Does a Yokai Have a Heart?
The Force Arts practitioner's pursuit of the fox yokai dragged on far more sluggishly than expected.
Boom! Her fist, laden with raw Force, cratered the earth and ripped trees up by the roots, shattering them into splinters. She was personally wrecking Jirisan's beautiful, majestic wilderness with her own two hands, yet Lee Ha-neul didn't care in the slightest.
If she let that fox yokai slip away here, a little damaged nature would be the least of her worries.
She imagined the worst. If the creature descended the mountain and reached human homes... it would become a living catastrophe. She had to end it herself before countless lives were lost.
But the white-furred fox yokai was quicker than she had ever imagined. It must have used some trick. The instant she thought she had it and swung her fist, blue flames flickered along the fox's tail—and it vanished from sight.
Lee Ha-neul was certain that had to be the wicked art known only in legends as fox sorcery.
Even while relentlessly chasing the fox yokai, she felt something strange.
'...No killing intent.'
Most yokai—no, every yokai she had ever encountered—carried clear killing intent toward humans. Even that pitiful death barrel goblin had tried to rip a monk's body apart and devour him. Killing intent could not be hidden. No matter how desperately the yokai fled from humans, it would always surface. For Force Arts practitioners whose senses had been honed by years of training, failing to detect it was simply impossible.
Yet the fox yokai fleeing from her right now showed no killing intent at all. If anything, she sensed a desperate, single-minded resolve to avoid her and escape this place.
At that point, doubt crept into Lee Ha-neul's mind.
Perhaps... she had gotten it wrong. Maybe this fox yokai had nothing to do with the incidents on Jirisan and was simply an ordinary minor spirit...
'...No. That's impossible.'
Fox yokai were exceedingly rare to begin with. So rare that one might appear only once in an era. The idea of two appearing in the same era, at the same time, in the same place was utterly illogical.
For that reason, Lee Ha-neul reached her conclusion.
'That sinister fox yokai is trying to deceive me somehow.'
To be able to erase even its own killing intent—truly, just as the legends said, fox yokai were cunning beyond measure.
The one silver lining was that the white fox yokai seemed exhausted from the long chase; its speed had noticeably dropped.
'This Force will end it.'
If she dragged things out any longer, some unforeseen variable might appear. Having made up her mind, Lee Ha-neul gathered every ounce of strength she possessed—even what she had used as a nursing infant—into her right hand.
Then, with both legs wrapped in Force, she kicked off the ground and shot forward, ready to crush the fox yokai's skull—
"Ti-time!"
With a soft puff, a cloud of white smoke billowed up. The fox yokai before her eyes had transformed into a trembling girl who looked about ten years old.
Lee Ha-neul flinched. At the filthy fox yokai's new trick, she hesitated.
For a Force Arts practitioner, hesitation meant death. The moment her focus broke, the Force gathered in her hand scattered into the air.
Ah.
'I'm dead.'
An attack without Force was meaningless. Sensing her own death, Lee Ha-neul brought her bare fist down on the ten-year-old girl's forehead.
Bonk.
The girl crumpled to the ground. Naturally, without Force behind the blow, her skull remained intact.
Lee Ha-neul clenched her teeth, closed her eyes, and humbly accepted her death.
But no pain came, no matter how much time passed. Instead, the only sound was the girl's groan of agony.
"Uuuuugh..."
"Fuuuuuck... I said time, you crazy bitch...!"
"...?"
"It hurts like hell! Is my head bleeding?!"
What on earth was going on? Lee Ha-neul couldn't understand it, but it felt as if someone's voice was echoing inside her head.
Does a yokai have a heart?
If it can see, hear, feel, and know, how can one say it has no heart?
Could it be that the young girl before her—no, the fox yokai—was the very being with a heart that she had been searching for all this time...?
"Stop staring like an idiot and help me up already!"
"Ah? Uh, um..."
