[...I cannot forgive.]
Today, the Yuki-onna drifted aimlessly through the mountains and forests as always.
[I cannot forgive.]
She had long forgotten why she was here.
She should have been exorcised and released centuries ago.
Those high monks' ritual implents, those muttered incantations, that scorching Cursed Energy forced into her body, burning her throat and charring her organs. The agony surpassed any punishnt endured by the dead.
She should never have awakened again.
And yet.
Whenever the bitter winter returned, the dazed Yuki-onna would rember those painful mories. Like phantoms of the past, they should have been forgotten, should have been erased, should have left not even the faintest trace in the long river of ti.
But…
The hatred in her heart could not be wiped away, no matter how many tis she tried.
It was raw and piercing, like a drumbeat, like a scream. It was the heart of this Cursed Spirit, still beating.
[I cannot forgive!!!]
She clutched her head and scread, summoning an even stronger blizzard.
Yuki-onna had no tears.
The mont they welled up, they would freeze into ice crystals.
So she would make the heavens weep for her.
She would make that pale, bone-chilling blizzard into her wails and cries. She would make the mountains of Nagano echo with her suffering. She would make the whole world feel her pain.
"●●●!!!"
She kept screaming that na.
It was a language humans could no longer understand.
Even the Cursed Spirits had forgotten how that na was written, and how it was pronounced.
But Yuki-onna still cried out, calling that na again and again.
Because that was her beloved.
That was the person destined for her, the other half of her life.
"●●●!!!"
Without that person, Yuki-onna would not be alive now.
She had completely forgotten her mories from when she was human.
Yuki-onna's mories began only after she beca a Cursed Spirit, when she drifted alone and ignorant through the snowy mountains.
Back then, she was very weak. She could not even endure sunlight, and always hid alone beneath the cedar trees, gazing from afar at the village where cooking smoke rose into the sky. She watched people work hard, smiles bright on their faces, the whole place full of harmony and warmth.
It was an exceptionally peaceful and united village.
Because everyone lived in the mountains, they had not been affected by the war. The village hunters were skilled as well, and every ti they went hunting, they brought back plenty of food. The farrs could tend their fields in peace, the won could weave cloth without worry, and everyone worked diligently.
Yuki-onna once gazed at that lively human scene from afar, and for the first ti, an unfamiliar warmth rose in her heart.
It was a feeling she had never known since becoming a Cursed Spirit.
She did not understand what it was. She only knew that whenever she watched those people, the loneliness in her heart faded a little.
Especially that hunter.
The man who always walked alone through the mountains and forests, drawing his bow and never missing a shot.
He was the finest hunter for miles around.
Expressionless, with sharp eyes, he seed so steady that even the mountain winds could not move him. An unapproachable air always surrounded him, blending with the chill of the snowy mountains, yet sohow colder than the snow and ice themselves.
The man rarely spoke.
Most of the ti, he simply moved silently through the forest. A soft twang of the bowstring ant prey had fallen. He was also quite generous. Sotis, a woman could trade a single piece of cloth for a pheasant from him.
But he never interacted much with anyone.
Even when a young girl in the village confessed her feelings to him, the man ignored her. He only sat alone on a rock, wiping down his bow and arrows, like a cedar growing by itself atop a snowy peak, proud and resilient.
Yuki-onna often hid behind the cedar trees and secretly watched him.
She watched him leave at dawn, treading over frost. She watched him descend the mountain at dusk with heavy ga on his back. She watched him sotis stop and gaze toward the distant mountains, a deeply buried sorrow flashing through his eyes, one she could not understand at all.
It was an expression he never showed when facing prey.
Yuki-onna did not understand where that sadness ca from.
She only felt that it tasted especially sweet, a delicacy found nowhere else in this snowy mountain. As long as she kept absorbing that negative emotion, she could beco stronger and more powerful.
And so, without realizing it, Yuki-onna began following the man.
When he camped to rest, she used a faint chill to drive away the mosquitoes that bit him.
When he chased elk, she secretly used icicles to trip the prey.
And whenever the man returned ho, he would suddenly stop and silently gaze into the distance. That rich, overwhelming sorrow beca the mont Yuki-onna looked forward to most each day.
But even a hunter as formidable as him could encounter an enemy in the mountains that he could not possibly fight.
