Yamiyo no Hotaru

Chapter 18

When was this memory? She has lived for hundreds of years, and this is one of the oldest memories she can recall. Her mother was killed, her house was burned down, she fled to the mountains only to be chased by a lowly man who humiliated her under the gaze of many curious eyes.

"N-No... Don't... Noooo!!"

The girl instinctively knows what this means, what he is going to do to her, and she screams in despair, even though she has no clear knowledge of what he is going to do. But there is no help. The world is not that kind.

...Therefore, a fate, which was brought about by whims and coincidences and "her" calculations, made "here" come there.

"What on earth do all these hairless monkeys want, gathered here on this mountain?"

It was at the same time that her sweet voice sounded. The half of the body of the man who had just ambushed the girl and was about to tear off her costume was torn off and flying in the air with a spray of blood.

"Ah..."

The girl felt warm blood splatter on her cheeks and clothes. Her eyes were filled with the sight of the man's body slowly collapsing, guts dripping from his body.

The white girl, half in a state of shock, turned her eyes slowly in the direction of the voice, or the armed peasants, fearfully.

There was a strange woman. A fantastically, unrealistically, frighteningly beautiful woman with crow's wet-feather hair and red eyes. Her beauty, which could be described as the beauty of a country, made those who saw her forget even to breathe.

However, the peasants who saw her were frightened and dismayed by her. This is because she has fox ears on her head and nine fox tails behind her. It was clearly not what a human should have, for the difference in power between them and her was obvious just from the carnage they had just caused.

"A-Aaahhhhhh, it's a mons—Gghh!!?"

The man who tried to escape was immediately cut off in equal lengths with a swing of her tail. The man falls down with a slipping, slithering motion.

"Eeeel...!?"

"You monster!! I'm gonna kill you...!?"

Some tried to escape, others tried to kill her with farming tools, but all were equally helpless. Soon they were all torn to pieces by the sound of the nine tails.

The girl stared dumbfounded, without a sense of reality, as the men in front of her were slaughtered like insects, so easily that it was almost mind-boggling. But then, she was brought back by the monster who had caused the slaughter.

"Oh my, oh my, what a small and cute little fellow we have here.... Well, that's very unusual. I didn't expect a half-youkai."

The nine-tailed monster walks up to the girl immediately and comments on her with a gleeful glee. Squinting, the calamity youkai admires the girl as if to judge her.

"Ah... Aahh..."

The white fox girl shudders at the look, as if she were literally looking at a thing or a domestic animal. And then... the next moment she is trampled.

"Kkhh...!?"

The girl suffers from the suddenness of the situation. Of course. Even though she is in human form, an adult monster fox is stomping on her chest with one foot. A creaking sound is heard in the forest.

"Aah... Ggghh... Stop... Please!!"

She desperately pleads as the monster fox stomps on her. However, the monster fox responds to the girl with a smile of aggravated amusement.