e climbed down the slope, into the dreadfully silent valley, passed through the forest devoid of animal noises and approached the large clearing. Surprisingly enough, the firefly Yôkai had stayed with us, despite not being tied up or being forced to come along in any other way. She had instead been concentrating on regenerating her severed arm, which was encased in a chrysalis-like membrane, rapidly expanding in size and approaching the full length of her arm. Most likely, by the end of the day, she would be back to her previous appearance.

Suika pointed at a small hill and as we rounded it, I finally saw the source of the geyser of spirits; it was a vertical cave with an opening of half a dozen square meters, reaching into the depths of the earth. The walls were almost vertical and the bottom could not be seen as the light of the setting sun could never hope to reach it. Looking over the edge, I felt a strange pull from below, as if the abyss was beckoning me to jump into its gaping maw. Even though I did not usually fear heights, this was something completely different.

"Kyôma, your destination lies at the bottom of this. Now would be a good time to learn how to fly," The little Oni said and simply pushed me over the edge. For a moment I did not understand what had just happened, as I felt gravity take hold of me, while I turned around and looked up to see Suika and Riguru growing distant at the border of the visible crimson sky. Then I turned over in midair again and was disappearing into the depths of the darkness, feeling like I was riding on an invisible rollercoaster; the sensation was similar, but indescribably more potent.

"Damn you, Suika, I'll remember this!" I shouted as I turned over again due to inertia.

First, I had to find a way to stabilize myself or the fall could end worse than it needed to. Despite the fact that I was in freefall and had already left behind at least fifty meters, knowing that impacting from this height spelled death, I was not panicking. A solution to this predicament could come in the form of a lake at the bottom, into which I could dive. At least water was softer than solid rock, even if it made no difference due to the height of the fall, some might argue. Maybe I would be able to catch an odd ledge sticking out of the wall, or get close enough to one wall to kick off of and propel myself into the wall on the other side to slow my fall.

Then again, the Oni had done this with a purpose, which was similar to how parent birds threw the children out of the nests to force them to act on their instincts, spread their wings and fly away. I wondered who came up with this myth, saying that birds would actually do such a thing to their young, but it must be a cold-hearted person. In any case, I was no bird, no wings to spread and no instincts for flight whatsoever.

Even then, looking down below, as my eyes began to get used to the darkness, my path was just a pitch black hole into the heart of the earth, it seemed. There was enough time to think idle thoughts, such as how this cave had come to be, and what kind of training Suika expected me to do in such a world of darkness. My mind wandered, playing with the idea that maybe she wanted me to train all senses other than sight, and had thrown me into a place with no light. Or maybe the hellish training had already begun.

"Aren't you a little fast, human?" Riguru's voice resounded close by me, but I was unable to see her in the darkness. "You must be looking forward to reaching the bottom."

"You don't have good ears, do you?" I responded with a hard to miss sarcastic undertone. "I shouldn't have ears in the first place, so no, they aren't that great," The firefly's voice replied. Due to the lack of a visual reference, I was unable to tell whether that was a cynical joke or a simple statement.

"I can't fly."

"That's bad, isn't it?"

I tried to grab at where her voice came from, in an attempt to strangle her for such a deadpan response. However, no matter how much I flailed, my hands only connected with the same thing my whole body had been connecting with for the past minute - thin air.

"You're a firefly, make some light already!"

"It doesn't look very dignified when I do it, so I refuse."

Again, I flailed. Again, to no avail.

"I think you're going to die at this rate, human."

"I know, right?" I responded, a fake smile on my face as I held back my anger at the voice's owner for stating things in such a matter of fact way. "How about helping me out for a bit? You can fly, so grab me and help me find something to hold onto on the wall."

"You look heavy, so I refuse."

"Alright, be like that. Then I'll…" I went silent, running out of words to say. During our entire exchange, there was no sign of me hitting the ground. Albeit, in the darkness, I would not be able to tell until it actually happened. The hole had been going almost completely straight down, as far as I could tell, and my grasping hands and feet touched nothing even as I haphazardly spread them in all directions, risking losing them on a sharp rock sticking out of the wall.

"You look quite pitiful."

"Thank you, but you’re not helping!"