A cunning, ferocious black bear had been watching the man for a long ti.
Bears were extrely patient creatures.
It lay hidden for several days, until the instant the man let his guard down after finishing a hunt. Then the black bear erupted in fury and swiped viciously at the man's back.
If Yuki-onna had not acted in ti, the man would certainly have died on the spot.
But Yuki-onna's power was too weak to kill the ferocious black bear. Even her sharp ice crystals only made the King of the Mountains even more enraged.
Badly wounded and relentlessly pursued by the black bear, the man was left with no choice but to seek life through death and throw himself off the cliff.
Yuki-onna froze.
It was the first ti she had felt panic since becoming a Cursed Spirit.
She lay at the edge of the cliff and stared into the bottomless abyss. A terror she had never felt before rose in her heart.
She did not want him to die.
She did not want to lose the person who brought her such delicious sorrow.
So Yuki-onna found the dying man at the bottom of the valley.
His body was covered in wounds, and several of his bones were broken, but he had luckily survived.
However, if no one protected him, then within a few days, the man would either be torn apart by wild beasts or starve to death because he could not move.
Yuki-onna floated in the air.
She looked at the man, who still gripped his bow tightly even on the verge of death, and for the first ti, an intense curiosity rose in her heart.
What kind of person was he?
And why did he always give off such powerful sorrow?
So, for the first ti, Yuki-onna cautiously approached him.
She used her faint cold air to protect his wounds and keep them from worsening.
Then she condensed dew from ice crystals and fed it into his mouth little by little.
When he fell unconscious, she quietly stayed by his side and drove away the wild beasts that tried to co near.
Yuki-onna only wanted the man to keep living.
She wanted to see him for the rest of her life. She wanted to absorb the sorrow from him for the rest of her life.
Under Yuki-onna's careful care, the man gradually awakened.
When the man opened his eyes and saw Yuki-onna, there was no fear in them, and no disgust. He only studied her with a complicated gaze.
Yuki-onna did not speak either. She simply floated quietly nearby, occasionally tossing over a few frozen rabbits and watching him eat the raw at as he slowly regained his strength.
From then on, the man silently accepted Yuki-onna's presence.
He did not report the appearance of a yokai to the village.
Although the man was taciturn and poor at socializing, he understood human nature with great clarity.
The mountains and wilderness nurtured living beings, and the wind and snow accepted the strange and different. But human desire and fear would never tolerate anything unlike themselves.
Once Yuki-onna's tracks were exposed, Onmyōji would co one after another. In the na of upholding the righteous path and eliminating evil, they would crush this lonely little yokai wandering the snowy mountains.
The village seed simple, harmonious, united, and thriving on the surface, but it was full of suspicion toward the unknown and rejection toward outsiders.
Ordinary people feared the power of yokai, and Jujutsu Sorcerers despised the existence of Cursed Spirits. The rules of the world had always been black and white. Humans were good, and spirits were evil.
No one would care that Yuki-onna had saved him. No one would care whether Yuki-onna was a good yokai or a bad one.
So the man kept Yuki-onna's secret.
Only later, when he went hunting in the mountains, he would take the initiative to call out to Yuki-onna hiding behind the cedar trees and begin showing her kindness.
He asked the villagers about rituals, so after every hunt, he would slaughter a pheasant, then light incense and kowtow before a completely bewildered Yuki-onna.
He also wanted to know who Yuki-onna had been before she died, and what unfinished wish had made her beco such a lonely wandering spirit drifting through the mountains.
But Yuki-onna had long forgotten her life before death.
And she was too weak.
She could not even learn human language, much less communicate.
So the man and the spirit would often stare at each other in the mountains.
In the end, the man could only talk to himself.
He would sit at the edge of a cliff, point toward the distant mountains, and tell Yuki-onna about the scenery beyond them.
On snowy days, he would tell her about the spring cherry blossoms, the sumr sea, and the autumn maples outside the mountains, all those magnificent sights of the human world that Yuki-onna had never seen.
As ti passed, the man would occasionally speak of his own past.
He told her he had once been married, with a beautiful wife and a bright, clever child.
But later, the world grew unstable and war began. One day, while he was out hunting, bandits stord into his village, burning, killing, and plundering. In a single night, his wife and child died under their blades.
