#yatoriweek2017

“Hello…?”

Hiyori jumped and the tulips sprang, shivering, away from her fingers. Balancing on the balls of her feet, she tumbled backward to land in a clump of something prickly. She sprang up at once, frantically brushing her rear to dislodge the short spikes of winter thorns.

“Ow, ow, ow!”

Hiyori gave the thorns a reproachful look. They seemed to shrink into themselves, and her frown collapsed.

“It’s all right, I know you didn’t mean it,” she said begrudgingly, still wounded from the sting in her backside.

“Uh…h-hello?” the voice repeated.

Hiyori spun towards its owner, who was standing just a few yards in front of her.

“I’m not…interrupting?” he asked, casting his bewildered gaze between her and the thorns.

Hiyori couldn’t respond at first. She felt like she should already know his name.

It was a boy about her age, with salt-pale skin and dark, messy hair tied in a short ponytail. He wore a stone-gray cloak that enshrouded his whole body and was long enough to brush the grass beneath it. One thin hand protruded from the cloak, clutching the fabric close around him as though it were midwinter. Shadows crowded in the hollows under his eyes and beneath his lean cheekbones.

Overall, he was a starkly monochrome presence in the middle of the blossoming forest—except for his eyes, which were a strong, unsettling blue.

But most importantly, he didn’t give Hiyori a strong impression of good health. It was her first instinct to correct that.

“Hello!” she said brightly. “It’s fine! You just…surprised me.”

The boy’s lips tightened almost imperceptibly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No, it’s all right—”

Hiyori hastily reached out a reassuring hand, only for him to take a step away from her. She withdrew her hand, trying not to feel hurt.

“It’s easy to sneak up on me,” she said, after an uncomfortable pause. “Or, so I’m told.”

One corner of his mouth twitched upward.

“And who tells you that?”

Hiyori’s cheeks grew hot.

“Almost everyone. They tease me that the mountain could explode under my feet and I wouldn’t notice.” She gave a guilty grin.

“My grandmother calls me a sleepwalker. She says someday I’m going to be so caught up in a distraction that the evil gods under the earth will come snatch me away.”

His expression—which had almost been a smile—changed completely. The softness melted from it, leaving behind hard, harrowed features that made him look a century older.

“Really?” he asked.

He sounded so tired—so unfathomably fatigued that Hiyori nearly wanted to cry for him.

“They’re not real stories,” she said kindly. “She only tells me that to frighten me. I know none of it is true.”

He smiled again, but it was an exhausted shadow of the real thing. With every passing second Hiyori grew more convinced she had made some sort of irredeemable error. Her gaze fell to the grass at his feet, unable to meet those fire-blue eyes.

“What—what’s your name?” she asked, casting around for a subject change.

A warm breeze picked up, lifting the hair off her face. It brought with it a new scent: something old, and lovely, and half-forgotten. She had never smelled anything like it—not in any springtime as far back as she could remember.

“I think you might know it already,” he said, inexplicably sad.

Hiyori closed her eyes and breathed in, deeply. When she opened them again, she was alone.

: : :

“I met someone today,” Hiyori said.

Grandmother looked up from behind her long desk, and her eyes narrowed.

Inari was frightening. Even Hiyori—who loved her more than heaven and earth—knew her grandmother possessed terrible power that she chose not to wield. And, although she did not associate the white-haired, golden-skinned woman behind the desk with anything but warmth and life, others would whisper to her that her grandmother was the real ruler of the heavens. That she could take the throne in an afternoon, and no one would have the power stop her.

Outside the whispers, nothing of that nature was hinted at. And so the wheat grew.

Grandmother sat behind her desk, looking at Hiyori with narrow, fire-colored eyes.

“Oh?” She said. “Who?”

“I…don’t know his name,” Hiyori admitted. She really should have asked.

“His?”

“He seemed nice!” Hiyori said, trying to forestall suspicion. “And…he could see me.”

