Kurama's Spring Flower

Chapter Twenty Four

Goro and Akina were eating breakfast outside, enjoying the taste of their food whilst staring at the beautiful ocean view and listening to the waves. All was peaceful for them. They deserved this peace after undergoing four whole months of surprisingly intense training. But that peace ends as Chiharu stands in front of the two and gives them a sad look as she says, "I apologise, but we won't be doing more spiritual training today." Goro looks up to her with confusion shining in his eyes as he asks, "Why, my lady?" Chiharu sighs and answers, "I have important business to attend to, so you two will use this as a break day and develop your friendship, which can help with your teamwork." The two look at each other, before looking back at Chiharu and nod, making the woman smile as she opens a portal and waves to the two saying, "Don't have too much fun, whilst I'm gone!" And with that she leaves. Goro and Akina look at each other with stars in their eyes, before leaping up into the air cheering, "FREEDOM!!!!"

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The two are now siting in the lounge part of Chiharu's room with blank looks on their faces and cups of tea in their hands. "So..." Akina breathes out before taking a sip and Goro repeats, "So..." They then look at each other and ask in sync, "What do we do?" The two laugh for a moment before releasing groans as they realise that both have no suggestions as to how they should spend their free day. "We have nothing to do." Goro whines, making Akina nod and reply, "I think we are to use to training."Goro groans and asks, "Why have we been deprived of a normal life? Why couldn't some other people gain Mistress's interest?" Akina chuckles, before then pausing and gasps as she says, "Wait this is the moment!" Goro looks at her with confusion shining in his dark eyes, making Akina say, "We can go to Spirit World and see if I am magically Chiharu's child." Goro leaps up and exclaims, "How could I forget such a thing?!" Goro then takes a hold of Akina's hand and starts dragging her to the room she was forced to do Chiharu's test months ago, before he releases her to then scavenge through the scrolls on the shelves, which line the room.

"Where is it? Where is it?" Goro kept mumbling as he kept opening and closing scrolls, before he comes to a pause as his hand lands on a scroll that has created itself a thick coat of dust, which was shedding small bits onto his finger tips. He manages to pull it out and wipe off the majority of dust coating the wooden scroll, before unrolling it to read it's content. "What are you looking for?" Akina asks as she continues to watch him read through the scroll. Goro looks up from the scroll and answers, "I am looking for the scroll that teaches us how to open undetected portals to anywhere we want to go. And as my Mistress is hiding from Spirit World, I don't want them to detect us teleporting to their world and tracking it to this location, where she has been hiding for years." Akina nods before asking, "So is that the scroll you're looking for?" He looks back down at it and gives a nod and says, "Yes, this is it." He puts the scroll down on the desk, before rushing to the storage room to grab something, and Akina is puzzled to hear him grunting whilst in that room, causing her to call out, "What are you doing? Do you need any help?" She hears him try to grunt out a reply, "I'm good." Akina chuckles and starts to make her way over to the storage room to see him trying to lift up an incredibly large mirror that was leant up against the back wall of the storage room, making her raise an eyebrow and chuckle as she asks, "You sure?" Goro looks at her with a self-disappointed look and allows his arms to just flop lifelessly by his sides, before replying, "Can I have a hand, please?" Akina then makes his way over to the mirror and stands on the side that is unoccupied and looks over to Goro and asks, "On three or...?" Goro nods and says, "On three."

"One...Two...Three." Akina counts, before the two channel their Spirit energy as they lift up the mirror and carry it out of the storage room and place it next to the desk that the scroll rests on. "Now what?" Akina asks Goro, who makes his way back over to the desk and looks down at the scroll, before replying, "I need to have a clear image of where we are aiming to teleport in." Akina nods and asks, "Does Chiharu have a photo book that has photos of the places in Spirit World?" Goro pauses and thinks to himself and slowly raises his right hand with his index finger pointed as his mouth opens as if to provide a positive answer, before his arm flops back down and he releases a sigh and shrugs as he answers, "I dunno." Akina begins to look around aimlessly as she searches her mind for some kind of solution to their problem, but her mind was not coming up with answers. It instead kept revisiting that dream she had on her first night and it continued to trouble her. Thankfully, Goro was able to make her mind refocus to the present when he looks to her with a brightened look and says, "We could go and find out." Akina smirks and nods saying, "Finally, I am seeing your rebellious side." Goro smiles back and says, "Let's search her room first as she likes to make that a room of mystery to me and to you."

