"Money," thought Shinjimaru, staring at the bottom of the empty bottle.
The word tasted better than the remains of the cheap liquor. He stood up, his joints cracking like dry firewood, and dusted off his kimono. Behind him, the girl (Himari) was a trembling tangle of hope and despair.
"I'll pay more!" she said, her voice breaking. "I'll do whatever it takes, just help me!"
Shinjimaru didn't look back. He grabbed the copper coins from her hand with the trained grace of a thief and turned to leave. His feet took three steps before his body froze. A sudden tightness in his chest, it wasn't the Dantian, it was something deeper and more irritating. A remnant of empathy, an echo of the noble upbringing he tried to drown in alcohol every day, forced him to stop. He looked at that girl alone... it was a scene even his cynicism couldn't ignore. He sighed, releasing a cloud of alcoholic breath that dissipated in the wind.
"Shit," he thought. "If I leave her here, she won't last an hour. And if she dies, no one will pay me the rest."
He turned slowly, his face molded into a mask of boredom to hide the pang of pity. As he walked back, his mind was already working at high speed, calculating the angle of exploitation.
"I have until nightfall," he planned. "Yuki expects me to be at the inn to load the Clan's stuff before the festival starts. If I play my cards right, I can squeeze this girl all day, get her a roof over her head, and still make it in time to take the 'Northern Fire' boots without getting beaten up."
"All right, kid," he growled, approaching her. "I'll help you. But don't think it's for free. Come on, show me where the body is."
They set off, passing through one of the streets that led to the large central market near the main gate. There, the human flow was an unstoppable stream of merchants, adventurers, and servants. No one had stopped to help the girl. She had only been lucky, or unlucky, enough to wake the only idle man sleeping on his own vomit on the floor.
They passed through the village gate, leaving behind the smell of incense and street food, and walked a few meters down the dirt road. There, under the shade of a tree, he lay. The ebony-skinned man (Afro) lay motionless. Shinjimaru stopped, his eyes half-closed with suspicion.
"Camouflage, it must be," Shinjimaru muttered to himself. "These adventurers invent every technique to hide in the shadows... but this color? It's too much dedication."
He leaned over the body. He noticed the Afro's clothes, worn fabrics covered in dust that looked like it had traveled thousands of miles. The man looked like a beggar. But then, his eyes drifted to Himari.
She stood there, waiting with a patience that only the pure possess. Her kimono was impeccable, clean in a way that defied the filth of the village. She wore high geta, made not to touch the mud, protecting her feet as if they were made of porcelain. She was beautiful, a beauty that did not belong in that alley, nor to that ebony "father."
Shinjimaru narrowed his eyes. His mind, addicted to the worst scenarios of human nature, began to draw dark lines.
"Listen here, girl," he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead and pointing to the inert giant. "If this camouflaged man kidnapped you, just say so. I'm no hero, but I know when something doesn't add up. He wants to become your pimp, is that it? Is he raising you like a flower to sell you in the pleasure district later?"
Himari tilted her head, her eyes large and confused. The term "pimp" had no echo in her world. She didn't know the vocabulary of degradation.
"Pimp?" she repeated, her voice sweet and lost. "Do you want... do you want more money to carry him? Is he heavy? Is my father very heavy?"
Shinjimaru froze. He looked at her small hand, already reaching for her purse, and then at her angelic face, which did not understand the insult he had just uttered. He felt a pang of something that was neither hunger nor hangover. "Screw it," he thought. Whether she was a victim or a daughter, the metal had the same value.
He held out his open hand. "Yeah. He's heavy, two more coins."
Himari didn't hesitate. She dropped two copper coins into his palm. The sound of metal was the signal. Shinjimaru pocketed the money, bent down, and hoisted Afro like a sack of potatoes. The contrast was almost comical: the decadent drunk, the noble girl, and the sickly ebony, moving like a procession of ghosts toward a cheap inn.
