The Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon

little richer. She should have a few scruples, then, about using Rakushun to keep body and soul together.
    "You're turning into quite the little scoundrel, now, aren't you?"
    "Just doing what I have to do," Youko muttered. She waved her hand dismissively. "I'm tired. Go away."
    A strange look came over the monkey's face, an expression like a child stubbornly chomping down on a lemon. He turned his back to her and in a wink sunk down into the futon and disappeared.
    Watching this, Youko laughed thinly. These were all the anxieties she didn't allow herself even to feel brought out in the open. It was proving a useful way to organize her thoughts, something she could take advantage of.
    She laughed again, derisively. "Yes, I really am turning into quite the little scoundrel."
    Nevertheless, there was no way she'd allowed herself to be used by another person again. No way she'd willingly allow another person to harm her again. Come what may, she was going to protect herself.
    "That's why it's got to be this way."
    The mother and child she'd met on the mountain road, they hadn't betrayed her because she hadn't given them the chance to betray her.
    I won't give Rakushun the chance, either.
    And that is how she would stay alive.
    But why had it been so necessary for her to come to this world? Why had Keiki called her "lord"? Who were her enemies? What was their goal? Why were they all after her? That woman--the one with the same golden hair as Keiki--who was she? Why had she done what she had done?
    Youma are not the kind of creature to go chasing after one person in particular.
    Then why were they attacking her ? That woman had embraced the corpse of the black dog as if mourning its death. Maybe they were comrades in arms. The same way Keiki gathered youma about him so did she, and she had sent hers after Youko. Still, it looked like the woman was being ordered to attack her. Who was giving the orders? Was it Keiki or somebody else related to her?
    She was clueless and she couldn't afford to stay clueless. She had to find somebody who could answer her questions. Unconsciously she clenched her hands into fists. Her fingernails dug into her palms. Youko held up her hands and examined the tips of her fingers.
    Her chipped and broken nails were like knives, like some creature's talons.
    Only youma and wizards can cross the Kyokai.
    Youko was neither a god nor a wizard.
    That makes me a youma.
    The dream of the red beast she'd had on the beach of the Kyokai--was it really a dream? Before coming to this world, for a long time she'd dreamt of being attacked by youma. That dream came true. Was her dream of becoming a youma also a premonition of things to come?
    Her hair had turned red, her eyes green. Were these the first steps in a total transformation? Perhaps that meant she wasn't a human being at all, but a youma. It struck her as a very frightening thought and at the same time a rather pleasant one.
    She could shout, scream, wave her sword about, threaten complete strangers, and all with a strange, hidden sense of euphoria. In the world she was born into, she had not once dared to raise her voice or give another person a cross look. To do so had always seemed like a sin. But wasn't that because she had always known the truth? Wasn't this all the result of pretending to live a "mostly harmless" life, when deep down in her subconscious she knew she was a youma, knew she was a ferocious beast, knew she could not have gone on living in that other world?
    Perhaps that was why everybody had described her as an unknown quantity, a closed book.
    With these thoughts crowding her mind, she drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 37
    T he house was the kind of small, poor-looking structure common in the rural districts. Even compared to those, Youko knew this dwelling was of a particularly wretched class.
    The dwellings located out among the fields were usually grouped together into a village. It was unusual to see a house all by itself like this. There didn't appear to be any other houses nearby on the mountainside.
    Think of a rat's house and she would have imagined something tiny. Although the overall scale was small, it was more or less a normal-sized structure. And not just the building. Youko couldn't help but marvel that from kitchen implements to daily necessities, everything was in human dimensions.
    "Rakushun, do you have parents?" Youko asked.
    She was filling a big kettle on the stove with water. She'd finally been able to get up and