Yokai (19 page)

Yumiko’s vision blurred, then turned
black all at once.

Yumiko was twelve and fell to the
floor with Mori’s chest heaving over her. Mori watched her for a
moment, and Yumiko couldn’t help but glare at the woman. “I never
beat you.”

“
That’s because you’re so
full of hate and anger,” Mori replied. She held out a hand to help
Yumiko up with a grunt.

“
You said that anger was
good,” Yumiko protested, wiping the sweat from her brow and getting
a better grip on the wooden sword she was using during
practice.

“
It is,” Mori acknowledged.
“It keeps you going. It drives you. But you can’t feed off of anger
alone. It won’t nourish you. You won’t win when you burn with hate.
It makes you sloppy and it blinds you.”

Yumiko scoffed and circled Mori,
taking a swing that Mori dodged easily. “Then what do you suggest?
I pick wildflowers and skip around a meadow?”

With a smirk, Mori attacked Yumiko
with three successive strikes, which Yumiko was able to block, but
just barely. On the last block, she’d felt her sword slip in her
grasp. She tightened it again as she fell back into a defensive
stance.

“
This is nothing to joke
about,” Mori said. “When you face Kagami, do you expect you’ll best
him if you come at him hard and fast? If you channel all of the
pain and hate that you’ve been feeling into your blade? No, Yumiko.
That is not how you win.”

“
Okay,” Yumiko said,
watching Mori’s hands for any indication of her next move. “Then
what will help me defeat Kagami?”

“
Focus,” Mori replied with
a shrug. “Instead of fighting with your mind and all that rage that
you have pushing you on, fight from your heart, from your soul.
Feel out your opponent, intuit their intentions. Because if all you
are is anger, you may as well be a monkey shaking a stick at him.”
And with that, Mori swept her sword at Yumiko’s legs. Yumiko leapt
and flew at Mori with the intent of landing a blow. Mori had
guessed her move, however, and stepped out of her way, following
Yumiko’s vulnerable body as she sailed past her and smacking Yumiko
across the back with her sword. Yumiko imagined that the blow was
harder than it needed to be, for she fell onto the mat with a loud
grunt, her sword flying from her hand and clattering across the
floor.

Yumiko sighed and turned to be helped
up by Mori, who looked her up and down. She gestured to Yumiko’s
sword, lying at the base of the far wall. “Again.”

With a gasp, the memory dispersed, and
Yumiko opened her eyes to stare up at the ceiling of her room. She
winced as she stood, since her head was throbbing slightly.
Recalling the syringe, she touched the back of her neck, which was
still tender, and cursed.

She looked around her room,
and frowned as her hand went to her waist. Her sword wasn’t on her.
Why would Brian take her sword? Did he think she would try to harm
him? She smirked, realizing that she would probably at least
try
, given this stunt. Who
did he think she was anyway? She wasn’t some helpless damsel in
distress. Sure, she’d needed a little assistance with the oni, but
she could hold her own against whatever he had planned to stop
further movement against her. She could have taken out that witch
Oni-Baba with little trouble, she was sure.

A glance at the window told her that
it was still dark outside, so not much time could have passed. She
wondered what had gone on downstairs. And what of Reina and Shou?
She walked over to the door and pulled on the handle, frowning when
it didn’t open. She yanked harder, then let go with a sigh. She was
locked in her own room? Brian was going to have to do a hell of a
lot better than that to keep her out of the fight.

Her head still throbbed, so she went
into the bathroom as she decided her next move. She turned the
faucet on, then stiffened, hands hovering over the water she had
been about to throw into her face to slough off the lingering fog
from her head. She stared at the water as it swirled in the sink,
running down the drain in a counter-clockwise pool.

It made no sound.

Her eyes widened as she turned the
faucet off, and was met with the same silence as before. Nothing
came to her ears aside from the sounds of her own breathing and her
own heartbeat. She cocked her head, realizing that the door handle
hadn’t made any sound earlier when she’d jiggled it.

She stepped out of the bathroom and
stared around her living space, acknowledging the truth.

She was in the mirror
world.

With a deep, shuddering breath, Yumiko
walked back over to the door and yanked on it again, then pulled on
it harder. She stepped back and stared at it, her hands going to
her hair as she looked around wildly for something to get past the
obstacle.

She eyed the screws in the handle and
nodded to herself. She would just have to take it apart. She
returned a moment later with a screwdriver and got to work. It was
slow and tedious, and with each minute, her resentment built. Brian
had been clever, she’d give him that. But this was not going to
deter her. She would get out of this place and she would kick his
butt along with the evil yokai.

When she finally got the door open,
she shoved the door aside and left it hanging open, not caring if
anyone went into this sanctuary that looked like hers, but wasn’t.
She had no mirror in her room, otherwise she could have easily
slipped back into the real world. And that was why she didn’t have
her mirror sword, she realized. She chuckled and shook her head.
She almost had to admire the move. Almost.

She took the elevator down to the
first floor of the love hotel, just like she normally would, and
paused at the glass doors leading outside. They were boarded over
with heavy-looking wood. She considered them for a moment, then
moved on, walking through the empty sake bar. When she reached the
library, she wondered why she’d even bothered to check there. The
oni hadn’t attacked them in the mirror world. And, of course, the
mirror by the door was missing. She looked around nonetheless, and
thought carefully about mirrors. Where were they? She was so used
to avoiding them, and Mori had very few on hand. She tapped her
lower lip, then went back down the hallway leading to the sake bar.
She turned into the women’s restroom and stared at the small mirror
over the sink. Or rather, the place where the mirror used to be. It
was now empty, framing a blank back panel. Just to be thorough, she
checked the men’s room, but it was the same there.

“
I am going to kill him,”
Yumiko decided, then raised her voice. “You hear me, Brian? I am
going to gut you for this!”

