Ink Stained

03: cold blue eyes*

冷たい青い目

The road they took to get back home led up to a local, small shrine based at the foot of a large hill. It took them twenty minutes to get there. The higher they went, the steeper and less paved the path became, until they walked on a well-worn track off short, flattened grass, with trees growing on either side.

It got colder, too. The trees grew over the path and their branches entangled right above their heads, forming a canopy of leafy shade that filtered out the sun. It was dark in the forest, though when Pai looked up, she could some of the sky, now pink tinged with a faint dusting of purple and brilliant orange.

This hill, almost a small mountain, wasn't very tall – but it was big, covering a lot of land. Ayashi House stood on a plateau along the middle run of the hill, and few people knew it was there. The entire hill and a large expanse of the land around it is owned by one man; Akiyama Kouta.

After having her brain delete three years of memory and seeing all the multitudes of new buildings sprang up in places where there were none, Pai thought Kouta was doing a damn good job of keeping this land and the forest on it free of any human interference.

Sitting on the branches of the trees were crows. They didn't caw or flutter in eternal search of food. They were all eerily silent. They simply watched the two girls make their way up the path, with red eyes that seemed to glow in the gloom. The two girls hardly noticed them though; they were already so used to the crows that at this point, it would be unusual not to see them.

Shiori glanced up at them soon enough, and sent a cheerful wave to the three crows perched on the branch closest to the ground and the tracked they walked on. In the middle of the tree sat one much larger than the others, almost the size of an eagle. It sat with its wings folded neatly at its sides and its head held proud in the air as it looked down on them with those disconcerting red eyes.

The jarring thing about this crow, besides the abnormally large frame, was the line of teeth that looked like small, thin claws lining the undersides of the crows wings.

She was used to it, but she still couldn't help the little shudder that went through her when she saw the crow's wings, every time.

Shiori smirked up at it. She raised a hand in a wildly cheerful wave and called out, "Yo, Karasatengu-kun! What's up!"

The crow angled his head and turned his eyes on her to give her a withering glare. In response, he merely ruffled his feathers irritably, raised his wings, and leaped into the air, flying in the direction they were heading in.

"He hates it when you greet him like that." Pai noted, mildly amused.

Shiori winked, grinning widely. "That's why I do it."

It took them another ten minutes of steady walking to reach a large wooden gate. Walls of concrete stretched above their heads and further on either side than their eyes could make out in the midst, the boundary standing tall and unbreakable before them. Kanji inscribed in black on a simple wooden lacquered plaque hung above a little panel that hid a button that allowed anyone outside to speak with someone on the inside, proclaiming this place to be Ayashi House.

怪し家

Shiori pressed the button and stepped back. It crackled momentarily before a voice came through.

"Shii-chan, that you?"

The voice was decidedly child-like, and belonged to a young boy. Pai expected to hear the gruff tones of Karasatengu. He was the security chief, and he tended to go out at different times of the day to check if anyone was approaching the main gate. Since he saw the two girls coming, Pai thought he would be the one answering.