"Ok, grab onto this," Riguru's voice stated, sounding like an angel's in my ears. I grabbed in the direction of where it originated from and touched something with my fingertip. Reflexively I extended my arm as far as possible and got hold of it, only then realizing that it felt like a rope. Maybe the firefly had tied it before jumping after me, and I would be saved, even though I knew that before I would come to a stop, my hands would be a blistering bloody mess from the friction, if I did not simply smash into the wall from the abrupt stop or the rope did not simply snap from the force of my fall. There were a lot of things to pay attention to, but I had no alternatives at this point in time, and held onto it firmly.

"Alright, I got it! Where did you tie it to?"

"Hm? What do you mean, where did I tie it to?"

I almost let go of the rope at those words and once again, fruitlessly, tried to catch the insolent cockroach to squash her, just as she had squashed my foolish hope that she would in any way save me. All the while, I was still helplessly falling. Her response just meant that I would have to find something to tie the rope onto myself, even though I was unable to see anything with my normal eye. Maybe this was the time to open my left eye for more than just seeing spiritual energy. I had no time to think about the repercussions of keeping it open for longer than just a split second and shut my right eye, opening my all-seeing left at the same time.

The darkness was blown away, as I saw a world of brightness, an upwards stream in which I was the only oddity that moved downwards. My floating body was surrounded by countless spirits, illuminating the world around me, their density making them appear like a river of light. However, I had no time to marvel at the sight, as pain was starting to spread from my eye. Looking at the rope Riguru had given me, I realized that it was about half a meter long in total.

"You damned cockroach!!!" I howled. Spinning my vision around, I finally found her among all the spirits, flying almost right next to me and trying to poke me in the ear with a twig. At my shout she jolted, but opened her mouth to respond with her usual 'I'm not a cockroach, I'm a firefly'. Before she could do so I snapped my right arm around and grabbed her upper arm, on the unharmed side. As I got hold of her, I used her as a means to maneuver and moved myself closer to the wall, which I kicked off of. Before I could feel the pain shooting into my right leg, I already found myself fast approaching the other side of the wall, my downwards momentum slowed ever so slightly.

By repeating this process, alternating between my right and left leg, and not letting go of a screaming Riguru all the while, I was able to decelerate considerably. Even then, there was no way to stop and the relatively smooth walls would not give me any opening to grab onto.

Then my fall was abruptly stopped by something like a net. Unable to keep my left eye open any longer, I was only able to see that it appeared to be partially made of spiritual energy, as it was glowing faintly. Then darkness returned and I found that the net was sticky and that I was trapped in it, like a butterfly in a spider's web.

The analogy should prove to be right on the mark, although I dreaded to consider the size of the spider, if it was able to spin a net strong enough to catch a grown human at terminal velocity. From books and television I had learned that being eaten by a spider was certainly not a quick end, and while insects lacked the capacity to feel pain, I certainly did not.

"Do you feel like being useful now, you cockroach?" I yelled, knowing that Riguru was just as trapped as I was. After all, I was still holding onto her arm, which I hoped had not come off again. I did not want to imagine what it would look like, being severed at the human looking part. Still, at this point, some would surely argue that I was mistreating animals.

"I'm not a cockroach, I'm-"

"A firefly. So do as a firefly, and make some light with your ass!" I shouted, somehow imagining that Riguru was blushing furiously. However, unexpectedly, she did not shout back in a reprimanding tone, but was completely silent, her arm shaking from what I assumed to be fear.

It appeared the owner had noticed the prey trapped in its web.

"What do we have here? This is a rare sight. Two at once," A sultry female voice resounded through the darkness. It came from above us, and in the dark I saw four pairs of red dots coming closer, all of them blinking periodically in pairs. The fact that the spider was capable of a very human voice made me assume that she was in fact humanoid, as much as Riguru was, with multiple eyes like a spider - just as Riguru had compound eyes in an otherwise human countenance.

Suddenly the firefly Yôkai's shaking stopped and I felt her arm stiffening, accompanied by the spider woman's voice. "Hm, this one is a little insect Yôkai. Just enough as an appetizer." It came closer towards the end of the statement and I felt a presence hovering right above me. Unable to move, I could only helplessly let a pair of clawed hands touch my face and trace down my neck to feel all over my body. "This is a well-built human. I haven't had a human in a long time." The voice became heated in anticipation. "I have to control myself. The best should be left for last. But I really want to eat you!" The sensual subtext was not lost on me, but I could not bring myself to feel even slightly aroused due to the fact that I preferred not to get sucked dry in a different sense than the enjoyable one.

