+++

‘Kuso…more blood?’

Akira ran a fingertip across the new stain on his dōbuku and let out a grunt, which was actually his version of sighing in relief. The blood was dry. Daiki’s stomach wound hadn’t started leaking again.

Thank gods cos the mage had already lost about a quarter of his body weight. Well, that was Akira’s estimate. According to the fox, it was closer to twenty or thirty milliliters, but everyone knew the fox was about as reliable as a-…as one of those bandits he’d just stabbed.

And if the little rat weren’t hiding in the beads, Akira would’ve told them that…again…for the fifty-seventh time in two hours.

But they were hiding, and had been ever since the pond halfway down the hill. Which was fine to begin with, all the fox did was whine about things [even though it was them who’d put them in the path of the bandits], and it was a sweet relief to hear only the wildlife in the trees and the occasional moan from the wounded mage.

But now that they were standing next to a wooden sign, nailed to what looked like a fishing boat oar planted handle-down in the dirt, with the words ‘A KIND OF HEALING PLACE’ painted on it, Akira thought it was about time the fox appeared and started to explain things.

‘I think we’re here,’ he tried first, lowering a half-conscious Daiki onto one of the flattened tree stumps nearby.

No response from the beads.

‘The healing place you told us to come to.’

Daiki’s head wobbled a bit, the beads giving out the tiniest spark of white light, then died down quickly as the mage put up a fist and punched himself in the temple.

‘You’re really not coming out?’

Daiki punched again, groaning in response.

‘Hey…what the hell are you doing? Stop that.’

‘Headache…’ muttered Daiki, hitting himself a few more times.

‘Yeah, and punching yourself isn’t gonna help much. Why don’t you lie down on the grass over there? Take a rest.’

Akira pointed at several spots before settling on a patch of green that didn’t have weird grey sludge on it – possibly animal shit – then let out a panicked wah as he spotted something light blue in the bushes.

‘Daiki…back up a bit.’

‘What…’

‘Stop moving. There’s something watching us.’

The mage paused his attempt at walking, which was more akin to a death crawl, with both hands clutched to the hole in his stomach and a long groaning noise every time he took a step with his knee.

‘In the bushes…look.’

‘Where?’

‘The bushes.’

‘Which bushes?’

Akira slapped the guard on his katana, annoyed. ‘The bushes I’m pointing at, obviously.’

Daiki released a staggered fuck you breath and then followed Akira’s eyes over, squinting at the two blue dots hovering in the middle of a fairly generic-looking bush.

‘Is that an animal?’

‘Well, it’s not a plant.’

‘With blue eyes?’

‘Hmm. I was thinking wolf…but then we don’t have any of those around here. Unless it got lost in Northern China, hopped on a boat, wandered inland looking for a peaceful forest and ended up here.’

‘Unlikely…’

‘Yeah.’

‘Could be a frog. One of those larger, exotic ones that-…’ Daiki broke off from his own conjecture to make yet another groaning noise.’ Kuso…my stomach…’

‘Okay, no noises. Just lie down there.’

‘…feels like someone sawing it with a katana…’

‘I’ll go check on our blue-eyed spy.’

‘…the blade covered in vinegar.’

Akira couldn’t help but chuckle a little at the last line, but killed it fast so Daiki wouldn’t start thinking he was funny. If that happened, it would be unbearable. Jokes every thirty seconds, repetition, weak observations, then jokes every ten seconds to try and make up for it, and no one in Japan could maintain that level of high quality to output ratio. If that was even the right word for it. He didn’t know. Ratio was a weird word. And Daiki’s wit was more than a little sporadic, most of the time giving way to general complaining about the fox leading them up a path to nowhere. Which was fair enough, the fox was ridiculous, and capricious, and cowardly…and still hiding in those fucking beads.

Ah, what am I doing? he thought, just get the katana out, deal with this blue-eyed nonsense first, whine about the fox later.

Nodding at his own thought, then shaking his head at the oddball resting position Daiki had curled himself up into on the grass, he took out his katana and advanced on the bushes.

Three steps in, the leaves swayed.

If he hadn’t been so tired, he would’ve stopped, but after carrying Daiki down the hill for two hours he only had the energy to say kuso as the blue eyes suddenly doubled in size and a fairly substantial dart flew out from in between them.

Luckily, it was poorly aimed and veered harmlessly down into the-

Akira paused his downward head tilt and said, ‘kuso,’ again.

‘Urgh,’ moaned Daiki, or some variation thereof, his left hand pulling the dart out from his neck and his eyes examining it for half a second before the lights went out and his whole body dropped.

‘Daiki…’ whispered Akira with utter redundance, vaguely pointing his sword at his fallen comrade.