He chose the inn "The One-Winged Crow," a place decrepit enough that no one would ask questions and memorable enough that he knew exactly which window to jump out of when the shit hit the fan. More importantly, it was miles away from the inn camp Enshō had been at, his brother Yuki wouldn't find him there, and his extortion plan was safe.
As they entered the tiny room, Shinjimaru dropped Afro onto the futon with a thud that made the floorboards groan.
"There you go, girl. Your 'father' is delivered," he said, wiping the sweat that stung his eyes. He looked at Afro, who looked like a forgotten iron statue. "But listen carefully: the diagnosis is serious. What he has is not fatigue... it's an 'exotic Ki congestion'. Only a fire specialist like me can purify this blockage without causing him to explode. But the reagents... ah, the necessary herbs are very expensive."
Himari looked at him with absolute seriousness, absorbing every lie as if it were sacred scripture.
"Can you cure him?" she asked, her hands clasped together at her chest.
"Sure. But a master can't work on an empty stomach," Shinjimaru interrupted, listening to his own stomach growl. "And you look like you're about to faint too. Let's go to the market. You pay for the 'consulting' and I'll make sure nothing attacks us on the way."
At the market, Shinjimaru was a spectacle of misconduct. He asked for the most expensive meat skewers, pointed to jars of rice liquor and told Himari they were "necessary for thermal balance." He lied about his imaginary battles, about how his fire was so hot that the sun was jealous, while wiping the fat from the meat onto his tunic.
But between lies, he began to observe.
Himari walked beside him without judging him. When a merchant tried to cheat Shinjimaru out of his change, she intervened with such polite manners that the man, ashamed, returned the coins. She didn't see him as the drunk who slept in his vomit; she saw the man who, despite grumbling, carried his father for a few meters.
"You are a good person, Mr. Shinjimaru," she said suddenly, as she broke off a piece of steamed bread.
Shinjimaru almost choked on his liquor. "Me!?"
"Bad people don't carry such heavy burdens so carefully so as not to drop them," she replied, with a smile that seemed to radiate a light that Shinjimaru hadn't seen in years. After all, in Shinjimaru's world, everyone was shit. But Himari... Himari seemed to believe that he wasn't.
And that belief was more addictive than alcohol.
"Well, then," he muttered, looking away to hide his discomfort. "Dessert is also part of spiritual treatment. Let's get those bean sweets over there. Then... then we'll go back to the room. I have to watch your father. I can't leave a 'patient' like that unsupervised, Enshō."
Later...
The inn room smelled of mold and lies. Shinjimaru, his eyes already clouded by the sake Himari had paid for, performed his "healing ritual." It was a spectacle of nonsense: he shook dried herbs over Afro's inert body and sprinkled sips of liquor into the air, almost setting the futon on fire with a poorly positioned candle.
"See this, girl? The smoke is turning gray... that means the 'spiritual blackness' is being contained," he lied, staggering.
Himari watched in awe, her eyes shining with a gratitude Shinjimaru did not deserve. She paid the "emergency supplement" without hesitation, and Shinjimaru felt the weight of the coins, but strangely, the weight of that trust was greater. No one had looked at him like that since the fire in the clan courtyard. It was a new addiction; to be seen as something more than a biological failure.
The afternoon was falling, painting the room with shades of orange and honey. The two sat by the window, watching the movement outside.
"Tell me something," Shinjimaru began, pointing to Afro's arm. "Why is he camouflaged in brown? Is it a permanent infiltration technique or what?"
"It's his color, sir," Himari replied casually.
Shinjimaru frowned. He stood up, tripping over his own feet, and went over to the patient. He rubbed Afro's skin hard, expecting the "paint" to come off on his fingers. Nothing. It was solid flesh. He returned to the window, open-mouthed, processing the information.
"Am I stupid?" he thought. "Or is this a new type of reverse albinism?" In that country, thousands were born and died without ever seeing a man the color of ebony. Afro was a living geographical anomaly.