Even though the pain in and around my left eye had yet to fade, I opened it in exchange with closing my right. The torrent of souls flowed upwards unabated, but it was creeping along the walls of the sinkhole, avoiding the spider web Riguru and I found myself in. Above me was the flaxen haired, eight-eyed spider woman, her face unexpectedly close to mine as it looked over my features in a more than just interested way. She had a sultry smile on her lips, which she would lick occasionally, exposing enlarged canines sticking out from the edges of her mouth, which appeared to be able to move like mandibles.

I had misjudged her humanity; she was more spider than human. As she moved away slightly, I was able to see that she had six spider legs, extending from her waist, which were holding onto various threads with their claws. She was wearing a brown, sleeveless fur dress, with yellow bands covering it in a pattern found in venomous types of spiders. I assumed that the dress was part of her development into a human, meaning that the fur had once been, or maybe still was, part of her body. Her exposed upper arms were human, just like Riguru's, but her lower arms were covered by chitin gauntlets, with her fingers ending in brown claws. They were larger than proportionally right for her human body's size, but did not appear too out of place. The large opisthosoma, a spider's abdomen, was connected to her humanoid body part's pelvis, so she was unable to wear anything below that point; her naked human legs were dangling, slightly bent, from where her dress ended.

I knew from various encounters with the Yôkai in the forest, that they did not possess the sense of shame humans did. The only reason they wore clothes was because they copied what they saw, as well as for blending in, rather than out of obligation born from social constraints. This particular individual seemed no different, as she turned back to Riguru, exposing her bare backside to me with no regard for her appearance.

"Hey, firefly, you should learn from this spider, who doesn't seem to care about exposing her bottom, and give us some light," I said, still joking around in a situation of life and death.

"Oh, human, you can see in this dark? It's not that I don't mind exposing myself. It's that you just won't live to tell the tale," The spider woman said, unwittingly denying the theory I had built up about Yôkai and their social behavior. Then again, it could be just this particular one, being the same as Riguru not wanting to let the sun rise from her backside. "Don't worry, I will be with you in a moment. Let me taste this firefly first."

"I don't really feel obligated to save her, especially after all she did on the way down here, but I'm too nice for my own good," I said with a sigh and closed my left eye, to return to a world of darkness. For what I wanted to do next, sight was secondary. I grabbed hold of one of the threads the spider woman had been moving along on, guessing that they were the non-sticky type, and putting all my strength into my body, lifted myself from the web, ripping it apart in the process.

"What are you doing?! Stop it, you're destroying my net!" The owner of the web whined. I felt motion and knew that she was coming down on me, so I let go of Riguru's right arm, reached out in front of me and hit the jackpot; I got my hand onto the spider's neck, meaning she would not be able to bite me with her venom.

"Now, be a good girl. Don't make me squeeze hard," Was all I needed to say to stop her from trying to fight back; I supported my words by applying some pressure on her neck to make it more believable. She was most likely physically stronger, but I had gotten into a very advantageous position and would, through the feeling in my arm, feel whenever she would try to do something. "Free the firefly, I don't want to pull on her arm and tear it off again." It had been the reason why I had not pulled her up with me.

"And now, Riguru-chan, please illuminate this place." I tried not to sound too commanding, all the while suppressing the overwhelming pain assaulting the left half of my head. I had kept my left eye open for too long and for too often in one day, so the repercussions were stacking. The pain would subside soon enough, but it could incapacitate me if I was not careful. And with a man-eating spider Yôkai around I did not want to let that happen.

Unexpectedly, this time, the firefly Yôkai complied wordlessly and a glow appeared in the dark. However, the light did not appear on Riguru's backside as I had expected, but rather from her abdomen, which she exposed by lifting up her shirt. The gesture held a feeling of sensuality, but this was not the time for that. I turned my attention to the one whose throat I was still holding. The spider woman's expression was that of suppressed anger and indignity, but there was no hint of helplessness.

"Well, Riguru-chan, you don't look too bad doing that, really. Now, you, spider," I stated, not looking away from the reddish-brown eyes of the Yôkai in question.

