Ink Stained With Blood (Yokai!Ichimatsu x Reader)

Chapter 1

"Get out!"

I fell to the ground, the slap stinging my cheek as I heard my belongings clatter behind me. Scrambling to my knees, I turned towards the woman who had been my landlord for a few weeks, intent on begging for just one more night. I opened my mouth before another slap cracked against my face, pain blossoming along my nose as heat radiated in my cheek from the first strike. Shoving my left hand against my mouth, I choked and spat out a gob of blood, the taste of iron flooding my mouth.

"I will not give shelter to an evil spirit!"

I heard the mutterings of villagers start to rise behind me.

"I'm not a spirit," I gathered up the scattered books about yokai, most of them holding my written notes, "Please, just let me stay one more night, then I'll leave in the morning peacefully!"

"You'll curse my family," She uttered angrily, folding her arms over her chest.

"I will not curse anyone's family," I countered, looking up as I felt blood trail down from my nose, "I do not have any kind of talisman or familiar! Just one more night, and I'll leave after the Night Parade!"

"I've given my answer, now leave!" She slammed the sliding door to the small apartment building shut. Catching my breath in the chill autumn air, I looked down towards the small pile of books that had triggered such a quick rage in my former landlady. They were small journals, ones that I had found in some of the newer bookstores, that contained eyewitness accounts of demons and devils throughout Japan. I gathered the books up gently, brushing off the dirt from the road and cradling them in my arms before standing up.

They were all I had to try and keep track of my betrothed and his brothers, as well as to continue to look for the source of the cursed fude set. If they were created by a Shinto priest or Buddhist monk, then I needed to find someone to forge more to reseal the yokai residing in my friends.

I didn't have a lot of time to try and find shelter before nightfall. The Night Parade was supposed to happen tonight and everything in me was screaming to not be out in the open. I could only guess that the very people I was looking to save would be participating, but they'd sooner spirit me away before keeping me hidden from the Parade.

Making sure the fude tucked away in my sash was still safe, I gathered what remained of my pride and walked down the road, looking out for some place that looked to offer temporary shelter.

Just outside of town was an abandoned shack, something that looked to be used by one of the local farmers to store rice or feed in, but the stale stench of air hit my nose as soon as I opened the jammed door. It was completely empty on the inside, an empty frame of a storage shed with a single covered ventilation hatch near the door. Laying out my books into a neat stack, I went to the vent hatch and tugged at the slab of wood covering it, some of the rotted wood pulling away and revealing a little viewing spot that I could use to look outside.

"...good enough," I whispered to myself before closing the sliding door behind me, finding a lengthy stick to prop it closed. The sunlight began to dim from a bright orange to a deep red as it sank behind the mountain range nearby. I read through the journals for as long as I could before I lost the light, pressing myself right underneath the vent hatch.

A faint chime sounded in the night, silencing the ambient noise in the town as night rolled over the mountains and swept through the town, blanketing everything in an eerie fog that swallowed the ground. Another chime joined the first, followed by a gasp as a door nearby shut forcibly.

The Night Parade was coming.

It didn't take long for the sounds to grow closer, a faint muttering that swelled into a cacophony of jeering, shouting, and yelling. The light outside the shack began to grow brighter, the noise growing along with it as I could hear wheels churn up the packed dirt in the street, footfalls combined with various chimes and bells. What was a red sunset shifted to vivid blues and greens as oni- and fox-fire danced along the path the Night Parade was to take, the loud cheers and laughter of the Parade grew closer until it sounded like it was passing right by the door.