[217]: Painted Skin Ghost
Most people wandering the streets at night were nobles.
In Heian-kyō, there was a custom known as "visiting the wife." A man would spend the night at a woman's house and only leave at dawn.
They weren't necessarily husband and wife—more often, they were lovers.
Before the sun had risen, Taira no Masahiko straightened his robes and boarded his ox-drawn carriage, departing from his lover's residence.
If he left any later, he might run into other familiar carriages on the road. To avoid that, he always made a point of leaving early.
The sky before sunrise was still dark, almost indistinguishable from night. The carriage rumbled along the familiar path back home. Soon enough, he'd need to attend court and meet the emperor.
The scenery along the road was no different from usual…
No—perhaps it was.
He saw a woman standing by the roadside in resplendent robes, long hair trailing along the ground. Her expression was sorrowful, her eyes cold.
He stopped the carriage.
Her skin was pale as moonlight. Jet-black hair, black brows, black eyes. Her entire being was painted in black and white—stunningly beautiful, leaving one breathless. Only one thought remained in his heart:
Is this a heavenly maiden?
All thoughts about running into female ghosts on the road vanished from Taira no Masahiko's mind.
She was so beautiful—how could she be a monster?
She was so beautiful—how could she harm anyone?
All those ghost stories were nonsense!
She must be a goddess descended from the heavens!
"And you are…?" he started, unsure what to call her.
"..." The beautiful woman looked at his moving lips, then slowly dropped her gaze. "Hao. My name is Hao."
Enchanted by the deep, glimmering black of her eyes, Taira no Masahiko passionately brought her back to his home.
Meanwhile, in Heian-kyō, rumors began to spread—beautiful women were vanishing at night.
A few days later, several corpses were found in the maple grove.
Each had been flayed, their skin completely stripped, leaving only blood-covered flesh behind. None could be identified, and all were missing their hearts.
Loving to peel the skin from beauties… feeding on human hearts… the traits all matched the ghost in that recently circulated tale.
A face and form can be painted, but never the heart. Born without one, she seeks hearts from others.
Conventional methods were useless. The nobles began calling in experts.
What kind of experts? Onmyōji.
In one of the courtyards within the Gojō estate...
"The onmyōji have started patrolling Kyoto, searching for the Painted-Skin Ghost..." Maro reported in a hushed voice, updating on recent events outside.
A white-haired boy sat beneath the eaves, a go board beside him, playing both sides of the game alone.
"So the onmyōji have entered the scene..." he said with a light laugh.
"What onmyōji?" Gojō Haru had just arrived and caught the tail end of that sentence, giving Cyr a teasing look.
"We're talking about the events outside... Do you think the onmyōji can catch the Painted-Skin Ghost?" Cyr didn't bother hiding anything and spoke to Haru casually.
Gojō Haru was already over thirty, yet remained unmarried and childless—seemingly a lone wolf.
Still, he didn't look his age. Standing next to Cyr, the two looked like peers.
White hair, white brows, white lashes. Blue eyes and snowy skin. As cold and noble as ice—and yet, the moment he opened his mouth, that aloof image completely shattered.
One had to wonder—did the Satoru Gojō of a thousand years later look exactly like Gojō Haru?
"If you mean the onmyōji dispatched from the Bureau… no chance," Gojō Haru replied without hesitation.
The onmyōji raised by the Onmyō Bureau weren't all useless… but the truly capable ones were rare.
Most of them could only divine fortune or misfortune, or make predictions about the weather.
As for subduing or fighting yokai or ghosts—very few were capable of that.
Jujutsu sorcerers, on the other hand, were much better fighters—able to go toe-to-toe with yokai in hand-to-hand combat. But every craft has its specialty. When it came to yokai, the onmyōji took charge; for curses and cursed spirits, it was the jujutsu sorcerers' domain.
When the corpses were first discovered, Gojō Haru had gone to investigate. He had concluded that it was the work of a yokai, not a cursed spirit.
And when a wielder of the Six Eyes spoke, their words carried weight.