"My name is Kurodani Yamame, human," The spider woman introduced herself, trying to sound condescending, as if talking to a lesser being.

"And my name is Kagami Kyôma, spider," I replied, following her example. It earned me a glare, which I returned with a smile. "Now that we got the introductions out of the way, I'd like to propose a ceasefire."

"You don't understand your position, human. The only reason I'm complying with you is because I don't want my neck snapped. But unlike you, I won't die from it. It will only be a pain to heal back up. I'm comparing the nutrition value lost from doing so and from eating you two, and it comes out at net zero," Yamame stated, her eyes staring at mine coldly. She bared her teeth and hissed. "So to me, it’s just a matter of how much I stand to gain in the end."

The spider woman's voice was dangerously low, and I understood that it was not an empty threat. I knew that Yôkai were very resilient, and seeing Riguru, I understood that those with an arthropod base could completely regenerate lost limbs. I would not be surprised if they could heal a broken spine, considering the fact that arthropods had no spines in the first place. If creating a humanoid body required only imagination and spiritual strength on the Yôkai's part, as long as the mind remained, anything could be grown back.

"This leaves us in a tight spot then…" I said, stalling for time while trying to find a way out. I understood that if I snapped Yamame's neck here, I would have lost my only leverage against her, upon which she would attack me relentlessly with all her strength. If we could not strike a trade or ceasefire, the moment I let go of her, she would come down on me just the same. "What should we do in this kind of situation? What do you think, Riguru-chan?"

"Don't ask me, it takes my all to make it shine for so long. She's my natural enemy, I don't know any form of countermeasure against her," The firefly Yôkai squeezed out from between her lips. Her face showed a mixture of fear, stress and mounting fatigue.

"You seem to be able to control insects, can't you control her?"

"Spiders are no insects."

"I know, but is your power really that clearly defined?" I wondered. It was strange to think that in Gensôkyô there were clear rules to supernatural powers, as if somebody had written them down on paper. In Riguru's case, being able to control only 'insects' seemed to be a strange limitation, considering the fact that spiders being put into a separate definition happened not too long ago and many still refer to them as insects. However, the only reason why any form of classification even existed was because humans made those definitions. Then again, Yôkai were supposedly a byproduct of humanity, as one scholar of folklore once claimed, so they followed human rules.

"I can't," Riguru said definitely. "And I won't be able to hold the light any longer. It's starting to burn me up from the inside."

If the light went out now, who knew what could happen. With six extra limbs to steady herself on, Yamame could spin a web around us in the darkness without me noticing. I had to act now.

"How about we all forget about this and go our separate ways, Yamame-san?" I began, but was shot down with a deadly smile. "Oh, you seem quite desperate, human. Let me see you squirm some more before the light fades, along with your hope for survival." She was convinced that she had the upper hand, and I was aware that it was true.

Riguru was free and standing on a non-sticky web, while there were a few strands still attached to my back. When it came down to it, they might delay me for a moment, which could make the difference between life and death. Time was running out and I had to decide what to do; it was the first time that not only my own life depended on my choice, unlike all the previous times, in which I could only be protected. It was a strange feeling, but for the first time, I was being depended on, as I could see from the firefly's eyes. She was looking in my direction nervously, signaling me that she had to stop the glowing in her belly anytime now.

It was all or nothing.

In a split second decision, just as the light from the firefly's stomach flickered, I pulled myself up with all my strength and used my left hand to push the spider Yôkai into her own web, noticing in the process that she seemed to be lighter than her appearance suggested. Riguru's bioluminescence fully disappeared, leaving only an afterimage of her position. I let go of the non-sticky thread and used my momentum to lunge at her, while in the same motion, tearing apart the last webs sticking onto my back. I put my arms around the petite firefly Yôkai and dragged her down, passing through the opening Yamame had created by freeing the former.

Just as I thought we had escaped, I felt sharp claws dig into my leg, ripping open my skin and piercing deep into my flesh. I suppressed a scream at the pain, hoping that there was no venom in the spider’s claws. However, at the speed I went momentum and weight caused her claws to rip open the skin of my leg, and freed me from her final attempt at keeping us in her grasp.

