Hanabi

Chapter 13: Help

Tears were now blurring Tomomi's view. She wouldn't be able to explain at first why she was being so heavily affected. She saw Haruna getting hurt countless times since they started her training, and she got hurt several times as well. Once Haruna got so injured dealing with a nasty yuurei that Tomomi thought those wounds would never disappear. 

But this was different. It felt different to her.

Tomomi just knew that Oni weren't the same thing. She had seen a bit of what they were capable of, and now she was about to see the exact thing that she never wanted to see.

The brunette saw Mami taking her knife as the Oni moved closer to her, and her heart ached. They were both really stupid, but she was more stupid than Mami. She should have known better. She should have told Hibiki that she couldn't help him, that he should wait for Grandma Ono.

She couldn't quite understand why Mami was so worried, to the point of doing something like that, but it didn't matter now. Tomomi desperately wanted to do something, but she knew she couldn't and shouldn't. After all those talks and that new information they had from the book, she knew that none of her songs would really work. It had to be a specific one to make them go away, and she didn't know anything like that yet.

Plus, Mami seemed so serious and even scared when she made her promise to stay hidden, and that only made Tomomi's chest feel heavier.

The Oni suddenly moved faster and advanced towards Mami, and the brunette had to let go of her purse and cover her mouth with both hands so she could keep her promise and not get attention to herself with noises.

Mami jumped back and successfully escaped the first of the Oni's attempts to hit her, feeling the air moving as those huge claws passed close to her chest. In that brief second she could be sure that it was still just aiming to wound her, or else she'd be dead. She wanted to see if she could lure the Oni farther away so Tomomi wouldn't watch that in full view, but it was something difficult to accomplish.

She continued to escape its attacks the best she could, but the Oni didn't seem bothered by that. It was clear that Mami didn't stand a chance, and that was very likely the reason. The creature was probably having fun with that.

The Oni raised its previously lowered body, standing in all its terror and looking down at its prey. Mami looked up at its face, trying to calm down and keep staring at it. She knew the Oni could feel her fear, but she wouldn't show it openly. The only thing she could do was to challenge it that way, that was the only possible brave thing to do.

She tried to escape once more when the Oni advanced again, but this time she wasn't fast enough. One of those big claws made contact with her left arm as the Oni dashed by her, and the blonde lost her balance with the sudden movement.

Everything was feeling cold now as she fell on her knees and quickly tried to stand again, looking over her shoulder to see the Oni with that same sinister grin. She was trembling, and she hated that. Mami hated the insane fear that she always felt when something like this happened, she hated feeling powerless, and she hated knowing that she was going to get out of that graveyard with more scars. Those weren't ordinary wounds, they would sting and burn for weeks after closing.

The Oni moved to her again, and this time she prepared to strike back with her knife instead of escaping, but something surprised her and the pitch-black Oni before it could get closer. There was music.

Mami froze on her spot when she heard the characteristic sound of the shakuhachi echoing on the graveyard, and she cursed mentally. She felt even more scared for a second, thinking that Tomomi had just put herself in danger.

But in fact, she didn't.

Mami took a second to notice, but she couldn't really tell where the sound was coming from. She had no idea of how Tomomi was doing that, but it sounded like there were multiple flutes all around the cemetery. Well, Mami knew where the sound was actually coming from, since she was the one who hid Tomomi, but the Oni clearly didn't know.