When a person grows old, gradually forgetting the family around them, their mind slowly becoming muddled, the only one they can still remember is the person who mattered most.
The aged red oni lay in bed. He could see his children and grandchildren before him, and he could see the villagers who had come to visit.
But he didn't remember a single one of them.
He only remembered a friend named Blue, who had left a long, long time ago and had never come back to see him.
Beside him, the younger generation gathered around the aged red oni, praying for him.
But the red oni paid them no attention.
He just kept looking ahead.
Gradually, as his body decayed, his aged consciousness also began to fade. The scene before his eyes grew blurrier and blurrier.
The red oni still used his last strength to keep calling out.
"Blue!"
"Blue!"
Just as the red oni's life force was about to dissipate completely, in his blurry vision, behind his family members, a familiar, illusory figure appeared.
It was the blue oni in his youth!
After all these years, in the red oni's eyes, the blue oni still looked like a young man.
Not only that, in his daze, the red oni seemed to hear the blue oni's voice.
"Hey, Red!"
"It's me, Blue. I'm back!"
"Hurry and get out of bed. Let's go pick wild fruit in the forest together!"
In the red oni's hazy vision, he seemed to see the young blue oni standing right before him.
And extending a hand to him.
The red oni finally smiled.
With his last strength, he used every ounce of power to raise a hand, wanting to grasp the blue oni's hand.
But the red oni's hand passed right through the blue oni. He touched nothing.
And so, in the red oni's blurry vision, the blue oni's young figure quietly faded away.
As if he had never been there at all.
As the illusion shattered, the red oni also exhausted all his life force. The hand he had raised in the air suddenly lost its strength and fell with a thud.
It never moved again.
Instantly, sorrowful cries filled the entire room.
Even the villagers outside, hearing the weeping of the red oni's children and grandchildren, could only lower their heads and sigh.
They understood.
Brother Red Oni had left this world.
May he rest in peace.
At this point, the story of the fifteenth life had come to a complete end.
The blue oni had disappeared.
The red oni had died of old age.
But as two members of the oni race, they had both left oni bloodlines in this world, completing the task of ensuring the oni's survival.
Even to this day, the red oni's descendants had not died out. They still lived on the land of Narukami Island in Inazuma.
If one day you come to Inazuma City as a traveler, do not forget to take a trip to the crossroads.
If nothing unexpected happens, you will run into an idle oni youth at the crossroads, swaggering through the streets with a few lackeys.
He might invite you to a sumo match on the street.
He might also invite you to a beetle fight on a street corner.
In that case, if you don't want to lose a day's worth of snacks, please decline his invitation.
...
At that moment, at Wangshu Inn in Liyue, after telling fifteen lives' worth of stories, Li Mo had grown more and more accustomed to this identity.
Even his tone of voice and his storyteller's gestures had become very similar to those of storytellers in other teahouses or on the streets.
After finishing the story of the fifteenth life, Li Mo finally let out a sigh of relief.
In this life, he had broken his promise to the red oni. At the moment of the red oni's death, he hadn't been able to visit him in time.
In truth, it wasn't that he didn't want to go back and see the red oni. He was afraid of dragging the red oni down.
In this life, the blue oni who had robbed and caused trouble in the city was not him at all.
It was another oni of the same race.
But those damned Shogunate soldiers only knew that the suspect was a blue-skinned oni, so they kept targeting the blue oni.
Even jumping into the river hadn't completely fooled the Shogunate soldiers.
He had spent his whole life hiding, hunted by the Shogunate, wanted by the Shogunate.
He had missed the red oni more than once.
He had wanted to risk danger to go back and see the red oni.
But the moment he showed himself, he would definitely be targeted by those despicable Shogunate soldiers. He might even drag the red oni down and destroy the red oni's stable, happy life.
That was why he had broken his promise to the red oni.
When the blue oni grew old.
When he was about to die, he finally made up his mind. He risked the greatest danger to return to that village, wanting to fulfill his old promise.
But it was too late.
When he arrived at the village, the red oni was already dead.
Thinking of all the things that had happened in the past, Li Mo could only sigh.
He silently resolved that once all the storytelling missions were complete, he would definitely resurrect his good friend the red oni and fulfill the promise he hadn't kept back then.
At that moment, below the stage, after hearing the story of the fifteenth life, the audience was also sighing.
They discussed it endlessly.
"Sigh, I was too shallow. I shouldn't have doubted the storyteller's skill with the blade!"
"I thought there was finally a story with a happy ending. Who knew the storyteller would still force in a blade at the very end? I'm really done with this storyteller!"
"By the way, there's a hole in this story!"
"Didn't it say earlier that the blue oni was very kind and very reclusive? A kind oni like that shouldn't have gone to the streets like a thug and robbed people, right?"
"Those Shogunate soldiers got it wrong? Lady Raiden Shogun, please give us an explanation!"
"Explain what? A thousand years have passed. It's impossible to investigate what happened back then!"
"Besides, an oni robbing and causing trouble is a trivial matter to the Raiden Shogun. It would have been handled by her subordinates. She wouldn't know anything about it!"
"Sigh, poor red oni. Even at the moment of death, he never saw the blue oni again!"
"Have any of you noticed something? Whether it's the blue oni or the red oni, they both worked so hard, they were both so kind. They're nothing like a certain lazy street thug who only wanders the streets and tricks kids out of their snacks in the name of beetle fights!"
"If this keeps up, the oni will go extinct sooner or later!"
"Hehe, I'm also a beetle fighting expert. I really want to have a match with that street thug!"
The audience directed all their criticism at the Raiden Shogun, the boss of Inazuma, and the street thug oni, Arataki Itto.
After all, in this story, the Raiden Shogun was the god of Inazuma at the time and the boss of all the Shogunate soldiers.
Arataki Itto was the descendant of the red oni in the story.
The two of them should be the ones most affected by this life's story.
As they discussed, people turned their heads and looked toward the corner where the Raiden sisters sat.
Sure enough, they saw the Raiden sisters grieving silently.
But when the audience turned their gaze to another corner, intending to see what that street thug was doing, they discovered—
That street thug had disappeared?
---
Translator's Note
I'm choosing a new work to translate. You guys can vote for it on my Ko-Fi profile. The link to it is in my bio.
The choices include 1 work related to Arknights, 1 work related to HSR and Undertale, 1 work related to HI3, and 2 works unrelated to any gacha.
The poll lasts 2 days.