Haruhi was awakened by the creaking noise the floor made and the soft rumbling sounds the mixture of cat and lion purrs. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, Nekozawa came into view, making a house call.
“You did not carry out the task,” Nekozawa said in a matter-of-fact way.
“No…” Haruhi replied apologetically, “Well, you see, there’s the engagement ceremony, and then my Oka-sama suddenly fell ill…”
“Bah!” Nekozawa waved her explanation away hastily. “That’s no excuse for negligence.”
“I apologize…”
A few seconds later, seeing that Haruhi was genuinely sorry and concerned for Count Kaoru’s health, Nekozawa sighed, materialized a doll that looked like a miniature wooden version of the statue in the gorge and handed it to Haruhi, saying, “Look, this is an oni-neko root. A plant that dreamt of being human. Put it under your Oka-sama’s bed in a bowl of fresh milk and give it two drops of blood each morning. That should do the trick.”
Haruhi brought the oni-neko root closer to her nose and smelt it. As usual it smelt of earth like Nekozawa, but was also mixed with the overpowering smell of ginger and manure. She grimaced and hid the root under her mattress.
“Now we have no time to waste,” Nekozawa said, getting back to business. “The full moon will be upon us soon. Here, take my pets to guide you through,” he said, calling forth a few of those winged kittens to her, “You are going to a very dangerous place, so be careful. The thing that slumbers there, it is not human.”
Haruhi gulped nervously. Not human? What kind of creature could be worse than a toad or Nekozawa, who was not so human himself?
Nekozawa then handed her an hourglass made of copper, with sand the colour of the moon’s light, and warned, “You will see a sumptuous feast before you but do not eat or drink anything displayed there. You hear me? Absolutely nothing!”
Haruhi nodded, but Nekozawa must have noticed the questioning eyes she was giving him because he said these words before he disappeared into the darkness:
“Your life depends on it.”
--:--
Mori, after lolling Haruhi to sleep, went to attend businesses of his own. After double-checking everything in the house and making sure everyone was sound asleep, he sneaked through the backdoor of the kitchen and made his way into the woods. In his pockets were copies of documents he made on the business transactions of slave trading. With his oil lamp in hand, he made a signal by covering and uncovering the light several times and paused between intervals before signaling again.
Sure enough, his tiny little blonde sweetheart came out with his little bunny plushie from his hiding place and they hugged and kissed each other like there was no tomorrow before they switched information and news and departing from each other reluctantly. Being the youngest member of the law-enforcing unit’s secret agents division alongside with his cousin and betrothed Mitsukuni Haninozuka (or Honey for short), he had volunteered to go undercover when his team was assigned to the case of Count Hikaru Hitachiin, suspected of being the mastermind behind countless smuggling of children from Africa and aborigines from parts of the Australia outback to be sold as slaves and cheap labour workers, and throughout his mission he had seen many of them who barely knew enough about the world being brutalized and sometimes even killed by the manhandling of the Count and Kyouya’s team. Honey had wanted to join him in his quest but Mori forbid him not only because he was already famous as an upholder of the law, but also for fear of anything happen to his beloved once any of their undercover mission go haywire, and that Honey’s combat expertise was much needed in the force to be abandoning on a dangerous undercover mission such as this.
Despite the lack of physical maturity, Honey was very well known for his abundant—almost superhuman—strength as he grew up in a combat military background with skills that would probably render Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Bruce Lee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Slyvester Stallone or any other known combat artists to shame, as likewise for Mori who grew up in a family of public servants. He and Mori were, like Haruhi in a way, engaged as soon as they were of age because Honey was born with hermaphroditic physique and it is this hermaphroditic physique that caused his growth in height and physical maturity to slow down to a snail’s pace. Usually such abnormalities within the Morinozuka and Haninozuka families (which occurs probably once every leap generation) are never able to have a lasting or normal marriage with women, thus they are usually married through male cousin-relations, and usually they would choose someone that is at least twice removed in the bloodline so as not to cause inbreeding. Since Mori and Honey are about 3 times removed, and they have been childhood friends since their dawn of time, it seemed right that the Morinozuka and Haninozuka families come to an agreement that they should be wed.
During the day, Mori would run the usual household errands for both the Counts, including babysitting Haruhi, and at night, he would work on preparing meals for the children in the cellar and helped call for carriages whenever there were transfers needed to be made. At the end of the day, when everything was said and done, he would go and report to his team which was camped out in the middle of the woods every chance he got to accumulate all the evidence they had for the day. To bring down a Count with millions of connections like him, they need all the evidence they can get and more.
