From the sky draped temples of Wei Hau Mountain one could see the world as only the monks could; set back symbolically from ceaseless rush of modern life, the landscape spread before you like a map on a table. Emerald wilderness gave way to the off-grey infection of the city beneath, wild, elegant loops of river like ribbon on a dress became giant oblong canals bordered by concrete and brimming with commercial boats selling all goods from traditional silk weaves and fruit to Hello Kitty key-chains and Doritos, the clouds curved in strange currents where they met fumes being belched from factory chimneys, swapping the beautiful, sleek white wings of migrating heron for the gleaming wink of jet planes.<br/><br/>Kuro meditated here often for the view of his home.<br/>He sat cross legged on a grassy bank at the foot of the temple, beneath a red wood archway, carved with numerous Buddhist mandala and mantra and shaded by the many naked, gnarled arms of a tree every bit as old and dead as he was. It was his spot and the resident monks understood that. They’d mostly stopped trying to chase him out or exorcise his ‘unholy and restless soul’ half a century ago, but it didn’t stop the occasional over-eager, holier-than-thou youngster from giving it a damn good shot.<br/><br/>Which was precisely what he thought must have been happening when he heard the click of sandals on the stepping stone approach. Without looking back over his shoulder to see who it was he raised a hand loosely up, feeling the excited hum of energy spark up from somewhere deep in his veins and spread across his skin like static—a warning of sorts, a concentrated burst of negative energy that even the most spiritually blind idiot could feel coming on like brain cramp. That usually scared them off, but the approaching stranger barked a dry laugh instead.<br/>“You shall have to cut that out if you want the tea I’ve brought you,”<br/><br/>Kuro leaned back, shifting his weight to get a better look. Orange garb, bald, wrinkled, raison head, prayer beads, the stench of incense and a tray clattering with simple cups and a small metal tea pot, it was an old monk, one he recognised although the face had been a good bit younger when he last saw him.<br/><br/>His eyes narrowed and the demon studied his unlikely companion. What a pair they were! Like where the river met the canals one’s dress was steeped in tradition and simplicity, the other opted for ragged jeans and a modern leather jacket, “Speaking to me is a punishable offence on its own, are you sure you want to serve me tea old boy? Do your people know you’re out here?”<br/><br/>“This old boy has made no secret of it!” the monks smile was every bit as warm and comforting as the tea he set down at Kuro’s side and bowed stiffly at the waist in greeting, “I told them that any weary traveller on our doorstep should see the best of us, the misfortuned and the wicked more so than any other, for I suspect they need it most. No one could argue without sounding like a fool themselves!”<br/><br/>This earned an unexpected grin from the demon, “Am I a wicked man?”<br/><br/>The monk shrugged, “I am but mortal, I can only tell you what these eyes see and these ears hear and they tell me you are most definitely not man, I couldn’t possibly speak for much else,”<br/><br/>He shifted over a little respectfully to make room for the holy rule breaker. It took time, it often did when humans aged, their bodies started to die long before they did and this one was a bit stiff in the legs as well as long in the tooth. Kuro poured the tea while he waited, then settled back into his straight backed meditative posture, feet curled in his lap, rooting his energies at the base of his spine into the earth beneath and extending them out to the heavens somewhere above the crest of his skull.<br/><br/>For a while they shared the space peacefully sat side by side, not a noise passed between them unless you counted the rustling of a passing breeze or the rattling of the old man’s chest. Finally the monk spoke, between sips of his tea, “Times are changed, are they not?”<br/><br/>Kuro nodded solemnly, “Yes, the land shifts faster with each passing day… but I don’t believe that’s what you came here to discuss…?” he’d been suspicious for a while. It was true, to speak to a demon or allow one so close to Holy grounds was a graven sin, his presence put the monks reputation at great risk—then again that was the thing with old boys, wasn’t it? Age allowed them a certain clarity of vision and a strength of will that a reputation did not. If he was here it was for reasons beyond his own benefit. Goddamn irritatingly righteous creatures were the spiritual, they didn’t follow rules of logic or reason like the rest of the world.<br/><br/>The monk sighed, the first signs of trouble clouding his expression, “No, it isn’t, but I’ve seen you here since I was a boy and I know at least we can share this much. It is in part the reason why we’re enjoying tea together! What do you make of it anyway? I picked the herbs myself,”<br/><br/>Kuro smirked, “I can tell. You couldn’t have washed the taste of old out of them first?”<br/><br/>“How ungrateful,” his companion remarked, sounding more amused than insulted, “It’s no wonder no one brings you tea!”<br/><br/>“Perhaps you’ve learned a valuable lesson about oni etiquette,” Kuro shrugged, “What do you want, monk?”<br/><br/>“I have consulted the fates--”<br/><br/>“Ah, that old game you play with sticks!” he’d seen the practice of ‘consulting the fates’ before, it was a ritual involving reading the shapes of dust made by charred sticks and referencing them to an ancient script as long as his leg.<br/><br/>“That’s the one!” the old boy grinned, a laugh whistling through the gaps in his teeth, point blank refusing to be insulted, “I’m glad to see you know of it! Perhaps after things all play out you might be more inclined to give the fates a little faith, they sent me here after all—with your favourite tea to boot! Ginger. You need not correct me, I know I’m right!”<br/><br/>Kuro scowled, not liking being bested by a couple of burned twigs. Ginger. Lucky guess. He crossed his arms over his chest, watching from the corner of his eye, “So what do ‘The Fates’ want of me? All knowing like they are I suppose they’re aware of my hourly rate?” he lifted both hands as if to say<span style="font-style: italic">‘well? Where’s my money?’