Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons (2)
The great doors of the Gaju-jeon swung open, and I was carried inside in my mother's arms.
An ordinary seven-year-old would have been shrinking into himself by now. This was the heart of a thousand-year family. The air alone was said to choke grown men.
I was the opposite.
From the moment I stepped through, I had no idea where to put my eyes.
It was the shikigami.
The Gaju-jeon held the shikigami that successive Family Heads had kept at their sides. The spirits that the pinnacles of a thousand-year lineage had spent their whole lives subduing and training—those spirits still lingered across the ages, guarding this hall. On the eaves, on the pillars, in the empty air. Each with its own rank, its own grain.
I stared up at every one of them, spellbound.
…This.
My heart hammered like mad.
I knew them. In my past life I had been a man who spent his years buried in Heian-period texts. Things I had known only from books, only from written words. Legendary shikigami whose mere names had made my chest race, that I had reread again and again—and now they stood before me in the flesh.
That one was the spirit beast named in those records. The one over there was the servant of a Family Head who had dominated an era. Things that had lived only beyond the page were within arm's reach. So this was what it felt like for a devoted fan to set foot on sacred ground.
"…Wow."
A babyish little gasp of wonder slipped out of me before I could stop it.
"Oh my. You must find them fascinating."
A clear voice came from beside me.
I turned my head. A girl was looking in at me. Fifteen or sixteen, perhaps. Her carefully arranged dress and sharp, well-drawn features marked her at a glance as a direct descendant of the main house—and she had the kind of face that would make no small number of young men lose sleep.
"So you're Hwiun. I'm your cousin. My name is Sayaka."
The girl called Sayaka smiled brightly.
I was a little wary. A direct descendant of the main house almost always meant someone who looked down on me. I still remembered the sneers that had poured down at the Spirit Selection Ceremony.
But there was none of that in this girl's eyes.
"Don't look at me like that. I'm not scared of you. If anything…"
Sayaka gave her skirts a light swish, spun, and settled facing me. Then she grinned, mischief dancing at the corners of her mouth.
"That spirit you picked at the Selection. Everyone was laughing, but I was curious. Why that one, of all things."
"It didn't look like you chose it for no reason. Not with those eyes."
I was a little surprised. While the whole family pointed at me as defective goods, this girl alone had vaguely guessed that I might have seen something.
"You're a little different from the others, cousin."
"Hoho. And you speak so well. I thought you were still a baby."
Sayaka laughed, bright and clear. She gave my mother a light bow of the head, then stood beside me and looked up at the shikigami with me.
"Since you're here, I'll show you around. Every single one of these is a treasure of the family."
Sayaka pointed them out one by one as she explained.
"That one served the Seventh Family Head. They say a single one of him tore an enemy family's barrier clean apart. And that one over there…"
Listening to her, I found myself growing short of breath.
…So this is the Heian period.
Each of them was beyond anything I could have imagined in the modern age. In the dying age I had lived through, so-called sorcerers could spend a lifetime and still barely manage a single stray spirit. The spiritual veins had run dry; high-ranking spirits had long since gone extinct. The legends written in books were only old stories—no one believed they had ever been real.
But here those old stories were alive and breathing.
A single one of these shikigami had the rank to wipe out an entire sorcerer house of my era. And there was more than one. The spirits packing the Gaju-jeon were, every one of them, legends that had commanded their ages.
My heart raced beyond all control.
In my past life I had hungered for this era through words alone. The golden age when sorcerers split the sky and commanded spirits. Sitting in a barren end-times, turning the pages of faded texts, I had pictured it again and again. Just once—I had wanted to live in that age.
And now I stood in the middle of it. Legends that had lived only beyond the page were breathing within arm's reach.
I could keep things like this at my side.
I, who in my whole life had never been able to keep anything near me. In this era, they said, I could train those legends and keep them with me.
I wanted to grow up fast. I wanted to get strong fast, so I could put each one of them at my side with my own hands. My fingertips tingled with it.
