HAKUOUKI: Back in Time

Chapter 25

~Why not listen to music while you read?~

Right, left. My footsteps echoed softly through the night.

"Owww... My legs are starting to cramp up..."

I stopped with Chizuru as she massaged her sore legs and looked at Nijo Castle.

In the early days of the Tokugawa shogunate, Nijo Castle had been a place for the shogun to stay on his way to the capital. It had been awhile since a shogun had actually stayed in it, though. We had met the shogun on the road and begun our escort about thirty minutes earlier, and had arrived at the castle relatively recently.

By now, I imagined, Kondou, Nagakura, Inoue, and the men were greeting the officials and other important people in the shogun's retinue. 

"Well, we got a job too do."

More specifically, it was our job to tell the soldiers when to change shifts, and generally carry messages back and forth. Glorified errand-girls in other words.

"At least I'm not total dead weight." I muttered to myself.

"Haruna, the castle is really well guarded, right? Only and idiot would try to-"

Before she could finish, I felt a sudden chill run down my spine and it seems that Chizuru felt it too. We froze.

"Ah!" Chizuru screamed.

I knew this feeling all too well. Two feet of cold steel, waiting to find their way to you. Eyes shining with a lust for blood and violence. I didn't want to be accustomed to such a horrible thing, but in the time since I had begun living with the Shinsengumi, I had felt it more than once.

I suppose they would have called what I felt radiating from the shadows, "bloodlust."

My eyes were drawn up toward the roof, where no normal person would ever think to look. A large wall cast a shadow, shielding a section of the roof from the moonlight. There they stood.

"You!"

"So you've noticed us. Not too slow, then..."

They looked very distinctive, unlike any soldiers I'd ever seen before, but three sets of piercing eyes scattered my thoughts and made it difficult for me to think. I had recognized them before; now I had to put names to faces.

Kazama Chikage, a man with ties with the Satsuma Domain who claims to be a demon.

Amagiri Kyuji, a mysterious person involved with the Satsuma domain and also claims to be a demon.

Shiranui Kyo, a person who associates himself with the Choshu Domain. He also claims to be a demon.

They were connected somehow to both the Satusma and the Choshu, and they're made an effort to impede the Shinsengumi at Ikedaya, and again at Hamaguri. Whoever they were, they did not belong at the shogun's castle.

"Wh-Why are you here?!"

"Hey little girl, you outta be asking yourself how we got here, not why! ... It was pretty easy, you know. A little human wall doesn't mean shit to demon."

"We are here for a specific purpose. That purpose is you two, Yukimura Chizuru and Suzumori Haruna. We are are for you."