“But you’re right,” Yumi admitted, “the samurai will find us soon. The Shogun’s plan is going ahead tonight. We need to stop it.”

They didn’t need to stop it. They needed to stay safe. “The Shogun’s won. Your precious brother betrayed you. Let it go.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Right now, the Shogun is marching every human in the riverbank settlement, every criminal charged, to that fortress. To feed them to the—to the demons—” She broke off, her shoulders shaking in fury and grief.

“Then you’ll have to learn to live with it.” Kuro couldn’t sacrifice Ren’s safety for a bunch of humans.

“I refuse,” she said. “And I can’t believe you don’t care either. At the very least, if we let the Shogun have this victory, then instead of concentrating his forces on keeping the Night Parade at bay, he’ll throw them all at finding us.”

And by ‘us’, she meant ‘you.’ Kuro closed his eyes. He’d have to do something then. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about how the only option he’d have was to attract attention away from Ren, to put himself in danger and probably get killed. If he thought about it too much, he’d probably refuse. “It’s a stupid plan.”

“It’s not even a plan yet,” she said. “You’re the one who’s stupid.”

His lip pulled away from his teeth. “Fine. Go kill yourself. But leave me out of it.”

“But you have to help.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“But the Shogun is going to let all those people get slaughtered—”

“You say that as if you haven’t already told me that a thousand times. I know. My answer’s still the same. I don’t give a flip about saving humans. Why should I care about them?”

He inhaled Ren’s scent. He already cared too much about one human. He didn’t need the fate of random strangers also dangling above him.

“Even if I do help you, it’s still a stupid plan,” he told her. “Or idea, if you’re being insistent. If the Night Parade, more than one hundred demons strong, can’t defeat the Shogun — if more than a hundred demons are too weak, then what are the two of us going to do?”

Yumi had no reply. She crossed her arms and pressed her lips together, as if she had to repress a tumult of abuse because no matter how many insults she slung, Kuro was still right.

So she finally understood. Kuro rested his muzzle on his paws, staring up at Ren’s blank face. A darkness roosted in his eyes, darkening his liquid brown to an impenetrable black. Just like Kuro’s fur. Only the dimness of the storehouse, he told himself.

He wanted to tell Ren so many things, but Ren couldn’t hear him in this form. Even if Ren cared to listen.

But Yumi wasn’t dumbfounded. She peered at the spirits gathered in the storehouse. “But if everyone here helps…”

Kuro snorted. “You’d accept help from demons?”

“They’re not demons,” she said. “Or so you keep telling me.” She addressed the spirits, “If you all help me—”

He stopped her with a bark. “They don’t want to help.”

“Then they can tell me themselves.”

“Why should I let you harass them?” he asked. “What gives you the right? Because you’re a human?”

“I’m not harassing them. I’m asking them nicely.”

“You’re asking them to get killed to save a bunch of fleabag humans, who were happy enough yesterday to cheer on the samurai as they rounded up and slaughtered their friends and family. Now remind me, were you just happy or were you downright giddy about the hunt?”

Yumi’s chastened look didn’t feel as satisfying as it should have been.

“Oh, you forgot about that already, did you? It’s easy to when you’re not the one being hunted down for not being human.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Humans are terrible monsters,” Nekogami piped in.“They like to eat cats and drown kittens in rivers.”

Yumi stepped back. “I’ve never done either of those things.”

“Oh, but you’re capable of it,” she said. “All humans are. And they care even less about my kind than they do about spirits.”

“But…” Yumi trailed off, then mumbled, “You’re a god. Shouldn’t you care about humans?”

“I’m not a god of humans, silly.” Nekogami laughed her cat laugh, husky like a breeze through chaff. “I’m here for cats. To comfort them at the loss of their friends and family. To carry their souls to the afterlife. To protect them, and to take revenge against the human sociopaths who murder them.”

Yumi made an “o” shape with her mouth, but didn’t say anything.

Nekogami pranced next to Ren, and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “But I like this human. He always leaves offerings for me and my worshippers.”

Kuro stiffened. That cat dared to touch his human. To mark him with her scent. He jumped to his feet, barking. She hissed back.

“Oi, enough.” Yumi smacked him on the snout and her between the ears. She didn’t use her power, but the smack startled them both. “The point is that you,” she nodded to Kuro, “have been trying to teach me that not all spirits are demons. Then doesn’t it stand to reason that not all humans are—”

“Kitten-murdering sociopaths?” Nekogami interrupted.

