Chain Yokai: Book 1. The Hunter

The Seven Pilgrims.

Laura marveled at the sights around her. All around, people and yokai moved through the city, going about their business. "This is...incredible...I've never seen such a big city.."

"Yeah." said Azami with a cheerful smile. "Shinjuku is known as the center of Tokyo. The government building is here, and the train station is known to be the bussiest in the world. It's also the place in Tokyo with the highest yokai activity. Sometimes even dragons like to pass through here."

After Azami had finished the tour of the school building, she had proceeded to show them the route to the dorms. As it turned out, all dorms were seperate from the school itself, each dorm being in a different area of Tokyo, having their own designated routes and wake up times that would allow students to make it to their classes without getting late.

"Hey look Laura!!" said Neko excitedly. "More Bakonekos!"

Sure enough, there were plenty of other cat ears and tails in the busy crowd. And Bakonekos weren't the only yokai.  A ginormous wheel with a human head in the center of it's spokes rolled through the street without any trouble having a heated conversation with a man who appeared to be in the real estate bussiness. A Yuki-Onna could be seen at a vending machine drinking a coke. And a flock of Tengu were seen flying through the sky.

Laura could even see some lesser known yokai, like a small dwarf figure who had a serpent's neck and head was conversing with a tanuki in a series of hisses.

"Many yokai gather here to do bussiness with humans." said Azami. "It's one of the reasons that the Japan branch is so large. This district also has the only Yokai only bar in the entire world, it's run by a Jorogumo named Kumo I believe."

"Jorogumo?" said Yuki. "Yuki thought that species was near extinction."

"Yes, Kumo is one of the only Jorogumo in Japan right now." said Azami. "Not many emotions have been sprouting up around spiders lately."

Yokai, as it was discovered in 2014, formed when humans formed a seriously explosive emotion. It could be anger, love, grief..anything. If the emotion was intense enough, the emotion would center around a person, animal, or object, and create a twisted duplicate of it...the duplicate would gain intelligence and later become a yokai. Bakonekos tended to be born when emotions were vibrant around cats for example. A duplicate of the cat would be created with changed features and intelligence...all a result of a strange energy known as Soul Fix that seemed to stem from human emotion. That was why some yokai resembled humans who already existed, sometimes an emotion would stem around them, the yokai's other traits would depend on the time and environment they were born in.

Yuki had been born when a mother had cried over her daughter whom she found dead out in a blizzard. In fact, had the daughter grown and matured, it was believed that Yuki would have resembled her greatly. Back in ancient times...humans misread this and thought humans were actually becoming yokai.

"Jorogumo are maidens who sometimes take the forms of spiders right?" asked Laura. "I've never actually seen one before."

"Just try not to meet this one." said Azami. "She may own a bar, but she's not exactly sociable...especially to humans."

"What does she have against humans?" said Neko. "They're not so bad...they throw you some free fish once in a while, and give you free stuff if you purr enough."

"She isn't against humans." said Azami with a shiver. "More like she finds them to be a nice rare delecacy...though international law prevents her from feeding on homosapiens...and Bakoneko...she likes Bakoneko too.."

Neko gulped. "Erm..let's not go near this Kumo person."

"Here we are." said Azami. "Home sweet home for the entire school year."