With that, the jujutsu sorcerers stepped back.
Now, all eyes were on the onmyōji and what they could do.
In this era, onmyōji looked down on jujutsu sorcerers, and the feeling was mutual.
Even within the jujutsu world, there was no harmony. The Gojō clan had risen to prominence due to Gojō Haru and his Six Eyes, earning a place as the de facto leaders of the jujutsu world—but there were still plenty of dissenters.
Yokai and cursed spirits wanted Gojō Haru dead. But so did a number of humans.
"That Painted-Skin Ghost doesn't seem to match the strength one would expect of a newly formed entity," Gojō Haru said, rubbing his chin and smiling casually.
"Oh? What do you mean by that?" the boy asked, his voice light and eyes full of amusement.
"If I had to explain..." Gojō Haru began, still smiling.
In theory, the Painted-Skin Ghost had only existed for less than half a month, given how recently the story began circulating.
And what was a newly born cursed spirit like?
Pathetically weak—so much so that Gojō Haru wouldn't even feel like squashing it.
The same applied to yokai. Newborn ones were never that strong.
But with the Six Eyes, he had examined the faint spiritual energy clinging to the corpses, and what he saw was power on par with a Greater Yokai.
Born less than half a month ago, and already comparable to a Greater Yokai? Not quite equal to the old, established ones, perhaps—but not something to be taken lightly.
"Incredible… So the Painted-Skin Ghost is truly that gifted?" Cyr feigned shock.
"Naturally…" Gojō Haru threw his head back and laughed.
"Cyr, oh Cyr… what are you really trying to do?" he asked suddenly, his tone drifting.
The boy had barely arrived in Kyoto, and already the tale of the Painted-Skin Ghost was circulating. To call that a coincidence was an insult to his intelligence.
"Me?" Cyr wasn't surprised at all.
No wielder of the Six Eyes was ever a fool.
Since childhood, they saw things—everything others could and couldn't see—all clearly laid bare before their eyes.
"Just an experiment," Cyr said softly, dropping a go piece from his left hand onto the board.
"To create yokai or gods… there's no difference at all."
"If I can bring a yokai into being through writing, then naturally, I can write a god into existence as well." He looked down at his own hands—slender, pale, bones sharply defined.
They looked like the hands of a grown man now.
"…What a blasphemous thought," Gojō Haru murmured as he slowly opened his folding fan to cover his face below the eyes.
Such an irreverent notion—defying the divine.
"They're welcome to come down and stop me if they're real," Cyr scoffed with disdain.
If gods did exist and took issue with him, let them come down and fight him.
"I'd love to craft a legend about slaying gods," Cyr sighed wistfully.
"That's… quite something," Gojō Haru chuckled, almost helplessly.
"You've really scared me," he added, shaking his head and sighing. But despite his words, he didn't look the least bit frightened.
"But those who died… they were innocent," he said again, as if in gentle rebuke.
Whatever Cyr was trying to do, it was a fact that his Painted-Skin Ghost had killed several people.
It shouldn't have come to this.
"…If you don't rein it in soon, Kyoto may fall into mass panic. Someone might ask Lord Seimei to intervene," Gojō Haru warned.
"Abe no Seimei…" Cyr murmured, sounding almost sentimental.
He had indeed wanted to meet the man, but it was more of a collector's mindset—just to check him off the list.
"The Painted-Skin Ghost arc is about to wrap up anyway. Don't worry, I won't let it spiral out of control," Cyr said as he began to gather the go pieces one by one.
Whether he used his left or right hand to play, it was the same brain behind both sides—fully aware of every move. That's why the game always ended in deadlock.
"As long as you know your limits," Gojō Haru said.
He seemed kind and soft-hearted, reminding Cyr to show restraint and mindful of those killed by the yokai.
But he wasn't truly kind—his tone had never risen, not even once. He knew exactly who had created the Painted-Skin Ghost that was causing fear throughout Kyoto, and yet had taken no action.
°°°
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