging over a bedchamber screen to attack someone.
Perhaps its target had been the owner of the obi herself.
“When Mayuka killed Ranko,” said the boy, “she’d already planned for it to end this way. Once her stepmother’s ashes were interred on the forty-ninth day, she meant to follow her in death. In short, her sin was never ‘murder’; it was murder-suicide. That may be why she took the form of a jatai.”
In that case, this ending was probably not the result of hatred or anger, but of…
“Was she motivated by her love for Ranko?” asked the boy.
“Obsession is probably a better term. Ranko had grown conspicuously weaker over the past few years, and she’d realized that her death was near. What concerned her was Mayuka. She’d wanted to get her away from Kazutora somehow, and the two of them had been planning to escape together. However…” The smile on the young man’s lips deepened. “It was Mayuka who had suggested blackmail to the man in the first place. Ranko never knew. Until the very end, she was convinced that the girl was a victim who’d been dragged into their crimes. Ranko was a kind soul, and the more crimes they committed, the harder it was for her to escape from Mayuka, her accomplice. That was why Mayuka kept doing it. It was as if she were trapping a songbird in a cage.”
Unbidden, a line from a children’s song surfaced in the boy’s mind.
Kagome, kagome, the bird in the cage…
That cage woven of sins had once held two birds. When one tried to escape, the other had killed it.
“Why…?” the boy moaned. His eyes looked as if he were fighting the pain of some invisible wound. “Ranko was trying to escape with her. They could have spent what little life she had left together.”
And yet…
“Because only Mayuka was born ugly,” the young man told him, as if it were only natural.
One’s appearance at birth was like a congenital illness. Mayuka’s face had, like a snake, provoked disgust since she was born. She didn’t think she’d be able to live anywhere else.
And, with one exception, she’d thought no one could ever love her.
“Ranko was beautiful, Mayuka’s polar opposite. Although she wasn’t aware of it herself, it was her beauty that had made her a victim of others’ lusts and caused the villagers to dread her. She was like the enchantresses in Kyoka Izumi’s Ryutandan and The Saint of Mount Koya. People swarmed around her like moths to a flame. Mayuka knew that, if Ranko only escaped the birdcage, someone who genuinely loved her would appear before too long.”
She didn’t want to lose her. Didn’t want to part with her.
This woman alone is mine—had that emotion been what transformed her into a snake?
“There’s a similar snake inside you, isn’t there?”
“…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the boy said coldly.
The young man gave a significant smile. “When I heard you’d begun keeping a human, I thought it was a clever move. The Enma Ministry’s agreement doesn’t cover those. A human you’d domesticated would be able to kill as many of your mortal enemies as you wished. I assumed you’d begun to train yours accordingly—but from the look of things, he’s just a child’s toy.”
Ibara’s lowered eyes held a kindness that was almost benevolence. It was the sort of look one of Hell’s tormenting demons might occasionally show a child who’d died after being abandoned by their parents.
“You’re frightened of others fleeing from you. You couldn’t handle being betrayed, so in the end, all you’ve been able to keep with you are a goldfish in a bowl and a pet dog you’ve collared and chained. It’s enough to make one weep.”
“Silence, you wretch.”
The boy’s voice was low and flat, but his teeth were clenched, and the anger stealing into his expression was more intense than anything he’d ever shown—it was murderous.
“Well, well. It looks like I was right.” The young man’s voice was lighthearted and mocking.
Then he slowly raised his hands and clapped for a third time.
“Come.”
The next moment, the boy’s nose caught the smell of an animal.
A figure leaped down from the rafters and landed heavily on the tatami.
It was a middle-aged man whose face was wrapped in bandages. Through the small gaps between them, eyes peered out at the boy, glaring, as the man exhaled foul-smelling breath.
It was Kazutora Sawada.
“I thought I would show you how turning men into beasts is usually done,” the young man whispered. He reached out, and the man’s bandages unraveled and fell away.