‘What’s happening?’ asked the fox, materialising in a misty white swirl next to the mage’s feet.

The question was straightforward, but it still took Akira a few seconds to process it, and by the time he did it was already too late. The whistling sound from the bushes told him another dart had been dispatched and it was probably heading towards his neck.

Yup, he confirmed, feeling something prick his skin.

‘Not more bandits…’ said the fox, scanning the surrounding forest, and then freezing on the wooden sign. ‘Ahh…good. We’re here.’

‘What the hell…have you…’ Akira started to say before the serum in his blood did its work and his body followed Daiki’s down onto the ground.

Luckily, he managed to avoid the scattered rocks here and there, and used the remaining few seconds of lucidity not to wonder what was in the bushes shooting darts at them, but to slice off the tails of the imaginary fox smirking at him inside his own head.

To rub salt into the wound, the real fox smirked too.

‘You simpletons…’

And that was the last thing Akira caught as the grass, the sign, the fox and all the bushes around them phased into a nebulous white-

+++

In a forest full of purple trees

Akira sat on the severed head of a frog, drinking shōchū from a shoe, asking Miho over and over and over why his name was Miho

yet Miho didn’t answer

he couldn’t

cos the kid was too busy wrapping himself and that demon mosquito girl together with sheets of rice paper, explaining that it was the only way to be sure that they wouldn’t leave each other and

Daiki was there too

grilling the red and white beads on a spit fire, telling the fox that it was for the best as the lying little shit sat on the grass licking its tails, muttering something about not licking them fast enough to stop the gate to their own world imploding and

Akira phased out the rest as the ninja woman was stabbing his gut with a sponge totem from that inane tree festival and she was really determined to draw blood, you could see it in her eyes, the furious stabbing motions, until, out of nowhere, the stabbing stopped and her hand turned to stroking his thigh and instead of death threats there were other threats, threats to buy a fishing hut and live together until they were too old to move their legs and

the white light was almost a relief

even though his hand was on her waist and stroking too and his lips were on her neck and

the light soaked up everything and

then rationed itself

becoming something that might creep out of a lamp and

feeling his limbs again, the air coming into his lungs

Akira reached out and swung at the thing that vaguely resembled a face, figuring that such a thing must be an enemy, the one who shot out the dart and-

‘Idiot…’ shouted a stern female voice, followed by the sound of a hand slapping against someone’s cheek.

No, wait…his cheek, he realised as the stinging pain hit.

‘What the-…’ he blurted out, opening his eyes and quickly scanning the new, unfamiliar environment.

A room. Lit by several okiandon. Green leaf prints on the wall. Some kind of bed chair thing next to him, with a woman planted on it. An angry-looking woman. Probably the one who’d just slapped him.

The Kind of Healing Place?

Was that where he was?

‘Careful where you put your hands, ashigaru.’

Akira blinked, reflexively looking down at his fingers. They were still stretched out, dangerously close to the yukata clinging to the woman’s chest.

‘Yeah,’ was the wittiest comeback he could manage, his brain still feeling a bit groggy, and, luckily, there was no need to say anything else as the woman edged back onto her chair-bed…thing…and went to sleep.

Or pretended to go to sleep.

Probably a trap, an attempt to draw him in so she could slap him again? Or maybe she wanted him to touch her?

He scanned her up and down, squinting at the huge bandage wrapped around her waist and the slightly smaller one on her right calf. Clearly she’d been seriously hurt in some way, but…why was there a blue stain there?

A jarring thought glided into and then straight back out of his brain – that blue demon guy from Suwa Castle, he’s here – quickly replaced by the urge to know exactly where he was and who’d thrown that dart at him.

Turning a little too quickly to the other side, he pressed a hand against his neck, massaging out the stiffness from the puncture wound, then fully evaluated the scene. Three more chair-beds, all empty. An unused sink. An unusually dark doorway. Okay. On one hand, the lack of any other life was a relief as it meant no enemies, but on the other, lonelier side…where was Daiki? The lying fox?

‘You are awake,’ said a voice from somewhere nearby.

For some reason, Akira tilted his head up towards the ceiling, frowning at the burnt plant things hanging down like charred tentacles.

What the…

Are those things moving?

Am I inside a tree?

‘Worrying is not necessary,’ continued the voice. ‘Your friend is in Healing Room 3. His wound is not life-threatening. The blood that has been lost will be replaced.’

Akira readjusted, following the soundwaves of the voice to the shadowed doorway, where an old woman with long white hair hanging solely on one side of her body stared back at him. In her right hand, a very gnarly-shaped walking stick.

‘Are you the…’

‘…the owner of this place. Please, do not try to stand. Your body is still recovering from the dart serum.’

