The Fox (1)
Mina stared at the woman who shared her face, and who nevertheless looked nothing like her.
"Who are you?"
"You know, don't you? I'm you."
"No. You aren't me."
Mina's eyes sank, cold and clear.
"If you were me, then everything you know, I ought to know as well."
That was what a mirror was. It might reverse you, but it showed you wholly as you were. A mirror could reflect nothing but the whole of you, and you could ask nothing more of it.
The Mina with the fox ears—no. The woman smiled, bewitching.
"Not quite as stupid as I expected."
Her manner of speech had changed. Even so, it was as if she had only now found the voice that was truly hers; the new cadence sat on her with unsettling ease.
"That's right. This lady is hardly the likes of you."
More precisely—
The fox-eared woman pointed at Mina's chest.
"The blood moving through that body. The source of the bloodline, shall we say?"
Bloodline.
At the word, Mina's heart thudded hard.
The woman's tail swayed, and with it small blue flames began to spread around her.
"What are you doing? Will you not pay your respects to your ancestor?"
Each time a blue flame brushed her skin, cloth burned away and her naked body was laid bare. Not a shred of shame touched the smile she wore as she took one deliberate step forward.
The change began.
The air thickened, as if fog had settled over the world. Even through it, the woman's golden eyes shone clear, and their light fell on Mina.
A soft sway.
The tails, which had certainly been two, became three, and then five. With every blink their number swelled, until at last they had split into nine.
Somewhere along the way she had donned robes like the ceremonial dress of an ancient age, cut nonetheless to bare her skin and flaunt the lines of her body. Her face had grown very different from Mina's.
Flame climbed.
Flame cold enough to sting.
"……."
Mina felt her teeth chatter. Was it the air, so suddenly changed, or the temperature dropping beneath her? She had no time to decide. She had to retreat—because the distance between them, considerable a moment ago, had vanished in an instant, and the Nine-Tails was smiling at her with her eyes.
"Good. Sharp instincts. You caught this lady's presence rather quickly."
Clap. Clap.
The Nine-Tails applauded her. The gesture was precisely that of a grandmother handling a young granddaughter. The language that rode her tongue, however, was something else entirely.
"I thought union with humankind would have thinned the blood, and yet a specimen this fine was born. As expected of my own root."
In truth, it was only praise for herself.
"So, descendant. Have you asked everything you wished to ask?"
Her gaze settled on Mina, who had opened the Divine Beast Fan and stood on her guard.
"……."
Mina looked at the Nine-Tails and thought, slowly, about what she ought to ask. Her own identity? Why this woman had appeared? Those questions flashed through her mind, but only one thing left her mouth.
"You never answered my first question. What did you do to Bihyung?"
"Worrying for your mate even in a moment like this. How devoted the heart."
The Nine-Tails laughed, bright and delighted, as if the sight amused her.
"Do not fret. That half-dokkaebi has been sent to the place he was meant to go. The only one invited into this domain is you."
"Half? A dokkaebi?"
"You didn't know? That child is the same as you. Born to the fate of a half-yokai."
Not that you are of a birth worth calling half-yokai at all.
"How curious. A half-yokai so vivid and complete. Truly a different being from you, who inherited only a fraction of my blood."
The fox's whisper reached her.
"Honestly. Hasn't your affection cooled?"
"……?"
"He hid that fact from you. He deceived you. And you still feel for a man like that?"
The voice was seductive enough to steal anyone's heart—seductive enough to force the answer she wanted. Mina only tilted her head. It didn't take.
"Deceived? What nonsense is that?"
"…What?"
"If it were me, I couldn't have said it either. Not if something like this had happened. It's his life."
That was the way of this world. Exorcists hunted anomalies, and anomalies hunted humans. Inside that prejudice, inside that frame, if she stood where Bihyung stood, how many people could look someone in the eye and honestly say they were half-yokai?
As far as Mina could see, no one.
"I know Bihyung. I know he wasn't trying to deceive me."
And her affection was supposed to cool?
"Why would it? Isn't this better?"
"…Better how."
"We're the same, aren't we? Both half monster. Isn't this what they call a fated match? The kind you only ever hear about?"
The look on her face didn't seem like a deliberate denial meant to provoke. She spoke as if it were only the truth, filling the words with undisguised partiality, affection melting into her voice.
The Nine-Tails could not hold back a hollow laugh at her descendant.
"Ha. Your head is more of a flower field than I imagined."
"So what. That's who I am. And if you're done explaining the bloodline, how about leaving? I need to go see Bihyung."
Mina tightened her grip on the Divine Beast Fan.
…I've only ever heard stories of the nine-tailed fox. But there has to be a way.
Something like that had come out of her own blood. It could not possibly be in a sound state.
The proof is the tails. Two at the start. Nine now.
She didn't know what trick had been played, but this, too, was likely a bluff.
Maybe it's a power that only holds for an instant, like that library anomaly before.
If so, she ought to be able to draw on the same kind of power. The restriction Bihyung had told her about worked that way.
The Nine-Tails read the thought.
"Haha! Truly foolish."
And she trampled it without mercy, showing just how naive it had been.
"Setting a yokai on the same level as this unfathomable scrap of a thing."
Blue flame swallowed her vision in an instant.
Mina hastily brought the Divine Beast Fan to bear, then startled. The art was weaker than she had expected.
So it wasn't amplified power.
She kicked off the ground.
Then some other method? Think. A way out.
One movement had struck a possibility from the list. That ought to be enough to build a plan—
"You think it will be enough?"
The thought never finished.