In all the vast world, there was no longer any place for him to return to.
But the man did not dare avenge his wife and child.
He was no match for those vicious bandits, and he was also a coward who valued his own life.
So the man fled his holand, now scorched earth, and hid alone in this isolated snowy mountain village. With his bow as his companion and the mountains as his ho, he built high walls from indifference and solitude, letting endless regret and loneliness gnaw at him day and night.
Whenever he told this story, the sorrow spilling from him was especially powerful, like the vast ocean he described, making Yuki-onna tremble all over.
In the past, she had craved that intense grief and treated it as food to strengthen herself.
But now, an inexplicable ache filled her heart. That bitterness and despair no longer tasted sweet. Instead, they were like tiny shards of ice, piercing thickly into her hollow spirit body.
So Yuki-onna took the initiative and embraced the man.
Gradually, the man let down all his defenses.
And so, the purest, most unblemished love in the world was born.
It was love between a human and a Cursed Spirit.
Humans and spirits were never ant to walk the sa path. That was the law of heaven.
But in this forgotten mountain valley, cut off from the world, rules and prejudice were kept outside by the endless wind and snow.
Love quietly took root in their silent companionship, unbound by race and untouched by the judgnt of the world.
Yuki-onna began trying hard to imitate human emotions. She learned dependence, learned attachnt, learned to resist the instincts of a Cursed Spirit, and placed this human deep within her soul.
The man would slow his speech and patiently teach her simple syllables, word by word, with quiet tenderness.
The snow-capped mountains beca their private refuge.
The man stopped returning to the village. Instead, he built a stone hut in the mountains, cleared a small patch of land, hunted, stored water, and made a crude but peaceful little ho.
Yuki-onna also worked hard to learn. Cooking, tending the fire, fumbling with the firewood. Although the flas lost their warmth the mont she touched them, over ti, she still managed to get the hang of it.
And in that ti, isolated from the world, a miracle happened.
Yuki-onna beca pregnant.
It was a bloodline born in defiance of heaven, half mortal flesh and blood, half the cold power of a snow mountain Cursed Spirit.
It was an ill-fated child rejected by yin and yang, a taboo hated by heaven and earth.
And with the child's arrival, strange events began happening throughout the mountains.
First, the cold gathered and would not disperse. Wild beasts died for no reason, wind and snow continued without end, and the fields could barely produce a harvest.
Even the battle-hardened man often missed his quarry while hunting, let alone the villagers with their clumsy skills.
The once-peaceful village was thrown into complete chaos by these disasters.
Then, one day, an uninvited guest ca to their door.
"Half-demons are beings heaven will not tolerate. Do you truly intend to give birth to this child?"
The man looked up at the person before him.
It was a handso man with an elegant smile.
But across his forehead was a terrifying line of stitches.
"Yuki-onna is already a Cursed Spirit who brings blizzards. Now that she carries a half-demon, her Cursed Energy has begun to surge. I imagine that the mont this child is born, the entire village will be buried beneath the wind and snow."
"...Who are you? What are you talking about?"
"I'm only a country bumpkin passing through, though I do happen to know a fair bit about Yin-Yang Cursed Techniques."
Kenjaku sighed.
"I truly never expected that the half-human, half-cursed spirit I spent centuries chasing would be created so easily by the two of you. A hunter who knows nothing of Cursed Techniques, and a weak little yokai with shallow power, sohow defying heaven's law and conceiving such an ominous child."
"What nonsense are you spouting? That is my child!"
The man grabbed Kenjaku by the collar. Usually so calm, he was now furious.
"That child is filled with the love between and Yuki-onna! It is a child born from happiness! It is not so ominous child like you said! You don't understand love at all!!!"
"[Love], is it?"
Kenjaku did not resist at all. He only smiled coldly.
"I truly do not understand [love]. After all, it is an emotion only the weak possess. But let warn you. Either you get rid of that child now, or you let the entire village be buried with it. Otherwise, your [love] will only beco sothing humans mock, scorn, and spit on."
"...What?"
"You don't really think no one has noticed this strange Cursed Energy, do you? The Onmyōji are already on their way. Do you and Yuki-onna stand any chance against them?"
"???"
