A Tale Of True Demons - Book 1: Innocence Begone (Indra Otsutsuki)

Chapter 31: A Night To Remember

After everything that had just happened tonight, there the trio walked with the pale man leading them along the way. Now making their way across the bridge that led to their home compound above the moat, they strolled in a slow and steady pace. Even the little pup in the girl's arms was not as happy as he always was whenever they returned home.

Both his ears were folded down and this depressing look can be noticed on his face as he let out soft whimpering sounds. It was either from the pain of his hurt left paw, or the sad aura he felt forming around his masters. It was not the little guy's fault, it was probably due to the fact that the three children had these down looks on their faces with their heads hanging low in presumably shame, the eldest of them especially.

There was something stuck in his head, a memory maybe but there were these words as well ringing across his head as he reminisced the images of the events from earlier. It was strange to him for having such memories, he himself even didn't knew why he even has them in the first place. 

"You three are just a bunch of kids, so of course you little brats wouldn't understand what I'm exactly going through."

I wonder what he meant by that?

He then snapped out of his thoughts when he noticed his father suddenly stopping in his tracks, causing them three to do the same.

The four stood there in an awkward silence for a few seconds, that's until without looking back at them, Hagoromo broke the silence between them when he spoke "Can any of you guess what the time is at the very moment?"

This left the trio obviously in a bit of bewilderment, regarding the fact of both what had just happened earlier as well the current situation they were all stuck in.

"Ummm...well..." Stuttered young Ashura as he used his index finger to awkwardly scratch the itch on his right cheek.

As for Indra, he looked to be hesitating at first.

That's until he let out a sigh, slowly removed his brother's arm off his shoulders and simply replied in a low tone "It's almost midnight!"

The reason for his quiet and obviously sad tone was all because he absolutely knew what the time of midnight specifically means, especially what it really meant in this festive night.

"Is that so! Well then..." Hagoromo said before he spun himself to face the young trio.

But the very thing that had actually startled them three a bit was hearing the sounds of his slippers against the ground and coming close towards them. None of them even had the galls to look up at him, fearing for what he was about to do next. That's until they suddenly felt something warm and bright lit against their faces.

Out of curiosity, the trio then gathered up what little courage they had to lift their heads to see. The very moment they saw it, all three of them were left with wide mild and sparkling eyes in awe. Because what actually shocked the trio was that there sitting on his now outstretched hand was a large sky lantern, the bright light they felt turned out to be the burning center of the paper object.

"I assume that none of you had made your wishes yet!" Indra heard his father say, making him tilt his head up to look at him.

The pale man still has that stern look on his face, but the brunette couldn't help but notice that there was this gentle tint from within those purple eyes, which actually surprised him a bit.

"Hurry, there's still time!" He added as he took out from his other hand what looks to be a single paintbrush and a small box, presumably filled with ink.

Once again, Indra was left surprised by this sudden turn of tonight's events. Dropping his head to look back at the lantern, he felt very reluctant at first. But he knew all too well that his own father wasn't the kind to play tricks on his own children, not even in a time like this.