One of the Nine-Tails' tails was already upon her. It lashed out like an enormous whip and struck her down.
The impact boomed. A violent blast of dust rose as Mina crashed to the earth.
The Nine-Tails looked at the arm hanging limp from Mina's shoulder and lifted her with a tail.
Ngh…….
Dizzying pain drove through her whole body. It felt as if every joint had shattered, and through the breaks a biting cold seeped in, freezing her blood from the inside.
Through eyes that would barely focus, Mina looked at the Nine-Tails.
The Nine-Tails' mouth opened.
"I have waited only for today. For the moment you could become aware of me. For the moment you could recognize the blood."
So that she could devour her.
The corner of her mouth split upward in a grin.
"Be grateful, descendant. This lady will make fine use of your flesh. And while I am at it, I suppose I ought to eat that half-dokkaebi as well."
A dokkaebi with that much potential. How exceptional his liver must be…
Hah.
The thought alone made her mouth water.
"……."
Watching her, Mina thought of only one thing.
…Bihyung.
Run. Get away…….
A violent stamp inside the anomaly's domain shook the ground like an earthquake.
Ghost-Appraisal Combat Art
Earth Tremor
The mighty true-step rode the Roots and shattered every mirror in the area.
Bihyung walked on in silence, crushing the shards underfoot.
"…Lord, are you all right, sir?!"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
Bihyung answered Eodugi. But Eodugi knew perfectly well that the feeling inside those words was nothing of the sort.
He doesn't want to show it, but he's worried.
Mina, wasn't it? The woman who had come with them had vanished without a trace the moment they stepped into the anomaly's domain. The Lord believed the fault was his. That was why he had thrown the original plan aside and was tearing across the domain without restraint, crossing it in a single rush.
"Why can't I see her."
The mutter rang across the empty expanse.
Thirty minutes already, since he had entered the domain and begun searching for Mina. Not a hair of hers. Not even a shadow.
What went wrong this time.
Where the butterfly effect had started. Or what fresh stroke of sabotage had him by the ankle. Irritation surged up in him.
The one mercy is that even with the invisibility cap, she doesn't show.
If she wasn't in the spirit realm, then at least she wasn't dead. Holding that single refuge in his mind, Bihyung meant to move again.
That was the moment.
An ominous roar.
No—more precisely, it was not heard. It was felt.
…What.
A wind whispered from somewhere, and the darkness all around flattened itself as if trembling in fear. Watching that, his half-yokai senses caught something unfolding in a space he could not place.
…Yokai power.
The instant he finished the judgment, Eodugi reached the same conclusion.
"Ah, Lord! It's yokai power, sir!"
"Can you pinpoint it?"
Mina was not in the anomaly's domain. Then, by the circumstances, that place was the most suspicious of all.
At the question, Eodugi pointed at once.
"That way, sir!"
Bihyung sprinted straight toward the direction Eodugi indicated. He made no effort to hide the yokai power. He activated the half-yokai body.
The crash tore through the domain. He smashed the walls of the countless residential blocks revealed within it and drove forward in a straight line.
At the end of it—
"…This is the place, sir."
Bihyung arrived at an empty lot where nothing existed.
"It looks like there's nothing, but… I'm certain, sir. The yokai power was coming from here."
Eodugi implored him as if begging to be believed, but Bihyung had never doubted the words. By now the sensation was reaching his own senses as well: the lingering trace of yokai power someone had spilled.
Spread thin across the area. Which means it's still nearby.
Then why was there nothing?
As he turned it over, the word domain came to him.
What if yokai can make domains, the same way anomalies do?
He drew the demon blade at once and wrapped Eodugi about himself. A darkness deeper than the dim air settled over his body, and the crimson length of the blade was dyed pitch-black.
Bihyung drove the demon blade into empty air, as if turning a key.
A soft sound answered him, and about half the blade vanished from sight.
He swung.
Steel sheared through something unseen, and the hidden space was laid bare.
What stood there was one enormous fox.
"…A nine-tailed fox?"
Nine tails swayed. The fox—no. The Nine-Tails looked at Bihyung and smiled, eyes bewitching.
"Oh ho. To arrive so quickly. Half-yokai. Your potential is truly boundless……."
Something spilled from the fox's mouth. Bihyung cut it off at once.
"Where is Mina."
Eyes sunk cold. Within them, ghost-fire was rising.
Seeing it, the Nine-Tails laughed, bright and sharp.
"My descendant chose her mate well, it seems. Worry comes first, even now."
Descendant? What was that supposed to mean?
Before he could follow the thought any further—
"The descendant you seek is right here."
So saying, the Nine-Tails indicated her own belly. A bright, ringing laugh struck his ears.
"She will take in the whole of this lady's consciousness here and be born again as a complete Nine-Tails. The rest of that child's life will be filled with nothing but blessing."
"……."
Bihyung did not hear the rest. Only one phrase circled in his head. Take in the whole of her consciousness.
"Hey."
The ghost-fire in his eyes flared.
"Let Mina go."
Strength gathered in his fist. He clenched so hard his nails bit into his palm, and drops of blood fell, one after another, to the ground.
The Nine-Tails only laughed.
"How I handle my descendant is this lady's affair. Meddling in another household—"
"Shut up."
Blue flame gathered and formed a horn upon his brow. The presence of the dokkaebi he had kept hidden crushed the air around them.
Give them joy, and they bestow fortune. Earn their wrath, and they send down calamity. A dokkaebi is one who calls both disaster and blessing.
And now—
The fox had earned a dokkaebi's wrath.