The night wind drifted softly through the air.
From somewhere below the stone steps, Kōbe Hikaru could faintly make out Kaede's parents calling her home.
"Come on, come on! It's pitch black out and you're still running around!"
"But that big brother is so pretty…"
"Big brother? That's a demon! Stay away from it!"
"He is not a bad demon! He helped Sister Kikyō chase all the other demons away! And besides — when he was standing next to Sister Kikyō, they looked like a painting. So beautiful. So perfectly matched!"
"…"
The voices faded into the distance.
Kōbe Hikaru stood beneath the torii gate and had caught every single word.
A Ghost Warrior's hearing far surpassed any ordinary human's. Even at a distance of several dozen zhang, whispered conversation came to him as clearly as if it had been spoken at his ear.
"Looks like that little girl's taken a liking to me," he muttered.
Perfectly matched, she'd said.
Honestly? He couldn't say he minded the sound of that.
He was still holding the crimson demon mask in one hand — he hadn't put it back on. There wasn't much point, now that it was already off. And truth be told, he'd grown a little tired of wearing it.
Three months without seeing daylight. Without feeling a breath of open air on his face.
That hadn't felt particularly good, if he was being honest with himself.
Ghost Warriors technically didn't need to breathe — but the psychological stuffiness of wearing that thing for months on end was real. He had only been a demon for three months. He had been human for nearly twenty years.
Twenty years of habit and accumulated instinct didn't change easily.
"Aren't you going to put the mask back on?"
Kikyō's voice came from behind him.
Kōbe Hikaru turned.
In the moonlight, the shrine maiden stood on the stone steps before the main hall, looking down at him from above. White kosode like fresh snow. Red hakama bright as flame. Her black hair fell loose over her shoulders, lifted lightly by the night wind, strands of it occasionally drifting across the curve of her neck.
Honestly, from this angle, the view was quite something.
Kōbe Hikaru pulled his gaze away and tucked the demon mask into his belt.
"Too suffocating," he said. "And it's not like my face scares you."
Kikyō didn't respond to that. She simply turned and walked back toward the main hall.
"Follow me."
Kōbe Hikaru followed.
The hall's doors were open, its interior simply furnished.
At the center stood a god-shelf, a small altar bearing offerings to some unnamed deity. In front of it sat a low table, set with an incense burner, a pair of candlesticks, and several empty offering plates. Sliding panel doors on either side of the room presumably led through to the inner chambers.
Kikyō crossed to the altar and knelt on the cushion before it. She didn't invite Kōbe Hikaru to sit — she simply reached into a nearby cabinet and began drawing things out.
Incense sticks.
A candle.
And then —
A small dish of rice.
A small dish of pickled vegetables.
A bowl of clear water.
Kōbe Hikaru watched as she arranged each item on the low table before the altar, one by one. Her movements were practiced and unhurried — the motions of someone who had performed this ritual more times than she could count.
She lit the incense. Pressed her palms together. Murmured a few low words.
Some kind of invocation or prayer — Kōbe Hikaru couldn't make out the meaning, but he could feel the faint pulse of spiritual power woven into the syllables.
When she had finished, Kikyō rose and turned to look at him from the side.
"This is for you."
Kōbe Hikaru blinked.
For me?
He looked at the dish of rice, the pickled vegetables, the bowl of clear water, the thin ribbon of incense smoke curling upward toward the ceiling.
This setup was…
"Is this an offering?"
Kikyō nodded.
Kōbe Hikaru went quiet.
Three months in this world — most of it spent in the wilderness killing demons — but he had still picked up enough knowledge of the era's customs to understand what was in front of him.
Offerings were humanity's expression of reverence and supplication toward the divine and the supernatural. Through food, incense, and flame, people appeased the spirits they feared and petitioned them for protection.
But for demons, offerings also served as a genuine source of power.
Incense smoke was the physical manifestation of human faith. When a person made an offering with true sincerity, that sincerity converted into a special kind of energy — something like nourishment for those of supernatural nature. It replenished demonic power. Mended injuries.
Which was why some demons disguised themselves as gods, tricking humans into making offerings to them. Some even went as far as actually protecting human settlements in exchange for a steady supply of that energy.
"You're making an offering to me?"
He wanted to be sure he had understood correctly.
"Yes," Kikyō said, her tone perfectly even. "You helped this village. This is gratitude."
"…"
Kōbe Hikaru wasn't sure what to say.
A shrine maiden, making an offering to a demon.
No matter how he looked at it, the image was deeply strange.
And yet — he could feel it. That warm, steady energy coiling within the rising smoke, flowing gradually into him, filling the reserves his battle had emptied.
It was pleasant.
Like sinking into a hot spring.
Kōbe Hikaru's eyebrow rose slightly. It was the first time he'd ever experienced the real benefit of faith-offerings firsthand.
If I'd known it felt like this, I should have found a village to slip into ages ago and soaked up offerings every day.
Of course, that was just an idle thought. In practice, relying on external energy sources felt somehow less reliable than cultivating his own through the Affection System — well, to be fair, the System was also an external source. One pot calling the kettle black.
But it was at least more consistent.
Either way, he wasn't about to turn this one down.
"Thanks," Kōbe Hikaru said.
Kikyō shook her head. "I should be the one saying that."
She drew the Shikon Jewel from her sleeve. Its soft violet radiance shifted in her palm like a living thing.
"This jewel was meant to reach my hands from the elder himself."
"But he never made it."
"If not for you…"
She didn't finish the sentence.
She didn't need to. Kōbe Hikaru understood exactly what she meant. If he hadn't picked the Shikon Jewel up along the way, it would almost certainly have fallen into demonic hands. The consequences of that were too grim to dwell on.
"Don't put it like that," Kōbe Hikaru said, waving a hand. "I'm not exactly a good person — I'm not even a person."
A small joke. Kikyō's expression didn't move even slightly.
Kōbe Hikaru cleared his throat, quietly, and pressed on.
"Anyway. I've already said it — helping the old man was incidental, and bringing the Shikon Jewel here was on my way. Don't think too much of it."
Kikyō looked at him.
Something passed through those cool, clear eyes — a brief glimmer, there and gone before it could be named.
In an instant, her composure was back, perfectly still.
"Whatever the reason," she said, "you helped me. You helped this village. I won't forget that."
Kōbe Hikaru opened his mouth as if to say something.
Then thought better of it. He closed his mouth and smiled instead.
It was a slightly awkward smile — unpolished, and with nothing hidden behind it whatsoever. Clean. Unguarded. Not a trace of pretense anywhere in it.
And that smile, against the backdrop of those inverted crimson-and-white eyes, that pale complexion, that unmistakably inhuman nature — created a strange and quietly striking contradiction.
Kikyō looked at that smile, and paused for just a moment.
She had seen countless demons in her life.
But she had never seen one smile like that.
So… human.
More human, even, than most of the people of this era — people who bent their backs to the earth every waking hour just trying to survive another day.
[Shikon Jewel — Naohi: Affection +1]
[Current Affection: 5 (Budding)]
[It conveys a message: 'She saw the way you smiled.']
So the Shikon Jewel is just as much of a looks-obsessed little gremlin as Kaede is, huh?
Kōbe Hikaru genuinely had not seen that one coming.
If he'd known it would be that easy — he'd have taken the mask off a whole lot sooner.
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