“Not a human, then,” Grandmother muttered, her fingers dancing a nervous rhythm against the desk’s warm wood.

Hiyori cleared her throat. “I was just wondering if, maybe—”

“You didn’t know who he was?” Grandmother interrupted. She pushed herself back from the desk and stood. Even from across the room, she seemed to tower over Hiyori.

“No, I didn’t,” Hiyori said. She tasted unease in the back of her throat. “He was kind of, um, pale, and strange-looking.”

She paused.

“And he had these blue eyes.”

: : :

Hiyori and her grandmother were called to the throne room the next day. Evidently, news of Hiyori’s new acquaintance had not been limited to just the two of them.

He was waiting.

As soon as they walked in, Hiyori saw him. A young man dangled his legs over the side of the tall throne at the top of the room. With every step she took toward him, his bare heel hit the side, and she felt the rhythm through her sandals.

Suddenly, his heels stopped hitting the side of the throne. Grandmother stopped walking, Hiyori beside her.

“Hello, Fujisaki,” Grandmother said.

“It’s been quite a while since you visited, Inari,” said Fujisaki. He swung himself around in the throne so he was sitting properly, and showed a smile that bared all his teeth.

“I have had no reason,” said Grandmother. He pouted.

“A shame that our only chance to catch up is like this,” he said. He released such a powerful sigh that Hiyori thought she felt the wind of it on her face. Grandmother’s expression remained stoic.

“You are right,” she said. “It is.”

Fujisaki’s smile widened, somehow showing impossibly more teeth. The hair on Hiyori’s neck stood up.

“Do you know what else is a shame?” he asked. He spoke to her grandmother, but his eyes focused on Hiyori.

“That such a sweet”—he rose from the throne—“innocent…”—descended the three steps, bare feet padding—“charming, little goddess…”

He walked right up to her, and his voice dropped into a hiss.

“…Should have to encounter something like that.”

Fujisaki stroked her chin with a thumb, holding her gaze. His eyes were flat as granite, and just as hard. As his thumb traced her jawline, Hiyori’s flesh crept up her arms.

There was a tingle of light, a burning smell, and Fujisaki’s hand dropped.

He chuckled. “No need for that, Inari.”

“Then kindly arrive at your point, if you have one,” Grandmother said through her teeth. Hiyori could feel the murderous heat radiating off her body.

“As much as it is a shame, fraternizing with the fallen is high treason,” Fujisaki said. The corners of his lips tugged down, as though it gave him no deeper pain than to make such an admission.

“I didn’t really ‘fraternize’,” Hiyori said, speaking up for the first time. The silence after her words crackled like a storm, and she swallowed.

“We just…talked a bit. I don’t know him. I never found out his name. Why is this important?”

Fujisaki turned back to her, and his face twisted with something Hiyori wasn’t sure she wanted to understand.

“His name?” he jeered softly. “That’s the easy answer, little Hiyori. That person is named Yaboku.”

Her teeth shivered with the echo of it.

Yaboku, the demon king of the underworld. He was a fallen god with a voice like earthquakes, who lived only in children’s nightmares. He would take their ears as trophies if they did not stay obediently in bed.

Yaboku was not a pale, hungry-eyed boy who smelled like memories.

“You’re lying,” said Hiyori. “That’s just a story.”

The room rang with her incautious words. At her side, Grandmother stiffened, and the other gods kept merciless silence.

Finally, Fujisaki laughed.

“You’re more fun than I had hoped for,” he said between giggles. “Still…”

He tapped one long finger against his bottom lip.

“I do not lie very often, little Hiyori.”

: : :

She was sent away from the mountain, wrapped in a dark mantle that would obscure her from the eyes of any searching gods.

“Hide in the dark,” Grandmother said. “Try not to miss the daylight too much.”

She cupped Hiyori’s chin, quickly pressing her lips to her forehead. “Quickly. Leave.”