Hearing the argunt, Yuki-onna poked her head out from inside the house and tilted it at the two of them in confusion.
"Good day, my lady."
Kenjaku lightly shook off the silent man and approached her instead, smiling kindly as he gently stroked Yuki-onna's belly.
"What a healthy baby. If it grows up safely, perhaps it will beco a legendary figure like Abe no Seii and leave its na in history. What a sha."
Kenjaku's eyes were filled with sorrow.
"Madam, have you already chosen a na for the child?"
"●●●"
Yuki-onna only lowered her head and stroked her belly, her eyes full of tenderness.
In a hoarse, halting voice, she answered,
"●●●"
"●●●, is it? What a lovely na."
After exchanging a few polite words, Kenjaku did not linger. He turned and left the valley.
For this Mara, it was nothing more than a small interlude in his long life.
But for the man, it was a choice that could decide his fate.
The truth could not stay hidden forever.
Kenjaku was right.
The villagers traced the source of the disturbances and rembered the genius hunter who had vanished without reason. Convinced that so evil yokai was hiding deep in the mountains, they pooled their money and begged the city's top Onmyōji to enter the mountains and exorcise it.
A group of Onmyōji, dressed in hunting robes and carrying exorcism tools and sealing talismans, stepped through the deep snow into the mountains.
Hidden in the wilderness, the man narrowed his eyes as he watched them. At last, he made up his mind.
He did not follow Kenjaku's advice.
The man made a third choice.
He would flee.
He did not want to get rid of his child, and he did not want to watch the village be destroyed because of him and Yuki-onna.
So the man decided to run away with Yuki-onna, just as he had done in the past, and seek a new place where no one would ever disturb them.
He held Yuki-onna's hand and hurried along a narrow path, planning to leave the mountain from the other side.
The man was truly exceptional.
Even Onmyōji with profound power could never know the mountains as well as he did.
He really did lead Yuki-onna out alive. Right under the eyes of Onmyōji hundreds and thousands of tis stronger than him, he took Yuki-onna away.
However, only the hunter was able to leave the mountains.
The mont Yuki-onna tried to step beyond them, she was stopped by an invisible barrier. No matter how desperately she tried to break through, all she did was smash herself bloody.
That was the [Barrier].
A barrier used by Onmyōji to separate humans from Cursed Spirits.
The deadly [Barrier] spread in an instant, sealing off the entire snowy mountain. Its fierce exorcising power pressed down so heavily that the wind and snow between heaven and earth suddenly ca to a halt.
"The union of human and yokai, the corruption of human morality, a Cursed Spirit carrying a child, defying heaven itself. All of these are grave sins against the world!"
The leading Onmyōji's voice was cold and hard.
Prayer beads spun in his hand, but there was not the slightest trace of rcy in his eyes. Only the cold resolve to exterminate an outsider.
In the eyes of the Onmyōji, Yuki-onna was an evil spirit that brought disaster to the world, the hunter was a traitor who had abandoned human morality, and the half-human, half-yokai child in her womb was a forbidden, accursed thing that had to be destroyed at the root.
The man imdiately shielded Yuki-onna tightly behind him, gripping the bow and arrows that had accompanied him for years, every muscle in his body taut.
He did not seek understanding from the world, nor forgiveness from heaven. He only wanted to protect his beloved and their child.
With nothing but a mortal body, the man faced a group of beings who commanded sorcery.
The battle had no suspense.
Sharp talismans tore through the air, and spells made specifically to counter Cursed Spirits slamd hard into Yuki-onna.
Even though her Cursed Energy had grown deep and powerful, she could not withstand the joint assault of several Onmyōji. Her ice barrier shattered inch by inch, her spirit body was scorched by exorcising power, cracks spread across her entire form, and bone-deep agony swept through every part of her.
The man drew his bow and fired, but the arrows that had never failed him could not even pierce the barriers around the Onmyōji.
The instant he looked up, he saw a pair of indigo eyes as vast as the sky.
Those were the [Six Eyes].
Of course, the hunter did not understand what the [Six Eyes] were. He did not understand why his arrows could not strike the enemy. He only felt bitterly unwilling. Why, when he had already given everything he had, was he still as powerless as a mayfly trying to shake a tree?
He drew his hunting knife, roared, and charged alone toward the Onmyōji.