We were falling again, with the enraged Yamame screaming curses after us. The voice soon disappeared into the distance like an echo in the endless pit that this cave was. Our situation had improved immensely, but I was still falling, and Riguru could not support my weight, no matter how much I clung to her. I let go and decided that I had to use my left eye again; falling in the dark could only go well for so long. Opening the all-seeing eye, the flow of souls remained unabated, and once again, the sinkhole was brightly illuminated.

Seeing that Riguru's expression was different from her previous mischievously deadpan one, looking almost frantic to find a way to save me, I smiled.

"You're a good girl, Riguru-chan," I said, eliciting a confused look from the girl in question. With that, I took the first opportunity that presented itself to try the same as I had before, kicking off a wall and jumping to and fro between the opposite sides of the hole. I ignored the deep gashes on my leg and used pure willpower to continue relying on it, slowing down steadily and finally coming to a controlled descent. This time, no matter how painful it was, I kept my left eye open, and soon I saw that the hole was bending slightly.

At one point, the sinkhole turned into a tunnel that proceeded nearly horizontally, and I finally came to a stop. I closed my eyes and fell onto my behind out of exhaustion and pain in my wounded leg. Any normal human would have broken his bones from kicking off a wall at the speed I had been going at. Considering the deep cut in my calf, the pain should have been distracting enough to make me lose my concentration and slip up. I assumed that the training Suika had subjected me to, as well as the Sake she had given me - both for drinking and healing purposes - had somehow not only strengthened my body but also my mind. The fatigue still got to me after such an eventful day, and I lay down, needing to rest for a while.

"Thanks, Kyôma," Riguru broke the silence in the darkness, her voice sounding much more amiable than it had before. She also called me by my name for the first time since we started talking to each other. "You saved me, even though I attacked you earlier. We Yôkai usually don't help each other, unless there is something to gain from it. But you endangered your own escape trying to save me."

Suddenly I felt Riguru's claws touching my wounded calf ever so gently. She seemed to be able to see in the dark, but I was unable to tell what her expression was concerning the wound I received from Yamame due to taking the time to save her instead of simply leaving her behind. If I had jumped down without her, I would have gotten out unscathed, while leaving her as a decoy. Mamizô must have had the exact same options at that fateful moment atop the stairs of the Hakurei Shrine, and she had chosen to protect me at the cost of her own life. Of course, I had rescued Riguru thinking that we would both be able to escape without a problem, not even considering that it could put my own life at risk. I was simply overconfident with my newfound superhuman powers, and it showed that I lacked insight into the difference of strength between me and others.

"There might be some venom in her claws," The insect girl said, before embracing my wounded leg with her hand. I felt a warm breath on it, before her lips touched the cut and began to suck out the blood from it. I was surprised that she would go so far, but I remembered that Riguru was the type of Yôkai to eat humans. I heard a gulping sound, so I knew she was actually drinking my blood. As long as she did not start to nibble on me or bite me, I was fine with that, for now.

"I think that should do it..." With a final lick across the entire length of the wound, she whispered with a heated undertone, as if she had entered a shark-like blood frenzy and had to bring herself back from it by force of will. "That was deli- I mean, there was no venom in it, I think." In the darkness, there was the ripping sound of cloth, and soon my leg was fully bandaged.

"Thank you, Riguru-chan. Now, just let me rest for a little..." With these words, I relaxed my whole body, feeling like it was sinking into the ground.

Waking up with a splitting headache, the first thing I noticed was that I was unable to open my left eye even when I tried to. Secondly, I noticed that my surroundings were no longer completely dark, but in fact slightly illuminated by a green glow that seemed to come off the walls. The third thing was that when I had laid down to sleep, the ground under my head had been solid rock, but now there seemed to be a pillow. Looking up, I saw a pair of green compound irises staring down at me.

"You finally came to, Kyôma," Suika's voice echoed throughout the tunnel. She sounded as mischievous as ever.

I found myself in the legendary lap pillow, and one by Riguru no less. Suika sat leaning against the tunnel wall, Sake and some of the dried, unidentified meat she had been feeding me the past few months, in her hands. She had been making merry while I was busy falling to my death in the darkness.

"You were supposed to learn how to fly," She stated, clearly serious in her reprimanding tone. I knew that she wanted to teach me a lesson, and I was used to her reckless ways - which was exactly why I quickly got up and snapped back at her, like every time after she would object me to reckless dangers.