She slid down the steepness below the clouds, into the trees at the foot of the high mountain. The familiar forest wore a warped cloak of nighttime that set her teeth on edge. Freckles of moonlight found their way through an overhang of late winter clouds, and Hiyori tried not to imagine the light reflecting off invisible eyes. Behind her, she thought the clatter of dislodged rocks were the feet of pursuers.

High treason, for speaking to a stranger.

Hiyori had unknowingly dredged up a taboo topic that Fujisaki—and therefore Heaven itself—no longer wished to acknowledge.

They would kill her, Grandmother had said. And by killing her they would ensure silence, forever.

Hiyori grit her teeth, drawing the mantle tight around her shoulders. Not so easy.

But in the deeper forest, every step was a gamble. Hiyori’s progress was obscenely loud as she crashed her blind way through the low branches, nothing but luck guiding her. For all she knew, she could be retracing her steps back to the mountain.

Inevitably, she tripped over an exposed root. Her forehead connected hard with the tree trunk it belonged to, and her vision erupted in stars. She cursed, lost her balance, and fell.

Once she crashed to the ground, she heard something—a noise not caused by her own racket.

A little ways off to her left, a single set of footsteps staggered to a halt.

Hiyori’s heart stopped entirely—then it took off again like a spooked horse. She sucked her lips between her teeth, her head and chest pounding.

The footsteps did not resume, but Hiyori felt the presence of someone else near her. She took a shallow, gulping breath. Tears of pain and panic sprang to the corners of her eyes.

Then, suddenly, a light flickered awake in the blackness. It was a cold light, bluer than snow. Hiyori winced away from the brightness, cringing into the undergrowth.

As her pupils adjusted to it, she saw the light was actually a lamp, held by an arm.

As the arm drew nearer, Hiyori scrambled backward. “Are you all right?” its owner asked.

A short, surprised laugh burst from her lungs, quickly followed by a sob.

“No!” she gasped.

The person who held the lantern hesitated before answering. When he did, he sounded distinctly uncomfortable.

“Um,” he said. “I’m sorry. I…would you…?” He cleared his throat. “Do you need some…help?”

Hiyori stumbled to her feet, pulling the hood of the useless mantle around her face.

“No,” she said roughly. “I do not need any help.”

“Your head,” the voice said. The lantern drew closer, and before she could move away, Hiyori was looking into the face of the person carrying it.

Blue reflected blue.

“Oh…” she breathed. “You.”

His eyebrows bunched together.

“You remember me?” he asked.

“You,” Hiyori repeated. “I’m going to be killed because of you.”

He winced.

“Ah. Yes. Sorry.”

Hiyori’s mouth opened and shut a few times. There were a long, long list of questions she could start asking, but she settled on:

“How did you see me?”

He nodded once at the blue lantern.

“A Diogenes lantern,” he said. “It dispels darkness only to the bearer. It also let me see past that tricky thing.” He tilted his head toward her, and Hiyori realized he meant her mantle.

“Oh,” she said. “So…you were following me?”

His eyes widened.

“I distracted the ones chasing you,” he retorted. Hiyori didn’t imagine the faint tinge of pink creeping along his chalk-white cheeks.

“Why?” she demanded. “You don’t even know me!”

He gave a tremendous frown, lowering the lantern a bit.

“You could just say ‘thank you’,” he muttered.

“And I don’t know you at all!” Hiyori continued, her voice gaining in volume. “But now because of you I’m suddenly accused of treason—and now here you are with some dogwood lantern—”

“—Diogenes—”

“—offering to help me, when you’re supposed to be some sort of horrible monster that steals ears—and then I hit my head on that poor tree, so you can understand why I’m a—a bit—” Hiyori stuttered to a halt, gasping deeply.

He didn’t respond, but simply looked at her, waiting for her to catch her breath again.

“You’re not really bad,” she asked in a fragile voice. “Are you?”

Behind the lantern, his eyes dropped.

“I like to think not.”

Hiyori stared at him for a moment: at the shy, downcast look on his face, at the blush of embarrassment just beginning to fade, at the softness that lurked around the corners of his frown.