The two leave the room and head down a corridor that leads to a set of stairs leading to the upper floor of the temple, which neither person were ever allowed to go to or enter, due to Chiharu claiming the whole upper floor as her private suit for a reason unknown to the two. This caused their bodies to shake, but not with fear, with excitement as they are eager to learn what kind of secrets lie behind the door they stand before. The two look to each other and smile before the two take a hold of the handle and swing the door wide open to not see anything but darkness, until the two stepped in, causing various candles that seem to be scattered in various places, suddenly light up to show a hallway with multiple doors. Akina groans and says in disbelief, "Her room has multiple rooms in it!" Goro stares wide eyed and says, "Mistress must really have a lot more secrets than anticipated."

The two walk forward and look to one another as Goro speaks with uncertainty, "You take the doors on the left and I go through the ones on the right?" Akina looks at him and then to the first door by her side and nods as she says, "Yeah, and if we find anything that could be a potential lead...we can call out for each other and show each other our findings." Goro nods before placing his hand on the door handle, before the two then enter their self-assigned separate rooms.

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Goro enters the first room and was greeted with a room that doesn't have the expected walls outlining the room, but seems to be made of uneven rock expected to be seen when inside of a cave. On some parts of the rock has chains attached to the walls and dangling to the ground with metal cuffs on the end. 'What in all the worlds....?' Goro thinks in fear at what he sees, and for some bizarre reason decides to walk further into the room. His nose scrunches up as it catches strong whiffs of various foul smells that are overpowering his other senses: blood, vomit, urine and faeces. He uses his right hand to cover his nostrils and decides to focus on a different sense, causing his eyes to sharpen their gaze and catch sight of something that concerns him. There were three unconscious and heavily tortured bodies chained to the wall One body, was a male Spirit adorned in a uniform that King Enma's special army, who are called upon whenever Spirit Detectives fail to remain under his control and influence. The second body was a very old female woman, who's Spirit energy signature seemed to be slowly fading, making Goro conclude that the woman's life is close to ending. The third body made Goro freeze in horror. The body was of a female demon, but not just any demon, for this female was a Dog Demon with matted messy brown hair and had a mark on her shoulder which is identical to the mark that sits on Goro's shoulder. "Mother!?" Goro gasps and leaps over to her unconscious form.

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Akina enters the room she picked and was rendered speechless by what she sees. The room was a recreation of a private room in a hospital ward but a peculiar one. It had a patient's bed as expected in all patient rooms. But beside the bed was not only a set of full draws, but also a large crib that held some objects. She first walked over to the crib and picked up one of the tags that you would see attached to a patient's hand, and she began to shake as she saw what was written on it: Urameshi Yusuke. This makes her quickly pick up the next small tag, which held more creases on it to see: Urameshi Akina. She then looks over to the patient's bed and hesitantly puts down the two name tags that have filled her up with fear, before slowly walking over to the bed to see the patient name tag that looked like someone had tried scrunching it up and reads what is on it: Urameshi Atsuko. "Sh...She really is a stalker...a very...very sick stalker..." Her voice chokes out, before her eyes move over to the draws. As much as she was greatly disturbed by this revelation, her curiosity as to what is filling up those draws start nagging at her mind. She takes a hold of the first draw handle and pulls it open to see the gown her mother had given birth to her in. Under it was a dead daisy sitting idly in the draw along with a fake midwife uniform. 'What the hell!?' She then opens the second draw and feels like being sick as she sees a glass box that hold a dried out umbilical cord along with a photo of her as an infant with the words written on it: my beautiful baby girl.