~~~

‘Katana,’ shouted Akira, poking a dripping wet yukata sleeve through the hole in the wall and jabbing wildly at the floor.

Pulling back the hand from his cheek, Miho wiped away the already smeared blood on the door frame and then went for the blade. It was odd, there was a pale, slightly viscous kind of green residue coated on its surface, which had to be the green man’s blood.

What else could it be?

Stomach bile?

‘Faster…’ shouted Akira, waving his arm frantically.

‘Coming.’

Miho hurried past Himiko, for some reason turning back to say, ‘sorry about the damage.’ This appeared to be the correct code word as she instantly re-activated, shoving Miho into the door panel as she rushed past, screaming, ‘don’t leave me, wait, not yet, don’t go.’

The sound of her ranting got fainter, and quickly developed an echo effect, which didn’t make any sense at all…until Miho made it through to the onsen room and saw one of the panels on the far wall slid to the side.

‘I’m going in,’ said Akira, taking his katana from Miho with his right hand and instantly dropping it on the floor. ‘Kuso…’

‘The green gooey stuff?’

‘My wrist…gonna have to use my left…’ Akira bent down and stopped a moment, waiting for the floor to stop spinning, then picked up the katana guard with his unbroken hand. ‘What the hell’s all this green slime?’

‘That’s what I said, the green gooey stuff.’

‘Looks like it’s been up an ogre’s nose. Kuso.’

‘Must be the green man’s blood…’

Akira put a hand against Miho’s calf and used it to pull himself up, then went over to the boiling onsen pool and dipped in his blade. He held it there for at least three seconds then pulled it back out and said kuso again.

‘Why is not coming off?’ he moaned, dipping it in once more, this time for ten, fifteen seconds before extracting.

Didn’t matter, the result was still the same.

‘Gods, I’m really gonna kill that green fucker,’ he said, spitting in the pool and turning back to the secret wall panel.

‘We’re still going in there?’ asked Miho, picking up a towel from the floor and handing it to Akira, who swatted it away in favour of poking his pale green katana into the darkness of the apparent cave passage.

‘Obviously…’

‘But you’re soaking wet…and your wrist is hurt.’

‘I’ll dry eventually. And I’ve still got my left.’

‘Can you fight with that?’

‘Against a trained opponent, no. Against a gravely wounded green thing…no problem. Besides, he almost bit my head off…can’t let that go without some kind of rebuttal.’

‘And Himiko?’

‘Kuso…this isn’t an interview, come on. Before they get too far.’

‘Too far to where?’

Akira’s shook his head as if the answer were obvious then vanished into the darkness, giving Miho a simple choice to make. Run after a demon who’d just tried to eat his entire face, weapon-less, or walk out the door over there and get the hell out of this place.

Or at the very least, go back to the ryokan lobby and wait for the results to come in.

Logically, there was only one option…leave…but if he did that then Akira would be enraged when he came back. And call him a coward. Maybe stab him in the leg too.

If he came back at all…

Miho rubbed his cheek again, the even more distant sounds of Himiko shouting, ‘wait, wait,’ drowning out the hissing noise, which he now realised was coming from the onsen water itself, and…wait, on the side, wasn’t that a gigantic spoon?

He stepped across to the tub, investigating.

It was. A pretty sturdy-looking spoon too. Could do some damage if the other guy wasn’t expecting anything…

Another faint shout from beyond the wall, Himiko requesting a biscuit on the other side.

Biscuit?

Ah, probably misheard.

Picking up the spoon and slashing it through the air like he’d seen other kids in the village do, Miho took a deep breath of mostly onsen steam and headed into the secret passage.

It was dark instantly, the light from Room 28 a fading dot as he advanced in roughly a straight line.

‘Which way is it? Where are you?’ he shouted into the darkness ahead, getting a closer than expected grunt from the ashigaru.

‘Wah, I thought you were running…’

‘Stop yelling, you’ll alert them,’ he whispered, taking Miho by his yukata sleeve and pulling him forward…accompanied by sounds of suppressed pain as his wrist started to throb.

‘It’s okay, I can hold onto your sleeve,’ said Miho, giving space for confirmation before making the switch.

Akira grunted, then continued his update. ‘They’re up ahead, maybe a hundred, two hundred metres. Hard to say exactly. One of them must know the way through this place…or there’s only one tunnel. Not sure. But it’s gonna be tough to attack in this level of darkness.’

‘I found a big spoon in the onsen room,’ said Miho, redundantly holding up his makeshift weapon.

‘To eat him?’

‘No…it was the only thing I could see in there.’

‘Fine. Just stay behind me.’

‘Okay.’

‘Unless I’m pinned down, then you get the fucker off me.’

‘Like just now…’

‘Yeah, but faster. None of that pillow throwing shit, okay?’

‘Sorry, I was still in shock, I didn’t-…’

Akira put his hand over Miho’s mouth and pulled them both back against the cave wall. Then groaned again in pain and let go.