Thanks to the young girl's scolding, Lee Ha-neul's thoughts could go no further. Flustered, she helped the girl to her feet, then watched her warily for a moment before asking.
"What exactly are you?"
I began explaining to the woman who had introduced herself as a Force Arts practitioner as coherently as I possibly could. If she didn't accept my words, it would clearly lead straight to my death. I knew my place.
If I had been in perfect condition—me from two years ago, brimming with yokai energy—I might have been able to put up a decent fight against the Force Arts practitioner before me. But with only three months' worth of yokai energy left, escaping her was impossible, and fighting her would be mutual destruction.
...On top of that, the recent chase had burned through roughly a month's worth of my reserves. Using transformation to speak to her was my final gamble.
Fortunately, she turned out to be someone who could be reasoned with. I poured every ounce of my strength into persuading her: who I was, why I was here, who the true culprit behind the Jirisan incident was, and why I had been chasing that other fox yokai. It was an excellent excuse.
...Yes. No matter how I dressed it up, it was still just an excuse. I was a yokai, and she was a Force Arts practitioner whose job was to exterminate us.
"How am I supposed to believe any of that?"
Her doubt was only natural.
"Prove it."
"..."
After speaking, she clenched her fist and began concentrating a strange energy I had never seen before. Ah. So that's it. That had to be the mystical power called Force.
"Prove right here why you shouldn't die by my hand."
"..."
Fuck. How the hell was I supposed to prove that? Should I show her my kill count? Fox sorcery, info share! Or maybe offer up one of my precious tails as collateral?
No. It was all pointless. A yokai persuading a human with words was absurd from the start. The fact that she had listened this far was already a miracle.
I quickly calculated my remaining yokai energy. Two months' worth. If I brought out all six tails right now, I could probably knock her down easily or escape without a scratch, but there would be no future after that. I would likely waste away and die within a day or two—at most, a week. Manifesting six tails placed an enormous burden on me.
Still, I had no other choices left. Words didn't seem to be working anymore, and I had no evidence to prove my story. I made up my mind. I would struggle, even if it was ugly, to prolong my life just a little longer.
How ridiculous. Who would have guessed that I, who had given up on life not long ago, would flail so pathetically the moment a sliver of hope appeared?
Just as I resolved to pull out all six tails at once—
Crackle. Crackle. Zzzzt.Zzzzzzzzzzt.
"...!"
"This... this is...!"
From somewhere—from the very peak of Jirisan—an indescribably enormous wave of yokai energy began to surge. As a yokai, I could feel it naturally, but even she, a human who shouldn't have been able to sense yokai energy, shuddered at the overwhelming pressure.
Insane. It was that powerful...? Depo had told me it was something I could easily subdue. It wasn't as if he had set a trap to kill me.
...Damn it. The thing had been eating human livers in real time and growing stronger—far stronger than before. The growth rate of a fox yokai seemed to surpass my imagination. I was starting to understand why Sangun feared them so much.
In any case, this was actually good. A crisis for her. An opportunity for me.
"...That's your evidence."
"..."
"I'm not the one who turned Jirisan into this mess. It's the fox yokai at the summit."
"..."
"The longer we wait, the stronger it will become. If you waste time on me here—"
She didn't answer. Whether she had instinctively realized what took priority and which was the greater evil, she shot toward the mountain's peak like a bolt of lightning.
"Haa..."
I collapsed to the ground in relief at having survived. Force Arts practitioners were far more dangerous than I had thought. No wonder Depo had warned me about them. If I had been at full strength, I might not have lost, but... no, no. In the end, all of that was just an excuse.
Survival of the fittest. It isn't the strong who survive—those who survive are the strong.
"..."
Ah. R-right! The Force Arts practitioner mustn't kill that fox yokai! I still had questions to ask it!
Dragging my exhausted body, I headed in the direction she had gone—toward the place where that horrific yokai energy pulsed. But...
Could that Force Arts practitioner truly defeat a fox yokai radiating such immense power?
Rather...