‘You’re the one who poked me?’

‘A defence mechanism. To stop those who would come here…not for healing…but for other purposes.’

‘Such as?’

The old woman switched her walking stick to the other hand and opened up the handle. It wasn’t clear what was inside, but it had to be lotion of some kind as she took something wet and sticky out and started smearing it on her wrists.

‘I want to see my friend.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Now.’

She stopped smearing, closed up the handle and put the stick back the original hand.

‘Are you listening to me?’ said Akira, turning up the dial a bit.

It didn’t matter.

The old woman ran fingers from scalp to the tail of her ridiculously long hair, waiting almost half a minute before finally giving a reply.

‘Your room will be ready in three hours. Until then, relax on the recovery chair here. Get some rest. Or talk to the patient next to you. But, please, no eroticism. That kind of activity is for the private rooms only.’

A violent, abrupt cough sounded out from the recovery chair next to Akira, causing him to turn and say, ‘hey, I didn’t say it, she did.’

‘It is not conjecture,’ elaborated the old woman, performing a cough of her own. ‘I am a trained seer. And sudden, exaggerated coughing is a clear sign of masked attraction towards another.’

This time there was no cough, but a muttered burst of gutter Japanese.

‘Of course, such attraction can sometimes end in murder.’

‘You what?’

The old woman added a grunt and nothing else. Instead, she threw her walking stick up a few inches, caught it and then hobbled off like a war-cripple into the darkness beyond the doorway.

Akira waited a minute to be certain she was gone, then turned back to the woman on the recovery chair next to him, who, despite having the facial expression of a bear whose wife had just run off with a otter, was actually quite pretty. In a very niche, migraine-inducing way. And seriously injured too, which meant she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.

And, apparently, neither would he.

‘So…’ he started, putting his hands up in the peace pose.

‘Don’t talk to me,’ came barrelling back, along with a few flecks of loose spit.

‘Err…that’s not exactly the nicest…’

‘Ever.’

‘…response I’ve-…okay. Fine.’ Akira leaned back on the chair, moving his shoulders around until he’d found the most comfortable position. ‘Silence it is then. Let’s see which one of us gets bored first.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Not gonna be me, I can tell you that much.’

Another cough came from the woman, which altered itself quickly into a chain of inaudible slurs. At least, Akira guessed that’s what they were. To be honest, he couldn’t really be bothered with this attempted seduction anyway. The woman was clearly a psychopath. Possibly a bandit, or one of those warrior monks. Or maybe even a ninja spy. Or an occult widow who’d sacrificed her husband’s corpse to the old ones. Or just a miserable cunt.

Ah, who cared anyway?

The chair felt cosy, Daiki was being healed in another room, and the steam coming out of the vents in the wall was like shōchū in gaseous form. No, wait, not shōchū…one of those herbs that the monks used…the soothing one.

Yeah, this was the life.

Better just to stay still a while, switch off the fugitive instincts, the need for another person’s warm body.

Relax like a normal person, soak in the peace and tranquillity of this-

‘Quiet.’

‘What?’ mumbled Akira, opening one eye, looking right.

‘I can hear you thinking,’ replied the woman, staring at him with narrowed eyes.

‘Are you insane?’

‘Your throat…is making that clicking sound…the tic that indicates brainless thought.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s very annoying. Stop it.’

‘Gods on a-…’

Akira didn’t bother to add any more, he just turned to his other side and glared at the empty recovery chair.

Then, after a few seconds, made a loud clicking noise.

‘Not funny,’ said the woman.

‘Quiet, I’m thinking.’

A muffled noise behind, either a laugh with a leash put on it or a plan to kill him in his sleep.

‘Okay, I’m done,’ said Akira, clearing his throat and adjusting his position again.

‘Good.’

‘For now.’

‘No.’

‘Huh? No what?’

‘No more thinking noises. No more talking. And no creeping up and fondling me when you think I’m asleep.’

‘Hey, I would never-…’

‘No.’

Akira opened his mouth to finish his defence then turned it into a smile, keeping a full laugh in the bag for later. Despite the vague threatening tone, this woman was quite funny. Though it would still take a great deal of work, and he was too tired for that now. And, besides, he still had to find out more about this weird healing place he’d landed in.

He edged his neck round until he was looking at the doorway.

It was pretty dark out there.

Too dark.

And that old woman…he’d have to get a better look at her later. Assess the possible risks. Cos anyone who shot darts our of bushes…couldn’t be completely sinless.

No, scratch that.

Anyone who was alive and breathing…was sinful.

He closed his eyes, pictured Miho looking gormless, opened them again.

Every single one of them.