She sighed. Yelling had made her feel
a little better, but she still felt caged. She needed to come up
with a plan of escape. And preferably, before she turned eighteen.
Tilting her head, she looked up at the fluorescent light that
flickered in the hallway, just like in the real world. For the
mirror world to have so much detail, somehow mirrors had to have
been introduced into the building. Into her room. She frowned,
wondering if he’d been sneaking around with a mirror over the past
month, absorbing everything, filling in the gaps of the mirror
world. Would this have just been a blank space in the mirror world
otherwise? And did this mean that everything in the mirror world
also existed in the real world? Even Kagami’s castle?

She shook her head. Answers would have
to wait. Right now, she had to find a way out.

She turned the corner into the sake
bar and jumped as she nearly ran into Reina.

“
Oh, thank god,” Reina
gasped, then threw her arms around Yumiko, who awkwardly patted her
on the back in response. “I thought I was alone here. It’s…” She
pulled back and looked around them. “Nothing makes any sound here.
I mean, nothing but me. And you. I could hear you screaming from up
the hall.”

“
Oh,” Yumiko bit her lip.
“Sorry about that.”

Reina shrugged, and looked past her.
“The windows are all boarded up. At least the ones on the first few
floors.”

“
So I noticed,” Yumiko
sighed. She frowned as they returned to the boarded-up entryway.
She stared at it while Reina pushed on the boards. They had been
solidly installed. “I’m sure we can find something to tear this
down, but it’ll take time.”

“
This is the mirror world,
isn’t it?” Reina asked.

“
Yes. It is.”

“
So, can’t you just take us
through a mirror to get us out of here?”

Yumiko nodded. “I’m sure
there are plenty of mirrors through that door. But searching for
one may even take some time. In here…” She cocked her head. “They
had to have gotten us in here somehow. And they mean to come back
for us. There
must
be a mirror around here someplace.”

Reina brightened. “The
restrooms!”

“
I already
checked.”

Frowning, Reina looked through the
glass door into the love hotel. “Well, I’m sure that some of the
hotel rooms have mirrors.”

“
Of course,” Yumiko agreed,
recalling the mirror she’d used in the nurse’s office to dispatch
The Slit-Mouthed Woman. “Let’s go.”

Reina followed her into the hotel,
where Reina grabbed a ring of keys from the counter before heading
into the elevator.

“
What other rooms have
mirrors besides the nurse’s office?” Yumiko asked.

Reina pursed her lips as she thought.
“The island retreat might. And maybe the carnival. I think there
are mirrors on the carousel.”

“
Good,” Yumiko nodded as
the doors opened. “We’ll check them all.” She stopped in front of
the door to the nurse’s office while Reina sorted through the ring
of keys for the right one. After a minute, Yumiko frowned at her.
“What’s taking so long?”

“
It’s not here,” Reina told
her, stopping to stare dumbly down at the keys. “I’ve been through
them three times. I can’t find the key to this room.”

“
Then we must be on the
right trail,” Yumiko observed. She stepped back and looked at the
door. It seemed very sturdy.

“
You girls might as well
give up now,” a voice on the other side of the door
advised.

Yumiko and Reina exchanged
looks.

“
Who’s there?” Reina
demanded, pressing her head against the wood grain, as if to hear
better.

“
The only mirror in this
place is in this room,” the voice continued. “And if you try to get
in here, I’ll smash it to pieces.”

Reina wrinkled her nose and pushed
herself away from the door. “Tanuki? Is that you in
there?”

“
You got it, toots,”
Tanuki’s voice replied. “And I’m sorry, but you girls aren’t going
anywhere.”

Chapter
Fifteen

The only weapons that Yumiko could
find were the wooden swords that they used for practice, which
would make getting out much more difficult and tedious.

“
Why are they doing this?”
Reina asked as they ascended the elevator to the nurse’s office
once more.

“
They think they’re
protecting us,” Yumiko said, as if the words she was speaking were
distasteful.

Reina considered. “Well, I can’t say I
can fault them there. Those oni were scary as hell. I thought we
were going to die for sure.” She winced under the withering look
Yumiko sent her. “No offense. I know you’re all…girl power and Miss
Independent, but you can’t do everything yourself. Sometimes you
need help.”

“
Exactly,” Yumiko agreed.
“And Brian is denying my aid.”

The elevator door opened and they
walked purposefully up to the nurse’s office.

“
Is Shou with Brian?”
Yumiko demanded, speaking into the wood of the closed
door.

There was silence, and then
“maybe.”

Yumiko swore. “That
traitor.”

Reina leaned against the wall and slid
down it to the floor. “I’m sorry I was mean to you,
Tanuki.”

“
That’s quite alright,”
Tanuki replied.

“
If you open the door, I’ll
let you cop a feel.”

Yumiko rolled her eyes at the same
time that Tanuki scoffed.

“
Why are you doing this?”
Yumiko asked. She leaned her forehead against the door frame and
slapped the wooden sword against the wall, satisfied that it made
no noise.

“
Because this isn’t your
fight.”

“
It’s not Shou’s either,”
Yumiko argued.

“
No, it’s not,” Tanuki
agreed. “But this is his choice. Reina has no fighting skills. She
would only get in the way.”

“
Thanks a lot,” Reina
mumbled.

“
And you, Yumiko,” Tanuki
continued. “You’re too valuable. If you’re killed, this is all
over.”

“
And what if Brian is
killed?” she challenged. “It takes a bride and a groom for a
union.”

Tanuki was silent for a moment. “He
can handle himself.”

“
So can I!” Yumiko shouted,
slamming the door with her fist. It made no sound, but the door
trembled ever so slightly under her weight. She hoped that the
sight frightened Tanuki.