The face they revealed was so ugly, it was hardly human. Or rather, at this point, it was less a face than a ruined mass of blackish scabs.
Behind the man’s neck, near the hollow at its nape, a shadow moved.
There was a hole the size of the tip of his little finger there. Inside it, something squirmed, and then a small, deep red snake emerged. Slithering out of the cavity, it slowly tore off a scab on the man’s face, then began to lap the blood and pus that welled up.
“Ghk, ah, ungh…”
The man groaned. It was doubtful that he was even sane anymore.
“That’s from Kyokutei Bakin’s Tale of Eternity Rewarding Virtue, isn’t it?” said the boy. “As retribution for a man’s misdeeds, a little snake makes its den in the back of his head, eventually eating all the scabs and flesh from his face and killing him—the story of a brutal villain who is devoured by his inner serpent, as it were.”
Could you call this a fitting end for a scoundrel? Even if one couldn’t pity him, it was simply cruel.
“That’s right. As that snake’s master, only I can stop it. This man seems to have eaten a living snake in an attempt to break the curse, but that could never work. As a result, he’ll do anything I say. That’s how he’s been trained.” A hand as white as a specter’s grabbed the back of the man’s head. Then Ibara peered into his eyes, just as a hunter would do to his prey. “This is what it means for an oni to keep a human. If you entrust so much as a corner of your heart to one, you’re no longer an oni. You’re just a lonely child. It’s sickeningly pathetic.”
Reaching into his kimono, the young man drew out a dagger. Smiling, he unsheathed it, then dangled it in front of the man’s nose, as if he were offering meat to a dog. The man’s trembling hand reached for the hilt—then he grabbed the blade with such force that it seemed as if it might break.
“Now what will you do?” the young man asked, turning back.
The boy was still kneeling calmly. Quietly, he shook his head; there was something like nobility in his expression. “I won’t cry and beg for mercy. Nor will I make one last futile attempt to flee. I may not look it, but I do have my pride.”
“…I see. That’s a relief,” the young man said, although he looked as if he actually found it rather boring. “In that case, let’s send you to Hell.”
There was a low, bestial growl. The man’s darkly gleaming eyes peered out of his scab-covered face and fixed on the boy. Then, abruptly, the jagged surface of the man’s face went slack. His lips seemed to split, curving, and a string of saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth.
He’d sneered.
“There. Go.” Ibara’s pale finger pointed.
At the signal, the man’s pupils constricted to tiny points.
They were the eyes of a snake targeting its prey.
And then—
“Ghaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
—he unleashed a hoarse scream.
The boy had taken a small glass bottle from his Shingen bag and dashed its contents into the man’s face. The smell of scorching flesh mixed with the stink of pus and blood.
It was concentrated acid.
While it couldn’t melt bone, it was more than enough to cause blindness. He’d secretly brought it along for self-defense.
Leaping to his feet, the boy bolted like a deer, making straight for the open door.
He’d run.
“Unbelievable. Fleeing’s his first and only option, hm? He’s even less principled than I thought,” Ibara whispered to himself. No one responded. Instead, broken screams welled from the throat of the man writhing in agony on the tatami, covering his face.
As Ibara watched, the screams died away, replaced by rough breathing. Then one glaring eye peeked out from between the man’s burned, blistered fingers.
He could see.
He’d reflexively clapped a hand over his face, and that side was unburned.
“…Ah. First his dog ran, and now his goldfish? They lose as poorly as their master,” the young man murmured.
By then, he was alone in the storehouse.
Autumn nights were long.
As long as a nightmare from which one cannot wake.
A small figure ran down the endless connecting walkway.
It never turned to look. It never stopped.
However, left with no way to protect itself, it was like a child pursued by a wild animal.
The man’s hand grabbed its shoulder with brutal force.
The figure staggered, and as it began to turn back…
Was it fear? Dread? There was no knowing what emotion those eyes held.
Just as he’d done to the live snake, the man’s leering mouth ripped out its pale throat.