Red Direction

Yumi rushed down the dirt path to find the first villager that she could. A middle-aged woman that stayed back to raise her five-year old. She was just out repairing a hole in the hut with their child hovering around them. “Excuse me, Mrs. Nakae!”

She turned towards Yumi, hearing her voice as she approached. “Master Yumi, what is it? You look out of breath.”

“Have you seen Yuki?” She only got a confused look out of the woman. Yumi forgot that no one even knew Yuki, by name anyway. He kept inside the hut recovering. So people only knew he was there, but nothing more. “My friend! Have you seen him outside?”

“Outside?” The question apparently seemed strange to the woman. Yumi didn’t understand it. But she didn’t want to try either. She just wanted an answer.

“Yes, have you seen him?”

As the woman thought more on the question, something seemed to come to her. “Oh, that’s right! I saw some stranger with the elder. Maybe that was him?”

Yumi quickly turned and started running off again. “Thanks!” she shouted remembering her manners a little late. ‘Yuki and the elder together? Why was Yuki out walking? Is he feeling better now? And why was he with the elder?’ More questions just seemed to be popping up for her. And she wanted answers now.

Chapter 399 – Red Direction

Seated atop one of the huts, Yumi sat with a pensive expression as she went over her information. She hoped keeping the high ground might let her see Yuki when he arrived. And everything was just a mistake of her overreacting. She would take that over anything.

‘No one’s seen him in the village. But several did see him walking on his own. And Yuki was spotted with the elder as well. But no one’s seen the elder either lately. What happened to the two of them?’ She still had pieces missing to the puzzle. The worst being the most obvious one, their location. No one knew where they had gone, just had seen them walking. Having no clues to work from meant she could only search aimlessly.

Though something about the whole thing bothered her. ‘Why was Yuki with the elder? The old man’s only talked to me and requested things from me. Why change now? Unless…’ It was something in the back of her mind for a while. Something that she really didn’t want to entertain. Yet she already admitted to herself it was a possibility. And given things, it almost seemed more possible. ‘That two-faced old man isn’t trying to get more leverage on me, is he? Making sure I stick around to keep their village safe by holding Yuki hostage. Would he do that?’

She didn’t want to really take such a negative thought. Yet with the old man, he was so driven to protect his people, she wondered if it might make him do anything dirty to keep that certainty. ‘He’s expecting me not to be willing to do anything against him, because I wouldn’t do anything bad.’ Such dark thoughts did make her hesitate in her resolve, if it turned out to be true. ‘This is still just a fake world. I’m only going along with the rules to make things easier on myself. So I shouldn’t need to worry about feeling bad about anything I do here. None of them are real and it’ll all disappear once Phoibe rescues us.’

Yumi stood up on the roof looking out at the horizon. The unknown before her that might hold Yuki. “I just need to stop hesitating and do what must be done.”

Resolved or not, she still lacked any information to act on. Without any sort of clue to go by, she was hunting around in the dark. “Should I just start searching?” Yumi was out of options in her mind. It seemed like the only thing that she could do. “Maybe I’ll stumble across him by accident…” An empty hope to pin things on, that much she knew.

But she ran out of ideas and she couldn’t stand and do nothing waiting for bad news. It was the only thing to do. Which quickly settled it for Yumi. She leapt off the roof and jumped over the fields to dash into the forest. Given that the forest was the most dangerous place for Yuki to be, she felt it was best to rule that out before anywhere else. Even if she had been keeping the demon population in the forest low, she could have missed one. She couldn’t sense energy, only listen. ‘There might have been one I missed. It would have been easy if they didn’t move.’

Even placing some hope on a demon capturing Yuki felt a little bit of a stretch to her. They were after her and not him for one. She had been doing all of the killing. ‘Even injured as he is, Yuki can still use his powers to defend himself. He wouldn’t be that easy to take. Unless they surprised him…’ Every point and a counter and she hated that she was getting nowhere with any of it.

It was useless.

An hour in the forest, Yumi finished slaying a random oni she found roaming the forest. It had nothing to do with Yuki or her. It just seemed to have picked up on her going through the forest and insisted on a fight that it lost immediately.

But it was about how she felt about the forest when she left it before. ‘It’s empty. I’m not going to find anything here. Yuki could be anywhere…’ Anywhere, and the land vast enough to leave her searching for days.

Yumi jumped to a new direction breaking free of the forest to begin her search anew with more unfamiliar areas. She moved with more caution and took care to watch her orientation. Unlike with the forest, she didn’t know any of the directions as well from just looking at the land. Even keeping the village at her back couldn’t be kept for long.

She turned and stopped for a moment. Leaping high into the air and pushing herself up to float, she could still see the village. Though it was getting to be just a dot in the region. “I can’t let it out of my sight. For now, I’ll keep my search radius to this. I don’t know how far Yuki could have gone.” Even with a defined limit, it still left her with too much ground to cover.