Most of them I already knew from the records, so I only listened in silence and pretended otherwise. But the pounding of my heart I could not hide at all.
"…You really are fascinated, aren't you?"
Sayaka peered at me and tilted her head.
"Ordinary kids cry when they come here because they're scared. Your eyes have been sparkling this whole time."
"I knew it. You were like that at the Selection too, weren't you?"
Sayaka narrowed her eyes playfully.
"Everyone laughed that you'd picked the most worthless one. But I saw. When you chose it, your eyes looked exactly like someone who'd found something incredible."
I flinched. This cousin's eyes were sharper than I had thought.
"Heh. See? That face again. You saw something, didn't you?"
I deliberately put on the most innocent expression I could manage—the blank look a clueless baby would wear. The privilege of being seven.
"…I don't know."
"Tch. Playing dumb."
Sayaka pouted, but her eyes were still smiling, amused. She wasn't trying to press me. She was simply interested. The whole family pointed at me as defective goods, and this cousin alone looked at me as "an interesting kid."
…Not bad. It had been a long time since I'd had a gaze like that.
So we walked deeper into the Gaju-jeon, step by step.
Sayaka, who had been pointing out the shikigami, suddenly lowered her voice.
"Hey, Hwiun. Have you ever heard of the Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons?"
Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons. At that name I flinched inwardly. Outwardly I only tilted my head as if I didn't know.
"It's an old story. A scary one."
Sayaka dropped her voice another tone—the way you tell a ghost story to a child.
"A long, long time ago, there was a calamity that swallowed a whole capital in a single night. Every ghost that could be called a ghost gathered into one procession, and where it passed, not even a blade of grass was left."
"The Five Great Families joined hands for the first time in a thousand years and only just managed to stop it. And they didn't stop it by winning—they just held out until it fell asleep again. That's the Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons. The monster among monsters. The pinnacle among pinnacles."
I listened in silence.
Of course I knew it better than Sayaka. In my past life, at the very end, I had crashed into the thick of it until I died. But hearing the Night Parade from the mouth of someone of this era carried a different weight. Even a thousand years later, it was remembered as the calamity that had forced the Five Great Families to join hands.
That was the scale of it—the Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons.
"But why bring that up all of a sudden?"
"Hm? Oh, just—there's something a little creepy if you go that way. It made me think of it."
Sayaka pointed toward the deepest corner of the Gaju-jeon.
I followed her fingertip—and stopped.
In the deepest corner of the Gaju-jeon, far from the other shikigami, something was sealed.
A small jar-like vessel, wound round and round in layer upon layer of talismans and barriers. Inside it, a single spirit was trapped. In rank it was a faint stray spirit, not even a handful of anything.
But inside that stray spirit's body—
…That.
My heart dropped.
Something was in there. Dense, condensed, asleep—something that made the stray spirit's rank look like nothing. A presence far too familiar. A grain that set the spine on end.
It was the same as what I had seen inside the stray spirit at the Spirit Selection Ceremony. No—thicker, clearer.
I knew what it was at once.
The legend Sayaka had just told me.
And the thing I had faced until I died at the end of my past life.
A fragment… of the Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons.
A chill ran over my whole body.
The pinnacle of monsters. A piece broken off from the calamity that had forced the Five Great Families to join hands after a thousand years. That fragment, no larger than a finger joint, was sealed with a stray spirit's body for a vessel.
And yet even that single piece—
The grain of it alone, sleeping, made my spine stand up. A fragment that could not have been a thousandth, a ten-thousandth of the main body, and still it felt heavier than every legendary shikigami packing the Gaju-jeon put together.
…This was a fragment.
It hit me all over again. What kind of monster I had crashed into in my past life. What I had done, walking straight into the middle of it and dying there.
"Ah, that."
Sayaka, following my gaze, lowered her voice.
"Creepy, right? Better not look at it. It's a headache for the family too."
"…A headache?"
"Yeah. Some Family Head long ago brought it from somewhere, but no one can do a thing with it. More than a few sorcerers tried to use it and every one of them went wrong. Their spiritual veins burst and they died, or they went mad."