He had counted on the Count trusting him to be just an errand boy who would do his biddings without questions and judgment and would easily be ignored as he was just a worker and nothing else, but he had not counted on having the Count’s future daughter-in-law to fall for him. He knew it was just puppy love of sorts, but his experience growing up with two elder female cousins who lived just right next door to his house told him that girls definitely mature much faster than boys emotionally, which is no wonder she had developed a crush for him.
He personally did not agree with matchmaking and arranged marriages (although his case was special and that he had loved Honey since before they were engaged), and certainly not the kind that Haruhi was going through, but he was in no position to question that. It was the way of their culture and his main focus is complete the mission.
Nothing more than that.
--:--
Haruhi was getting ready to get down to business. She took out the book from the bathroom cabinet and opened it. As usual, the pages began to fill up, but with words and pictures this time. There was a drawing of a weird-looking man who was bald, tall and gangly, with two dots for his eyes and huge mouth filled with ugly sharp teeth. His hands stretched and curled into the shape of circles and in them was a little girl drawing something on the wall on the left and the little girl standing in front of a doorway on the right, while between the man’s legs that were bent in the shape of an O, the little girl was facing three small lockers with keyholes ready for her key to fit in. the instructions on the next page went as followed:
Use the chalk to trace a door anywhere in your room. Once the door’s open, start the hourglass. Let the fairies guide you. Don’t eat or drink anything during your stay and come back before the last grain of sand falls.
Haruhi did just as the instruction gave her. She took out the chalk she had hidden under her pillow and looked around for a place wide enough to trace a door. She picked the wall her bed was leaning on and traced the shape of a door as straight as she could. To her surprise, a seam began to appear on the wall where the chalk marks were, forming a small gap that could open like a door. She slowly pushed it open and found herself staring down a long, gloomy hallway, with blood-red walls and tall, bone-like pillars along it. The floor was tiled in pink and white, like a checkerboard and she could occasionally hear low exhales of breath from down the hallway.
Haruhi took a deep breath and stepped into the hallway, leading the winged kittens behind her and taking the key in her nightclothes’ pocket. She upturned the hourglass so that the one with sand was on top. Not wanting to waste anymore time, she made her way down the hallway towards the sound of exhaling breath. Moments later, she saw in front of her a huge dining room like the ones in kings’ castles she read in her storybooks. Here, the ceiling above was concaved like a half circle, and sure enough, as mentioned by Nekozawa, there was a huge, long table laden with everything delicious and edible, from pot-roast to pumpkin pie to fruit salad, from fried chicken to baked fish and potatoes, from cherry-covered fruit cake to ice-cream to jugs upon jugs of all forms of drinks imaginable. Everything was there ready for the taking, but Nekozawa’s warning rang through her mind and she dare not touch them, tempting as they were.
At the main seat, there sat with its back facing the fireplace the creature that was depicted in the Book of Crossroads. Like the drawing, it was bald and skinny, tall and gangly-looking, with both of its hands on the table. Its face was bare save two holes for its eyes and a mouth that looked like the one she saw when one of the cooks was removing the scales from a catfish. It had skin hanging from his arms and face, and its bones were jutting out, including its ribs, as if it had not eaten for a very long time. Its hands were bony as well, with black fingernails to match, and between its hands laid a plate that had two tiny balls on it. Seeing that the creature did not react at her presence, she picked up the plate and saw that the balls were actually eyes. It finally came to her that the holes on its face were not eyes, but a pair of nostrils for it to breathe. So, if those were its eyes and it couldn’t see without them, where did they go on its face? She shuddered to think of it as she replaced the plate back between the creature’s hands.
It was when she looked up to see the mosaic on the ceiling and the shoes the size of children’s feet at one corner of the dining room that she knew the seriousness of the situation. According to the mosaic, it was a creature that did not eat normal food, but children’s flesh. Illustration of it grabbing children, stripping them and carving them with its dagger before stuffing them into its guts showed the fact that Nekozawa was right about it: it was not human. Haruhi got goose pimples and a chill went down her spine just thinking about what it would do to her. It was best to heed Nekozawa’s words for now.