Returning to the ground, she hovered over the rolling hills with the openness proving easier travel for her. “I need to find him quickly. The more time I waste searching, the further away he could be getting…”

Despite her speed and the need, nothing ever came from the searching. Day changed to night and day once more. And despite that, she still hadn’t finished searching the entire area. More remained that she could search. That much she knew, though if she didn’t find him in that, there was still plenty more beyond. “Am I going to have to search all of Japan to find him?”

That potential reality worried her, since she didn’t know what was going on. And for all she knew, he was in an area that she had already searched. So many unknowns existed that she couldn’t control or understand. ‘Give me even one piece to base my search on… Anything!’

A crunch from underfoot of the earth spiked through her ear. It wasn’t the sort of clue that she sought. Yumi turned around, finding that she was being approached by five demons, none of which were oni. She only recognized one of them as a wolf sort of demon she killed previously. The rest all looked unlike any other demon that she had fought yet, which surprised her giving the amount she had already. But she was reminded of the vast nature of the Japanese lore with demons and spirits. ‘I don’t have time for this…’

Yumi leapt forward disappearing from the sight of the demons. In their confusion, they didn’t see her slice the head off the lead demon while the two adjacent ones met deaths by crushing pressure left with smoothly curved cross sections of their lower bodies falling to the ground.

The two demons that escaped immediate death only managed by reflex as wounds sprayed up from their chests. They leapt back, going to heightened attention against Yumi’s ruthless assault. Staring at each other for signs of Yumi, they slipped out of sight as well. However, one was found by Yumi’s blade as demon blood sprayed everywhere.

Last of his group, the final demon caught sight of Yumi’s movements from the blood spray painting her path. It unleashed flames from its mouth over the area that Yumi ran into. However, Yumi sliced through, splitting it with her blade. Appearing directly in front of the demon, she came to a stop before the demon.

Looking down at Yumi, it didn’t notice the blade sticking through its chest until death already swept down to claim its life as the last in the set. It grabbed out for Yumi’s head only for her to slice off its hand before it came anywhere close. “Don’t touch me.” She spun around slicing off the head as she walked away.

“Nothing still…” She began walking towards the village left with her thoughts. “I doubted they would have any clues on them, but it’s still disappointing to be right.” Yumi leapt into the air once more hovering in flight. A day without any signs left her feeling dejected and empty. She hoped, expected, something to pop up. Yet she was still in the same place as before.

Lost. Completely lost.

“Maybe Yuki’s returned and I was overreacting…” she muttered with a thin hope to tie it all together. It was the only thing she could pin something to now. The village might have answers. ‘If this is all the elder’s doing, maybe he’s back and I can wring some information out of him…’

The village still remained more than an hour away from her at her normal speed. Which left her with other concerns. The demons she just killed hadn’t been the only ones out of the forest that she killed. Which left her with some worries. ‘I’m moving around so much, how are they still finding me so easily? It’s like they can track my every movement…’ It was something that she never understood. In the forest, there was something that always felt off about it that she assumed it was a territory of the demons. But outside of it they could still track her with ease.

‘Could they also be tracking Yuki?’ she wondered, ‘Or is it only me? Is it this mark that they warned me about? Is it more than just having a bounty on my head?’ For all her questions, none were new ones for her. She never really figured it out and it always bothered her. Though it made it easier killing them since they came to her instead. But she didn’t need another interruption at the moment.

Which fortunately panned out for Yumi by the time she reached the village. No further demons harassed her and the village seemed to be safe as well, not that was on her mind in priorities at the moment. But since she left the village, it didn’t surprise her. They wanted her right now rather than the village.

Yumi landed in front of the entrance and ran the rest of the way into the village keeping her eyes open for any signs. ‘Yuki be here, please! Just let this be an overreaction. I don’t know where to look for you if it isn’t…’

Her hope disappeared at the sight of the unchanged bed. No one had been back since she left. ‘Damn…what’s going on?’ She poked her head back out looking for her next target. ‘There he is!’ The elder was back now. “You’ve got some answers to give up, old man…”

Turning away from the hut sharply, she hastened her step. There was no chance that she was going to allow him to get away. She needed him to give up what he knew. “Old man!” she shouted, dropping any sort of formalities, as he had done to her.

“Master Yumi?” he questioned, as he came to face her on her approach. Some confusion found their way into his voice at her change in tone with him.

“Where’s my friend?” she demanded standing very close to him, building up her presence.

“What do you mean?”

Yumi leaned in a little not taking his ignorance at face value. “I know you were with him. Where is he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her blood started to boil as she was losing her patience with him. It made her legs shake with anger that she barely kept in check. “Don’t play dumb with me, old man. You were the last person to see him. I know you know something!”

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply, but your friend left on his own yesterday. He only told me that he was leaving and nothing more.”

Yumi had enough of his lying and grabbed him by his tunic. “Enough with the lies! I know you’re involved! Tell me what you know!”

“Master Yumi?! What are you doing? You—“

“Don’t think I won’t level your entire village if you’ve done anything to him! I care nothing for the consequences of a fake world! Answer me now before you regret it!”