‘Fucking wrist…’

‘You should stop using it so much…’

‘Yeah. Nice idea.’

‘At least until we get it in a bandage.’

‘Over there…’ said Akira, clearly getting tired of injury talk.

Miho pushed his face forward an inch and squinted.

Up ahead was a faint green glow, seemingly indicating a turn in the path. And possibly the green man.

‘Let’s go…’ whispered Akira, tugging lightly on Miho’s sleeve.

Edging forward with their backs tight to the wall, and grumbling quietly every time they scraped against a jagged shelf, they quickly reached the corner, which was, in fact, more of curve, and breathed out in relief.

The green light wasn’t a whole group of demons prepping for a massacre, it was a random series of mineral-type fragments embedded within the cave wall.

‘Got a bit of light now…’ said Akira, moving ahead.

‘All this is really inside the mountain?’

‘Looks like it. Probably leads out somewhere…though I’m guessing our demon friend won’t be there yet.’

‘Maybe Himiko’s carrying him?’

‘Yeah, Miss Honey Trap. Fucking traitor.’

Miho looked left at one of the luminous green fragments and pictured it hanging round Himiko’s neck. It’s not her fault was the default response in his head, but then he remembered how she’d just stood there, closing her eyes as both he and Akira were being eaten.

Or bitten into.

‘Come on…I can hear voices…’ whispered Akira, sparing Miho’s sleeve this time and just offering a brief hand beckoning gesture.

Miho left the green rock slice, and his Himiko defence, and followed a few feet behind the soaking wet guy with the katana. The newly-discovered light source helped a lot as they didn’t need to worry about tripping over any rocks or getting their zori stuck in a crack, or the worst case scenario, slipping down a crevice and falling into a lost land of dinosaurs.

Ha, that was River Bitch’s theory. A lost paradise of herbivores and reformed meat eaters who wouldn’t bother humans if we didn’t bother them. Of course, no one in the village ever believed it, but…now that he’d seen two demons in less than a week…maybe it wasn’t too far-fetched.

‘Are you daydreaming?’

Miho blinked, seeing an empty cave in front of him.

‘Over here…’

He adjusted to the voice and turned right, seeing Akira ducking behind a huge rock jutting out from the wall. Beyond that were voices; Himiko begging someone to take her with him, and the other replying in gibberish.

‘He’s delirious,’ said Akira, as Miho crouched down beside him. ‘I looked round and he was fondling the green bits on the wall.’

‘What about Himiko?’

‘Pulling on his yukata, whining a lot. Gods, if she weren’t so sultry-looking, I’d stab her first, just for being such a pushover.’

Miho flinched, scratching his cheek with his onsen spoon. Did that mean Akira wasn’t going to kill her? Or that he wasn’t going to kill her first?

‘Okay, I think we’ve done enough surveillance…’

Akira moved out from the rock and shook some of the drops off the left sleeve of his yukata as he honed in on his prey.

Sending the signal for his legs to move, some part of Miho disobeyed as he stayed precisely where he was, switching the spoon to his neck for further scratching.

There was about to be two murders.

In cold blood.

One of them a woman who’d said his cooking was good.

He closed his eyes and pretended he was back in the kitchen, asking Aya why Chef Amo was angry all the time. Then he went back further, back home, to the bank of the river where he first met Yuki…the hem of her yukata pulled up to her knees as she waded suicidally through the icy water.

Would you like to join me for a swim?

A noise from up ahead, a whoosh sound as if a waterfall had just crashed through the walls…then a scream from Himiko.

‘Don’t leave me here…’ she wailed, the here part eaten up by sobbing sounds.

There was no blocking that out, and Miho didn’t even try, pulling his spoon close to his side and pushing out from behind the rock.

If I die, shit.

If I live, get out of here, find Yuki.

If I suffer an injury of some sort…improvise.

Rounding the corner at jogging speed, he bumped straight into Akira’s statue impersonation and reflexively whacked him on the neck with his onsen spoon.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, noticing the tip of the ashigaru’s katana was pushing down into the cave floor.

Akira didn’t answer, he just stared dead ahead.

Miho followed his line of sight, putting his arm up to mitigate the bright light streaming hardcore at his eyes, and was just about able to make out Himiko’s arm and face disintegrating into tiny flecks of human dust.

‘What…’

‘Dead,’ replied Akira, barely above a murmur. ‘Both of them.’

The light started to dim, giving them a clearer view as the remaining half of Himiko – the part still planted to the cave floor - was sucked into the same thing that had been painted onto the door panel of Room 28; a giant, luminous red spider lily.

‘That’s…’ Miho mumbled, vaguely lifting his arm.

Before he could add any kind of description, even a basic caveman grunt of big red thing, the glowing portal flashed out five bright pulses then folded in on itself and vanished.

In its place, a generic cave interior appeared. Or returned. And from the tunnel to the left, an echoed growling noise that sounded like a annoyed bear.

‘Time to leave,’ said Akira, tucking his katana back in his belt.

‘What was-…’

‘Quickly.’