Sayaka gave a little shudder.
"Whatever's inside, they say no human can handle it. So they just sealed it like that so no one can touch it. For a thousand years."
Sayaka clearly did not know what it was. She only thought of it as a "dangerous sealed object." Well—if she had known that what was inside was a piece of the Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons she had just described, she would not have been standing so calmly beside it.
I did not bother to tell her.
Sealed for a thousand years. Everyone who touched it shattered.
…Yes. Of course they did. It was a fragment of the Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons. They had tried to take a piece of that pinnacle into their bodies, so of course they could not endure it. Spiritual veins bursting, minds breaking.
Ordinarily.
…But.
I could not take my eyes off that fragment.
Strangely, I was not afraid. If anything, it felt familiar. In my past life I had faced its main body head-on and taken that grain with my whole body. What kind of power it was, how it had to be handled—I knew better than anyone in this body.
Everyone else shattered the moment they touched it.
But if it were me—maybe.
"Hwiun? What's wrong—are you scared?"
When I stood frozen in front of it for a long time, Sayaka peered at me, puzzled.
"Yeah, it's a nasty presence. Come on. The Family Head is waiting."
I slowly turned my eyes from the seal. But the fragment I had just seen would not leave my head.
"Cousin."
"Hm?"
"Where is the Family Head?"
In the deepest place of the Gaju-jeon.
On a raised dais sat a man. The same Family Head who had looked down on me from the platform at the Spirit Selection Ceremony.
Facing him up close made it clearer. Simply by sitting there, he made the air of the Gaju-jeon sink heavy. The shikigami circling at his side outranked anything else in the hall. Not a campfire, not a torch—something more like a small sun.
…So this is the pinnacle of the thousand-year Eoryeong Family.
I swallowed dryly as I gauged that shikigami's rank.
…Honestly, I was a little thrilled again. If the door-guard was on that level, what would the summit be? Exactly as expected. That single shikigami at his side stood shoulder to shoulder with the legends I had just seen. To see a man like this up close. This thirst of mine truly could not be helped.
Mother, still holding me, bowed her head with proper respect.
For a while the Family Head said nothing. He only watched me, nestled in my mother's arms, with those languid eyes.
Then—
A low voice settled over the Gaju-jeon.
"At the Spirit Selection Ceremony."
Looking straight at me.
"What was your reason for choosing that spirit."
Here it came.
When I had chosen that stray spirit at the ceremony, those languid eyes on the platform had narrowed for the first time. The Family Head had seen it. What was inside that stray spirit. And me, recognizing it.
I took a moment to choose how to answer.
I could have dodged. A baby's words—I could have mumbled something vague and gotten away with it. But I did not think it would work on this man. Those eyes had already seen too much.
So I decided to answer honestly.
"Because there was something else inside it."
The Family Head's eyes deepened by a fraction.
"The shell was only a stray spirit. But what was inside wasn't. I saw what was inside, and I reached for it."
The air in the hall sank a beat. Even Mother looked down at me, not understanding what I meant.
But the Family Head slowly nodded, as if he had already known.
"…Indeed."
A low voice.
"So it was visible after all. To those eyes."
Confirmation. Whether I had truly seen it. And he had just gotten his answer.
A heavy silence settled over the Gaju-jeon. The Family Head stared at me for a long time. Deep in those once-languid eyes, something was slowly stirring.
Then—
I opened my mouth.
There had been something I wanted to ask since earlier. From the moment I saw that fragment, sealed for a thousand years in the deep corner.
"Family Head."
I met his eyes straight on as I spoke.
"The thing sealed further inside. The fragment of the Night Parade of Ten Thousand Demons."
The Family Head's eyes wavered for the first time—at that name coming from a baby's mouth.
I went on without caring.
"I heard no one could handle it, so it's only been sealed for a thousand years. That everyone who touched it shattered."
"That thing. Would it be all right if I tried absorbing it once?"
The air in the Gaju-jeon froze solid.