"Do you usually push people down an endless hole to teach them flying?! There was even a man-eating spider Yôkai along the way!"

"If you had died, that would have just meant that you were not strong enough!" The Oni snapped back. It was the usual routine we both had gotten used to. At first I had been truly upset, not only at Suika's teaching methods, but also at my own shortcomings, which had resulted in Mamizô's sacrifice. But over time I had learned to embrace those flaws like creases in a sheet of steel which had to be painstakingly ironed out. And I came to understand that it took a sledgehammer to do so. The little Oni’s questionable methods and my own willpower together formed that sledgehammer, so I had no real right to complain. By now it was like a play we liked to enact, since it took off tension from living at the edge of death every day.

"I know I know. Still, you could do something about the way you teach people."

"You should simply improve more quickly. Then I wouldn't have to teach you like this. Just know I don't usually teach people, you're special."

"Why, thank you! I feel so privileged, oh great teacher," I remarked sarcastically and laid back down, my head still slightly spinning. The casual manner in which I placed my head back onto Riguru's lap actually surprised myself, but she did not seem to mind. In the outside world, this kind of casual contact would be considered strange. A woman giving a man a lap pillow was usually a display of affection, and I had only ever seen it between lovers, who were usually called idiot couples. Discarding another aspect of my common sense formed by life in modern human society, I simply enjoyed a moment of rest.

"What are you getting all comfortable for, we're moving!" Suika said and got up from her position. She had put away the food and Sake, and was pointing at the green glow around us. "This is the doing of another Yôkai. What if it was another man-eating one? You shouldn't let down your guard."

"How long have I been out of it and how long has this glow been here?" I asked without getting up. Suika didn't answer, knowing that the truth would dispel my worries and undermine her attempt at pressuring me into action. I had gathered from the way she talked about the glow that she knew whom it belonged to, meaning that the owner was not an immediate danger to me. "I like it in Riguru-chan's lap, so just leave me be for now."

"Che, have it your way then. I won't help you when a Yôkai attacks," The Oni grumbled and sat back down.

"Not like you would even if I listened to you." My words left her nothing to respond with, but she sneered at me anyway. Silence fell over the tunnel.

I did not try to sleep but instead took a closer look at Riguru's face, especially her eyes. Her overall features were fascinating and anyone would be able to tell that she was not a human even without the feelers sticking out of her green hair. However, just as I had noticed before, she was beautiful in her own right, possessing a different kind of aesthetic compared to a human's. I slowly extended a hand towards her forehead and touched one of her antenna carefully, but she still flinched at the sensation. It twitched and drew away, but soon returned hesitantly and began to feel my hand with light tapping.

All the while, Riguru was looking at me curiously with her large compound irises. After a while I withdrew my hand, but she grabbed it with her right hand. The arm I had accidentally ripped off earlier had grown back completely, and looked no different to her previous one. It appeared that she wanted to continue this wordless exchange, as her feeler played over my hand, tickling my palm. I extended my free hand and got hold of her left arm, examining the wring and the claws while intertwining our fingers.

"Way to go, Kyôma! I don't know what happened in the darkness, but you two seem to be much closer to each other," Suika remarked with a bemused undertone. Both Riguru and I snapped out of the trance-like state we had found ourselves in and pulled our hands away. Way to go, Oni, ruining the glorious moment, I thought.

There was no point in dawdling anymore, and my headache would not disappear without proper rest, which I could not get in an environment where everything was out to kill a human such as myself. I knew that even with Suika and Riguru around, I could not rely on them to protect me while I was asleep; the fact that nothing had happened was purely by chance. The spider Yôkai could have freed herself and decided to chase after us, or another Yôkai could have appeared from deeper down the hole, at any time.

"Let's go," I said as I got up from the firefly's lap and pulled her up by her new right hand. Suika stood up as well, watching us with the grin of an old perverted man. "Give me some of your Sake against my headache. It's the only thing that seems to have an effect on my current self." When the little Oni had offered me some from her gourd for the first time, I had made the mistake to decline and say that I could not get drunk at all. She had proven that an Oni's brew had a much greater effect than Mamizô's human-made Sake, and knocked me out with it for an entire day.

