Hyakki Yagyou

Chapter Twenty One: Sacrifice, Bait

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” 

- William Blake

January 15th, 9:45 pm

“Hello, Abe.” Hara said, pushing a hand through his slicked-back, dark hair. He acted cool, as if there was nothing wrong with the picture. So many questions must have been passing through her head and quite certainly she had put two and two together only to realize that he was – Grudge.

She was a smart woman. Once he walked in, she realized what kind of a threat he was. He wasn’t just a human foolishly spending time with immortals as if nothing wrong could happen in that kind of a scenario. Truth be told, when he just entered, such thoughts occurred to Ryu who was probably even more shocked to see Hara entering.

He wasn’t close to the man as Abe was (as a matter of fact, Nakagawa and he were not close at all; they barely knew each other. They were nothing but co-workers and even that was pushing it) but the fact that he entered the room so comfortably, exchanging the friendliest of smiles with Falsehood, threw him off completely.

What was going on here?

But, then he realized. Hara wasn’t human, was he? He was something…else. But what? Out of all those aforementioned creatures, what kind of a vile thing could he have been? His head almost started to spin. This was too much information. Ryu felt the contents of his stomach moving about, wanting to exit through the same way they came from and already he could feel the bitter and awful taste of acid on his tongue. But, he held it in. He had to. He had to be strong, if not for himself, then for Emi.

She was the one who needed him the most in this room. In this village…Hell, in this world. Probably no one else in this world needed him as much as she did.

“Please, save me the shocked faces.” Hara said, as only referring to Abe and Nakagawa. “I can understand him, but you, Miki-san?”

Hara closed the door. Abe realized this was probably one of the rare times that he called her by her given name, instead of just calling her by her last name. “I suppose I haven’t been introduced.” He glanced at Falsehood who had taken a seat on the floor with a huge grin plastered across her face. Her hair was now long on one side of her head whereas on the other, it was short, just like Aoyama’s was. Her face was the same. Half of a man and half of a woman.

It must have caught Hara by surprise because once he noticed it, he grimaced and looked away. “Grudge, at your service. You probably have other names for me as well, but this is the one I’ve gone by ever since I could remember. Hara is also good. It’s a fake one-“He glanced at Abe who readily had her hand up her sleeve. He knew she had a gun there and as if telling her through facial expressions he knew what she was thinking of doing, he grinned and looked back at the rest of the group who were strangely enough clustered around Sanada and Kayoko. Well, all except Abe, and Keita who was on the left. He was on the right of Falsehood, actually, staring at her as if she were the world’s eighth wonder.

“Miki-san should have seen right through me before, I think.” He said, taking a seat next to Falsehood who did not move a muscle. She was all ears to what her partner would say. Everyone was. “This job was convenient. The plan we had fit into it perfectly, like a puzzle. A puzzle that suddenly lost a piece when you moved to our department.” He frowned a little, staring at Abe.

“It was easy to cover-up “mysterious” cases before you came. I managed to rule off many deaths as suicides and many cases were closed because I was there, controlling everything. You know, if I became chief, and I am this close-“ he lifted his left arm and leaned his forefinger closer to the thumb, making a small distance between the tips of the fingers as if indicating how close he was to becoming chief “to make that happen. Once I do, who’s going to stop me? Stop anything. No one.”