“I meant evil.” Yumi sighed.

“The human girl is correct,” Nurarihyan said. “They’re normally quite delightful.”

“Only because you beguile them into thinking you’re human,” Kuro snapped at him. “You’re safe when everyone else is getting run into the ground. Why are you even here? Run out of tea?”

“Oh, poor, cynical Kuro.” Nurarihyan sighed.

“He protects the storehouse,” Nekogami said.

“What? But he’s decrepit.”

“Humans think he owns the place, so they don’t look closer.”

Oh, well that was true.

“If you help humans, then you’ll forge closer bonds,” Yumi said. “They’ll realise you’re not demons.”

“And the next time humans get frightened, they’ll slaughter us all the same.”

“They—”

“It’s not a secret,” Kuro told her. “They know. But it’s easier to beat up a spirit than it is to kill a demon.”

“But…” Yumi’s shoulders sank. “But it’s the right thing to do.”

Kuro opened his mouth, breathing heavily as he laughed silently in fox form. If Yumi had been reduced to that argument, than their fight was done. Yumi was finished.

Ren pushed himself up straight. Kuro inhaled, his nose twitching as he tried to smell what Ren was thinking. Kuro jumped to his feet, his tail brushing away the tail behind him as it insisted on wagging.

Ren was all right. Ren was back. Everything would be all right now. They could go back to the way it was — Ren despising Kuro for his family’s murder, and Kuro…

But Ren’s words shattered even that frail illusion. “We are going to save the humans. We are going to stop the Shogun.”

He spoke as if his words were concrete. As if they’d already happened, or it was only inevitable. The only inevitability was death. Ren didn’t smell his normal idealistic self, though. His eyes were still shuttered black. He took no pleasure in his self-assigned heroic quest. No eagerness. He wasn’t the old Ren, or even the new Ren who’d threatened Kuro into leading him to the Night Parade. But something darker.

Kuro hunched his shoulders, his tail sticking between his legs. Ren wouldn’t be the same. If Kuro betraying Ren had led to Ren’s more furious self after only two days of friendship, then the betrayal of someone he’d believed his mentor, his hero…

“Er, great,” Yumi said. She glanced from Kuro to Ren and back, as if waiting for Kuro to argue.

Ren rose to his feet, as sturdy as the Shogun. That was who this new Ren reminded him of. The Shogun, ordering his troops, speaking upon Ren’s death as if speaking of casualties in a long ago war. He turned to the other spirits. “This fight will be dangerous. Some will be hurt. Some will die. But,” the one word cut through the silence like a sword, “I promise you only one thing: You will have your revenge against the Shogun.”

The others were as intimidated by this Ren as Kuro was. None of them spoke, but glanced at each other, their muscles taut.

“You’ll have to hurry,” Nekogami said. “The Night Parade always attacks at the Witching Hour.”

“And it’ll take us most of that time to get to the fortress,” Yumi added.

Ren snapped his gaze to Yumi. Confusion drooped the corner of his eyes, but he seemed unwilling to ask why Yumi seemed to speak out of nowhere.

“Right, you weren’t there,” Yumi said, completely missing the point. She quickly explained what she and Kuro had discovered in the Shogun’s Palace. “We need to hurry.”

“We’ll make it,” Ren said, with that same certainty. As if anything else was unimaginable. He looked down at Kuro. “You’re coming too.”

Kuro pressed his belly against the floor, trying to make himself as small as possible under Ren’s eyes. Kuro stared down. “But we still can’t get through the checkpoint on the bridge.”

Ren couldn’t hear him disagreeing, so he couldn’t punish him. They didn’t have any of the checkpoint passes.

Yumi nodded slowly.

“What did he say?” Ren asked, voice even and promising pain if Kuro had balked.

She jerked up, flashing between Kuro and Ren, before seeming to remember only she could hear most of the participants. “The bridge guards won’t allow anyone to pass. I don’t think they’d let us through even with a pass.”

“Then we’ll fight.”

Kuro jumped to his feet. “But we’ll be slaughtered!”

Ren couldn’t hear him, but apparently he could still read his body language. He closed his eyes. “I’m not interested in your narrow-minded protests.”

“But — but even if the spirits help, none of us are warriors. You don’t even have your—” Kusanagi.

But Ren couldn’t hear him. Thankfully.

Yumi pounded her fist into her palm. “I have a better plan.”