the devil of heavenly device

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“I think I can handle myself pretty well! What’s your name??” 

     Having been quite taken with the little one, he gave a mild start at her rather sudden transformation. Was this deception? Trickery? Likely not. The drifter sensed no harm outside of his own impulse to survive.      “Bakeneko...?” He voiced the thought aloud, then followed with a mutter, “Hideo. I am Hideo. Do you consider yourself yokai?”

Small bursts of flames surrounded Tomoe’s head as he hid his face in his hands, crackling unheeded in small wisps. How could this happen? He’d been so careful not to let anyone see him like this; so ugly and drippy and disheveled and ill. The tissues surrounding Tomoe’s bed caught alight, and Tomoe drew his legs up and hid his face in his knees.

     Comfortable with the amicable greeting, she gratefully rubs her head and neck against his leg.

     The drifter beams at what he hopes to be his makeshift companion. He crouches beside it, scratching its cheeks all the while. “Where did you come from, friend? The wilds are merciless.”

Meals and tea lay ignored beyond his door, left by his worried boys and girls with timid knocks and an unwillingness to disturb their boss. Wise; Tomoe wouldn’t be able to bear it, if anyone saw him like this. Sicknesses came and went, and this one would run its course; no one would see him so…vulnerable. And filthy.

  “ —- oh. did you not get in? “  she of course assumes his trials were too, for an army of kinds. then again, the fianna were less of an army and more of a band of brothers. wild dogs running in a pack, young children carrying sticks like guns and wearing bruises like medals of honour. she lifts a hand, gives a little nod and scratches beneath her nose.  “ — niamh. some call me ban phrionsa, though, but you needn’t bother. and you? ”

     Whether from gallows humour or the venom in his heart, Hideo slips. A small fang cuts through the guise of his smile. But the least of all he feels is apologetic. There is a mutual sense of otherness here, he hopes, where there is no use in hiding, and the oni can, just for now, fall prey to the indecency of being himself.      He dips his head. “A wonderful title, Niamh--is it of high rank?” He imagines so. Her names are remarkably foreign to him.      “I was... born into it, you could say. The only choice aside from death. I am Hideo, ao majin.”

Shinji Somai, Kaza-hana, 2000

Yakuza headquarters, Osaka, Japan - 1985

Tsutchie - Fly