Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 14: Rose: A Likely Story

December 23rd:

Rose stared at the picture on her phone's tiny screen, and then sent it to her computer for a better look. So this was Yukie… Large eyes set in a thinnish face with a high forehead and a soft-looking mouth, that was her first impression. The second thought she had was that Yukime Kuwano looked—startled. Yes, definitely startled.

Even though her father had said she wasn't what most people considered beautiful and Tim had said pretty much the same, she had expected somebody who looked, well, gorgeous but hard-edged, like Lady Shiva or maybe Lucy Liu. Yukie looked feeling, sensitive. A sensitive, feeling person with no severe moral objections to murder for hire. How does this make sense?

She read the message, and then she looked at the itinerary. So they landed in Tokyo on the eleventh, and they were staying at the Ryokan Kanesei Hana for three weeks. Each day had a note or two about what they would be doing or where they would be going. 'Morning: Edo-Tokyo Museum. Afternoon, Sightseeing in Asakusa.' was straightforward enough, but there were also entries like 'Investigate sightings of Kuchisake-onna in/around Taito prefecture.' What did that mean? After that, they were going to be traveling around the country until the last week, which they would spend at the Hakkoda Resort Hotel, skiing. The notes for the area were 'Superior powder, never crowded, challenging runs. The Inn is known for the excellence of its cuisine.'

Okay, so now she knew everywhere they would be and when. So what? What good does that do me?

She found Kwaidan on line, and called it up. It was…surreal. Four ghost stories, sort of. The second one was more like a fairy tale and the last one was 'blink and you missed it' short.

The first story, 'Black Hair', was about a lordless samurai who divorced and abandoned his loyal, hardworking wife to marry a woman from a rich and influential family who could advance his career, but she turned out to be vain and self-indulgent. All he could think of was his lost love and how what he had gained was not worth what he had given up. Finally he finished his military service, divorced the nasty wife, and went back to find his first wife, who was still living in the ruins of their old house, dirt poor but unchanged.

Her love for him had never dwindled, either, for she took him back immediately. After spending the night with her, he woke in the morning to find he had been embracing a skeleton—his wife had died years before right there in their house. Ghosts in Japan must be something like vampires because he aged years overnight and died strangling in yards and yards of her black tresses.

Next there was the tale of 'Yuki-Onna', which she watched through once and decided to go back and watch again after she saw the rest. The third story was 'Hoichi the Earless'. Hoichi was a blind musician who thought he was giving a command performance to a great lord and his noble court in an elegant mansion when he was actually sitting in a cemetery playing for a lot of ghosts. The problem was that associating too much with the dead was killing him, so his friend, a Buddhist priest, wrote all over his body with holy texts to make him invisible to the ghosts.

That was interesting because it was like warding off a vampire with a cross—Rose had never thought that other religions might have their own equivalent. Unfortunately, the priest was called away in the middle of all the writing, and his assistant forgot to ink Hoichi's ears. When a ghost came to fetch him that night, all he could see was the musician's ears, so he ripped off the ears and brought those as proof he tried. At least Hoichi lived.

The fourth tale, 'In A Cup Of Tea', puzzled the hell out of her. Somebody looked in a cup of tea and saw faces, then he disappeared. That was it?

She went back to 'Yuki-Onna'.