#renkari

The first time Renko ate the flesh of her own, of course, was gentle. Yukari seemed to know how to make it seem like something other than it was, perhaps an extent of her power or perhaps a skill learned the hard way, during all the miserable time spent away from each other. But over time, she felt something shift in her mind. Not only had she become okay with it, that had happened long ago, but now...she started to want it. A carnivorous desire that had never gripped her before, wanting to sink her teeth into something real. All she had known for her whole life was fake, compared to this even the best meal she had before Yukari found her feels like cardboard in her memory.

because I apparently can’t stop getting ideas for these

Renko is a down-on-her-luck private investigator slash aspiring Great Detective, in her thirties or so. She has a reputation for being good at her job but also a bit arrogant and troublesome to work with.

Maribel was her childhood friend but disappeared ~10 years ago; Renko finds out this is because Merry’s family were in trouble with some Seriously Nasty People and has a bit of a guilt complex about not being able to figure this out sooner and help her.

Merry escaped with the help of Ran, a family friend, who takes her in as her daughter “Yakumo Yukari”. Ran encourages “Yukari” to be more aggressive and, rather than just hide out, work on eliminating her family’s old enemies.

Renko eventually discovers that Yukari’s organisation intersects a lot with her Maribel investigation, and begins to try and track down Yukari actively (to the point that some of Yukari’s people nearly make an attempt on her life, before Yukari stops them).

Yukari tries to avoid Renko, and when she can’t, she tries to keep Renko so off-balance during their meetings that Renko never has the chance to ask her outright who she is. (She’s worried about how she’d answer.)

"Don’t look. Don’t come. Don’t know. Don’t cross over."

Antithesis: if Renko became a youkai she would become a crow bird of some description because merry/yukari are obviously some sort of cat, symbolism with toxic love in the form of cat saliva being toxic to birds so one small bite would be all it takes