"Listen... how come your money hasn't run out yet?" he asked, trying to return to his instinct for extortion.
"We got a lot of money from the last village," Himari explained. "My father defeated two imperial samurai who were trying to steal the Porcelain Mask. Now, he just wants to extinguish the memories that are embedded in it."
Shinjimaru stopped listening the moment she said "a lot of money." His eyes lit up. The beggar "father" was, in fact, an elite samurai slayer with a purse full of imperial gold and a memory artifact in his backpack.
They continued to chat, exchanging random stories and jokes that made Himari let out short, crystalline laughs. Shinjimaru felt light. The cynicism was there, but the girl's presence was like a balm for his cracked Dantian.
Sleep began to overcome Himari. She yawned, her eyes heavy, and looked at Shinjimaru with a sweetness that completely disarmed him.
"Thanks for everything..."
He looked at the bottle, then at the patient, and finally at the girl. He sighed, a last cloud of alcohol escaping his lips.
"You can just call me Shinji," he murmured. "Rest, girl. Shinji will take care of the rest."
As she fell asleep, Shinjimaru sat in the dark, staring at the backpack where the mask was stored. The sun had already set. He should have been at his brother's inn, carrying loads and getting kicked around. But there, in that fetid room, he was "Master Shinji." And for the first time in years, he didn't want to be anywhere else. But his plan was already set. As soon as the silence of the night became absolute and Himari's breathing stabilized, he got up as carefully as a mouse. His joints cracked. "Aiaiaiii..." he muttered mentally, hoping that the alcohol would still give him the courage he needed.
With catlike steps, he searched every corner until his fingers found the treasure: the bag under the child's futon. When he opened it, his eyes sparkled. It was an immense fortune. The weight of the gold was the promise of weeks of luxury and liquor. Without looking back, he climbed up to the window with the smile of someone who had cheated fate.
"Hehehe... tomorrow there'll be more, the liquor will be expensive," he muttered, already on the roof.
But as he straightened his back, his blood ran cold. In front of him, five small but viscerally ugly figures blocked his path. Demons. Before Shinjimaru could scream, a slimy hand covered his mouth, throwing him against the tiles. The monster licked his neck, savoring the salt of his sweat. It wanted to feel the fear ripening in his flesh before delivering the fatal blow. Shinjimaru, the heir to the ashes, cried. The coins fell, useless.
"I don't want to die... I'm going to die like this," he thought, as the world became a blur of terror.
As Shinjimaru was pressed against the cold tiles, the demon's rotten breath on his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the fifth figure jump into the room through the window he himself had just left open. A second passed. The silence in the room was absolute. Two seconds. Shinjimaru closed his eyes, waiting for the child's scream of agony. Three seconds.
SPLASH.
Shinjimaru didn't see the blow, only the result. The demon that had entered the room was thrown out the window, but it didn't come alone. Afro was clinging to it, his ebony hands dug into the monster's shell, using the momentum to slam the creature's head against the alley wall with the force of a hydraulic hammer.
The sound of skull pulverizing against brick echoed through the settlement.
Before the demon pinning Shinji could even growl, the air exploded.
The ebony man burst forth in a blur of pure speed, the impact of his feet on the face of the demon pinning Shinji shattering its skull like clay, sending shards flying like projectiles at the monsters. In one continuous motion, Afro grabbed the nearest demon by the face and, with a shrug of his shoulders, ripped off its head and spine in a single block of bone and nerves. The sound of bones being chewed and flesh being mutilated began to fill the night.
Taking advantage of the situation, Shinjimaru crawled away in fear, feeling the warmth of his own urine soaking his pants as panic suffocated him.
"Demons... they're all demons!" he screamed, his voice a whisper.
It was then that Afro suddenly dragged him off the roof, and both fell onto the dusty street with a crash. Afro straddled Shinjimaru's chest, his face stained with black blood, and his mouth began to open beyond human limits, revealing rows of sharp teeth ready to devour him.