The moment the door closes behind us, everything halts.
Every conversation, every movement, everyone falls still, despite the bass throbbing through the place. Kuchisake-onnas stare, grinning with their wide-cut mouths and their spike-sharp teeth. A dodomeki’s hundreds of eyes swivel in his skin, each one of them narrowing as it focuses on me. Almost a hundred yokai have crammed themselves into this tiny space. Their gazes make me feel like I’m standing naked before them all.
To anyone else, this would look like a normal dive bar in the heart of Shibuya—one full of ambitiously fashionable people, perhaps, but nothing supernatural. The few true humans in the bar don’t seem to realize they’re surrounded by monsters, or have any clue what’s about to happen to them. Perhaps they’re too drunk to sense anything is amiss in the first place.
A hiss slips among the patrons, skittering into my ears on thin, spidery legs:
That girl can see us.
No, she must be wearing a glamour. Ask her who made it for her, it’s fetching.
That’s no glamour, I swear!
Don’t be silly—
It’s true!
She shouldn’t be here, we’re supposed to be safe here.
After what happened at the shrine, these whispers make my stomach shrivel like a persimmon left to rot. I never imagined the yokai feared us humans as much as we fear them. Or perhaps they fear us more—some of modern Japan has stopped believing in yokai, but the yokai never had the privilege to stop believing in us. Not all yokai may be evil, but most don’t consider themselves allies of Amaterasu, either. To some, I will look like the predator, the exorcist, a danger.
To others, I look like prey.
I wrap one hand around Shiro’s elbow, whispering, “Where are we?”
“Standing on the outskirts of hell,” he says under his breath. “You know how I’m always telling you to relax?”
You say it so often, it’s almost a catchphrase. “Yes?”
“Do that, but stay alert,” he says, and takes me by the hand as he leads me into the bar. I follow Shiro through the crowd, scowling when someone tries to trip me. Whispers of priestess sizzle in my wake. Snarls and growls snag my bones. The yokai draw away from me, as if brushing up against me might burn them to ash.
The bartender turns toward us, drying a mug using a hand towel. She looks human enough, but as her body moves away from us, her head remains stationary, balanced on a sinuous, snakelike neck. She’s a rokurokubi, or a “pulley neck.” The creatures are found in brothels and are fond of drinking lamp oil, according to the old tales.
“You know the rules, kid,” the bartender says to Shiro, tilting her chin toward me. “The girl isn’t welcome here.”
“We have important business with Lady O-bei,” Shiro says. “Is she seeing supplicants tonight?”
Supplicants? I wonder.
The bartender nods at a lantern overhead, one lit with tiny red fireflies, all of which are beating themselves stupid against the glass. Bug corpses fill the lantern’s bottom third. “Her Ladyship will be unhappy to learn that you’ve brought a miko into our midst.”
“Mother will live,” Shiro says.
“An odd choice of dying words,” the bartender says with a frown. She motions to a serving girl with white antlers branching off her temples. “Go, then. Koemi will announce you to the Twilight Court.”
As we follow the girl toward the back of the bar, Shiro falls into step with me, taking my elbow. “Nothing will be what it seems, once we’re on the other side,” he whispers in my ear. “Not even to eyes like ours.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“Death,” he says. “Yomi. Hell. Whatever you want to call it, we won’t be in the land of the living anymore.”
Before I can ask what he means, the antlered girl leads us up a precarious set of wooden steps. The stairwell is so narrow, it forces Shiro and me to walk single file.
When we reach the landing, I find myself caught between two glowing hallways. On my right, the corridor appears to stretch into eternity, red light splattered all over the walls. The left hallway stretches just as far, its carpet and doors stained with a violet glow. Shrieks, groans, and cries filter through the thin walls. I’m not sure whether they’re made in pleasure or pain, but they turn my cheeks scarlet.
A third hallway lies straight ahead, drenched in shadow. We venture into the dimness, and the shape of a torii gate materializes. Dry leaves crunch underfoot, startling me. Where did all these leaves come from? They stir in the dank wind blowing through the gate.
The antlered girl pauses at the gate’s threshold, bows to us, and disappears without a word.
“You’re sure about this?” I ask Shiro.
“Nope,” he replies, straightening his leather jacket. “But there isn’t a better place to start looking for answers. Ready?”
“Not at all,” I say. “Let’s go before I lose my nerve.”
We step through the torii gate, making sure to take the left path. Just in case.
Light seeps through the shadows, leaving me half-blind. I squint, stepping into a large, airy courtyard that glitters like something out of the old tales. An enormous Japanese maple tree grows at the center of the room, its branches growing through the ceiling’s open space. Its fiery, red-orange leaves dance in a breeze I can’t feel. Tiny spherical hitodama float among its branches, illuminating the tree from within and setting its colors aflame. Moss covers the ground, boxed in by wooden verandas and shoji screens that lead to other rooms. It’s an impossibly large space, worlds bigger than it appeared from the outside. The air here feels different in my lungs. More substantial, almost, as if I’m breathing in ghosts. Electricity crackles along my skin, making all the little hairs stand on end.
I straighten and turn, taking in the beauty of the place. This is Yomi? I wonder. Who knew hell could look like heaven?
A woman sits on a veranda on the opposite side of the room, surrounded by a court of yokai. With her moon-pale skin, chrysanthemum red lips, and sculpted hairstyle, she has all the beauty of a classical geisha, yet no human could hope to attain this level of physical perfection. She laughs at something one of her courtiers says, her voice bright as a pealing bell.
Who is she? I wonder. Is that Shiro’s mother? She’s not a kitsune.
I follow Shiro off the veranda, across the wide courtyard, and under the spirit-lit tree. The small ornaments in the woman’s hair chime as she turns her head to look at us. She rises and conversation ceases. All eyes turn in our direction.
“Leave us,” she says, pressing her painted lips into a thin line. “All of you.”
A golden kitsune rises from her seat in the court. “But Lady O-bei, we shouldn’t leave you alone with—”
“I can handle a human girl, Minami,” O-bei snaps. “Don’t be a fool. Go.”
The yokai withdraw from their seats. Silent. Obedient. Some of them fade straight into the shadows; others disperse across the room, slipping behind the room’s elegantly painted shoji screens or disappearing down corridors. The golden kitsune, Minami, is last to leave. She pauses at the threshold of an open shoji door, glaring at Shiro before she turns away with a flick of her tails. The door slides closed on its own, hitting the wooden jamb with a loud thwack!