His blade hacked at Shikigami, his flesh endured Cursed Techniques, old wounds split open, and blood poured out, staining the white snow beneath his feet red.
He fought until his eyes went bloodshot, staking his life again and again to block fatal attacks. Yet in the end, he was only a mortal. Before such powerful Cursed Techniques, he was small and powerless.
At the very end, the man struggled to turn back and look at the terrified, helpless Yuki-onna. His lips moved, but he could no longer make a sound.
The reluctance and longing left in his eyes finally faded completely.
The coward who had once fled from reality beca, in that mont, the loneliest hunter, dying amid the blinding snowstorm.
Watching her beloved die before her eyes, Yuki-onna's sanity shattered in an instant.
A heart-rending chill shot into the sky. A rampaging blizzard swept wildly through the valley, and countless ice blades ford out of thin air, surging madly toward the Onmyōji.
Yet the Onmyōji only watched coldly as she collapsed into despair.
With a single palm strike, he killed the child in Yuki-onna's womb on the spot.
That tiny life did not even have ti to cry before it fell completely silent, turning into a wisp of fine frost and scattering into the icy wind.
Her husband was dead. Her child was gone.
In that brief instant, all the tenderness and happiness Yuki-onna had gained after a lifeti of loneliness were crushed to dust by these people who held the righteous path high.
Her grief reached its limit and beca towering hatred.
[I cannot forgive!]
[I cannot forgive!!]
[I cannot forgive!!!]
Even as the years turned, even through reincarnation.
Yuki-onna would forever imprison that pain and resentnt, carved deep into her bones, within her soul.
Even if she awakened again from a long sleep and drifted aimlessly through the mountains of Nagano.
Even if her mories had already beco broken and incomplete.
She had forgotten the warmth of the stone hut, forgotten the man's tenderness, forgotten the warmth of touching her child, forgotten those long years when one human and one yokai stayed together and depended on each other.
Only the pain carved into her soul would never fade.
Only the na of that beloved, long lost and known to no one, would be scread again and again in despair each ti the bitter winter arrived.
She did not know whom she hated. She did not know what she had lost.
She only knew there was a hollow place in her heart, bleeding all year round, aching at the slightest touch, impossible to ever fill.
She would kill every Onmyōji!!!
She would kill every human in this world!!!
Yuki-onna shrieked and rushed forward.
The violent snowstorm rcilessly devoured the village.
And within that blizzard dancing across the sky, a tall, upright figure appeared.
He was expressionless, his gaze sharp, as if even the mountain winds could not shake him in the slightest. An unapproachable air always surrounded him, blending into the chill of the snowy mountain, yet colder than the ice and snow themselves.
That sa proud solitude.
That sa figure.
"●●●?!"
A sudden stabbing pain tore through Yuki-onna's head.
It was as if countless ice needles had been driven ruthlessly into her muddled consciousness.
Broken images, faded warmth, voices sealed away long ago... all of it surged up through the agony.
The firewood crackling in the stone hut, the man lowering his head to warm her hands with his breath, the heartbeat in the swaddling cloth as faint as frost, and that final mont, when he stood in front of her with his blood staining the white snow red!!
But in the next instant, she finally saw those eyes clearly.
They were completely different from the eyes of the man in her mories.
The man's gaze had always carried exhaustion and despair.
But the eyes before her now were filled with absolute calm and coldness.
They were amber eyes!!!
"Gah—!!!"
Yuki-onna stared at her own body in disbelief.
In a single instant, a brutal fist had pierced through her chest. Only then did Yuki-onna see clearly that from beginning to end, she had never had a heart at all.
The Cursed Spirit spat blood and collapsed heavily to the ground.
"Why... Why did you kill ..."
Even on the verge of death, Yuki-onna still mistook the man before her for the beloved she had lost long ago.
The Cursed Spirit stared deeply at Naoya Zenin's back, and until the very last mont before she vanished, she kept murmuring to herself.
"I... I actually always... always loved you the most..."
Naoya Zenin's face was covered in blood.
An indescribable revulsion surged up in him, strong enough to feel like nausea.
It was humiliation, contempt, hatred, and murderous intent, so intense that even he found it confusing.
"...Filthy thing. Even on the brink of death, it still sprays filth everywhere."
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