The winged kittens that flew behind her came up front, chirping with glee as they led her to another corner of the room, revealing a tall cabinet where there were three small lockers made of copper, silver and gold each on the upper level. They flew back and forth from the copper to the silver to the gold locker and back again until her blue-eyed winged kitten—whom she named Belzenev for reasons unknown even to her (she just thought it fitted her)—stopped at the silver locker and pointed at the keyhole excitedly. Haruhi took out the key from her pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.
When she was about to turn the key, instinct told her that this was not the locker she should open. She didn’t know why, but somehow something inside her told her that this was not the right one. She shifted her gaze towards the gold locker and shook her head again. Definitely a far cry than this silver locker, she thought and took out the key, putting it into the copper locker. As luck would have it, the key turned, unlocking the door and slipping it open. She slowly reached in and felt something velvet inside it. She then took hold of it and took it out, revealing something that was wrapped in expensive-looking red velvet. When she unwrapped it, it revealed a shiny dagger that shone brighter than any blade she had ever seen with a handle of welded gold and silver and the same design of surreal fire from the stone slab she saw in the labyrinth on it. She would’ve marveled at it even longer if she hadn’t been reminded by the kittens’ chirps that time was ticking and that the sand in the hourglass might run out sooner or later.
That was when she stopped short for a moment. She caught sight of her favourite snack: otoro or tuna belly readily sliced into bite-sized finger food served grandly on a china plate. She had not eaten much since the incident during the engagement ceremony and the sight of another one of her favourite foods fueled her hunger pangs. The kittens realized her intentions and shook their heads at her, telling her not to even think about it, but the otoro were simply too irresistible for her to ignore. She stole a look at the creature that was still sitting there without moving. Since it didn’t even see or react to any of her movements before, what’s a slice of missing otoro going to do? Not much difference, I’m sure, she thought.
Finally her weakness for otoro overcame the warnings of Nekozawa and the winged kittens. She waved them away and shooed them like one would do to a fly and took a slice of otoro from the plate. Unbeknownst to her, as soon as she popped the otoro into her mouth, the creature immediately came to life. It inhaled long and hard before reaching out to take its eyes on the plate, putting them into the holes on its palms. Holding up the back of its palms onto its face, it could see very clearly a little girl who was eating off one of the food from its dinner table. A very delicious-looking girl.
Haruhi was oblivious to what was going on behind her. All she could think of right now was popping another slice of expensive otoro into her mouth. Still thinking that there’s no harm done, she took another slice (waving the winged kittens away and wrestling it out of Belzenev who tried to take it out of her fingers in the process). As she popped it into her mouth and licked her fingers, she finally heard the commotion that was going on behind her. She spun round to see the creature alive and kicking and very much intent in turning her into a three-course meal. The other kittens were trying to protect her by keeping it busy and distracted, but ended up getting caught and eaten by it within seconds.
Haruhi’s survival mode kicked in. She quickly made a dash for it, running for her life towards where she last left the door open. Except this time, the door was slowly closing, signaling that she was running out of time. The last grain of sand was falling and the door was threatening to shut her in with the creature after her tail.
“No! No! Don’t close! I’m still here! NO!!”
Too late. The door had slammed shut. No matter how hard she pounded, it would not open for her. Even the seams that formed the door were gone. She had no choice but to draw another door. Out of nervousness, her chalk broke into half while she tried to draw. Belzenev, who was the last one standing, warned her that the creature was coming close. She could see it screeching bloody murder and moving as fast as its zombie-like body could towards her. There was no time to pick up the broken chalk. Climbing one of the pillars, she drew a door on the ceiling while praying hard not to get caught and become dinner as she could hear the creature coming closer and closer towards her.
Finally a door opened for her. Her blue-eyed friend flew up first before she struggled to climb up. More screeches echoed down the hallway as the creature realized that its meal was running away. She could hear its footsteps gaining momentum and coming closer towards her. She could almost feel its breath against her ankles. Belzenev helped her as best as she could by pulling at her sleeves, but a little winged kitten could only do so much.
It was a close call. Before the creature’s black finger nailed-hands could grab her, Haruhi managed to climb up into her bedroom and slam the door shut before it could climb in after her. She watched as the seams of the door disappeared as the creature pounded at it, trying to get in. Haruhi’s heart almost stopped at the horrific ordeal she went through. So horrifying it was that she almost forgot to breathe. As she sat back on the bed trying to catch her breath, she realized the severity of the situation she was in.
“I did something wrong now, didn’t I, Belzenev?”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
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