I took the offered gourd and directly took a few gulps from it. The burning liquid flowed down my sore throat, cleared up my mind and soon dispelled the headache plaguing me. I still did not dare to open my left eye, even just as a test, but at least I could feel the left half of my face again. Then, I felt my right half going numb from the effect of the strong alcohol. It felt like an Oni's Sake contained more alcohol than liquid, as if defying the laws of physics. Of course, a human drinking just a small cup of pure alcohol would be dancing with death, making me wonder just what I had become to chug it as a sort of medicine.

"Can you go on like this, Kyôma? Wasn't that a little too much?" Suika asked, clearly not concerned but rather amused.

"Shut up, I can take this much," I responded and felt a little tipsy. It wouldn't impede my ability to think or walk straight with just this much, however, so I walked ahead. The wound on my leg was pulsing with a numb pain with every step, but the alcohol was doing its part in making it bearable. I knew that drinking Suika's Sake would greatly help with the healing process, so I was not overly concerned with it. In my already very unconcerned state, intoxication had an amplifying effect on it, so there was that, too.

"If you say so."

We proceeded deeper into the caverns, surrounded by the soft but eerie green light. Looking back, it felt as if an invisible darkness was following us, but I knew that it was in fact the glow that was always illuminating a certain area around us, as if to highlight us for whoever controlled it.

It felt like we walked for a few hours, through an ever-winding tunnel that never branched off, when the cave started to widen steadily. If it had been the size of a subway tunnel before, it was now becoming wide enough to accommodate a river tanker. Then we walked out into an open area, and the walls and the ceiling disappeared in all directions.

"Ah, it's been a while since I came here," Suika commented, and looked happy. The cave was not pitch black, as wisps were floating around in the empty space, but the actual size of the cavern was unfathomable. I now understood when the little Oni, who trudged ahead and left Riguru and me behind looking around us in awe, referred to this as Former Hell; the endless appearing space seemed to be enough to house all the people in Gensôkyô, and the flow of spirits was proof that there had been an abundance of dead in this place. The fact that the temperature was rising ever so slightly was also an indicator, although I was not sure as to what exactly it portended.

The green glow remained on us, like a searchlight in the dark, as we followed Suika's lead; she seemed to know where to go. The splatter of a flowing body of water could be heard ahead of us, suggesting that there was an underground river. It sounded like the Kamo river in Kyôto during summer, so it could not be very deep. I did not feel like wading through a river that flowed through a place referred to as Former Hell, though. There was just the feeling of doing something irreversible involved in that image.

Soon, we were climbing a small hill, beyond which dim lights illuminated the endless appearing cavern like a small city at night lit the sky above it. It could have been many things, so I did not make any hasty conclusions about the possibility of a village being in a place like this. We soon reached the top and found a river below us, with a wooden bridge brightly lit by paper lanterns in various colors leading across its shallow depths. The water looked very clear, and its surface reflected and refracted the colorful lanterns to create a beautiful play of lights. In the distance, beyond the bridge, there was an actual settlement, consisting of wooden buildings, looking like they had been taken from the human village and transported underground.

The green glow that had been following us faded away into the stronger light of the lanterns, as we approached the bridge. However, it had not disappeared, but rather, moved ahead of us, turning into glowing balls of lights that resembled wisps, as they approached a figure leaning against the red lacquered railings. It was a girl with ash blond hair, fair skin, faintly glowing green eyes and exceptionally long pointy ears that were curved downwards. A dark red scarf hid her neck, and she wore an elaborate two-colored, short-sleeved dress, of which the upper part was brown, featuring a dark blue and white cross pattern on its hem. The lower part, held together by a white sash, was two-layered, with the shorter upper layer being dark blue, featuring a white hem, and the lower layer being completely black. Attached to the lower layer's hem were red strings, hanging down in a cross pattern.

She did not look at us, even though our steps made dull sounds on the wooden bridge, as she was biting nail on her thumb. A faint green aura surrounded her, into which the wisp-like balls dove and separated from repeatedly. Suika passed by her without paying her any attention, while Riguru looked at her for a moment, curiosity in her eyes, but not slowing down in her pace. Just as I was about to pass her, I heard her whisper something barely audible, most likely to herself rather than directed at anyone.

"So jealous..."