</span><br/><br/>“If they thought that would get you to do what they wanted I would have brought a coin purse instead of tea!” the old boy smiled and refilled their cups gently, “Don’t be so simple, it’s belittling of both of us. Oni do not count currency like men, your greed’s and lusts are of a different nature,”<br/><br/>Kuro looked him up and down, the old boy wore a serious kind of wisdom modestly, wrapping it in humour and warmth, but it shone through nonetheless, “Alright, so I’m curious, what is this mysterious favour to the fates and why am I going to help them?”<br/><br/>Then suddenly the old boy was straight to the point, no hesitation in his words or warmth in his voice now. He was all matter-of-fact with maybe a hint of pleading so slight you could easily miss it, “There is a girl in the city, an unclaimed witch. Her future is uncertain, but tragic without immediate intervention. Great changes come her way and she will not be prepared or warned—the fates tell me that you’ll understand what that means even if I do not. They wish for you to find her and mind by her,”<br/><br/>Kuro’s brow knitted in the middle, “Unclaimed?” he cocked his head curiously,<br/><br/>“Whatever that means,” the monk shrugged and started the motions of struggling back to his feet—Kuro scrambled up and went to offer him an arm before hesitating—wasn’t it a terrible omen for them to make physical contact with a demon? If it was the old monk didn’t know or simply didn’t care, he reached for the oni’s arm and together they got him upright again. For an unsettling moment or two he wheezed and Kuro was sure his energies had brought about the onset of a heart attack, but the old boy straightened his orange robes and settled his breathing, brushing off the concerned demon with a brisk, insincere apology that was probably more out of habit than anything else, “It’s these old bones! Once the weather starts turning they want to stop working! Quit fussing, I’m quite alright thank you!”<br/><br/>Kuro scowled again, looking at him like a mother would a child when they won’t eat their vegetables, “Do you want me to walk you back?”<br/><br/>“Goodness no!” the monk exclaimed with a wide, gappy smile, clasping his hands together, “It took enough convincing to allow you this far up the mountain, if I brought you back I’m sure we’d<span style="font-style: italic">both</span>be run off that cliff edge!”<br/><br/>Kuro sighed and pulled his jacket tighter around his middle as a winding breeze whipped up his hair, the wind gathered in these high places and gained strength with momentum. He imagined it would be this cold air that would be the death of the old boy, probably not more than a handful of years from now, it would steal his soul into the heavens like a dry maple leaf from the pavement and the world would be a little worse off without him.<br/>What a funny, uncomprehendable thing mortality was, he found himself grateful he didn’t suffer from it.<br/><br/>“Where am I meant to find this girl?” he sighed pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, asking more as a favour to the monk than to the fates, “What if I can’t? What if she won’t allow me to ‘mind’ her—you’re not aware of how this looks, but I promise you there’s no way to do this without coming across seedy--” the hand travelled up to brush back a loose and suddenly irritating bang of hair, “What if I’m just telling you this to keep you quiet? I could just leave and go about my life as intended, no unclaimed witches or unplanned dabbles in fate whatsoever!”<br/><br/>“You<span style="font-style: italic">could</span>, but you won’t!” the monk chuckled, “This is fate after all! And I’m not a sat nav--”<br/><br/>--Kuro snorted, taken aback the old boy even knew what one was.<br/><br/>--“I cannot give you directions to her… but take comfort, you<span style="font-style: italic">will</span>find her!”<br/><br/>“How immensely comforting,” Kuro remarked dryly, rolling his eyes.<br/><br/>The monk ignored him and turned to head home, “Finish your tea and leave the tray, I shall send someone out to collect it,”<br/><br/>“Arigato,” Kuro gave the old boy a parting bow.<br/><br/>“Don’t mention it, just do it if you really want to thank me,” the monk waved him off.<br/><br/>Never in his waking memory had anyone made such an impression in such a short time… maybe it was because he could taste the musty lick of death radiating off of his parchment skin, it was faint, hidden by sweat and incense, but for sure it was there. Death was an unsettling smell to the immortal and Kuro couldn’t help but to contemplate it as he watched the old boy hobble back up the hill to where his eager and disapproving band of brothers waited. Still scowling he settled back down to continue his meditation.<br/>Six months later, on the same eve that his newfound old friend would pass away, the fates made good on their promise.<br/><br/><br/>----------------------                   ----------------------------------           -------------------<br/><br/>Dock work wasn’t exactly a picnic, but it paid the bills whilst Kuro was busy playing at being human. Day in, day out he’d load and secure and haul. It was plentiful profession on sea-shore settlements and common enough to chase out the suspicions bred among a community with an Island mentality. Even his Clan markings blended in here, most of the boys were tattooed to some extent and almost all of them could recognize the Yakuza artwork weaved into his families own patterning and knew well enough to leave it alone.<br/>To be completely honest, it was probably where most suspicions and stories started, the grizzled blue collar employees got together like packs of old women and nattered over their sake with nothing better to do once the whistle had blown. It was a time honoured tradition setting up some of the best old story-tellers with free booze for life. The bars frequented by his co-workers never failed to buzz with gossip. Over the last two-hundred years Kuro hadn’t found a better place to lay low and listen than on the docks.<br/><br/>That evening, sharing a corner booth with a few of the boys, he overheard something significant.<br/><br/>He’d been tuning out anyway, enjoying the fuzzy-headed warmth of his fourth beer—German stuff, tasted like piss, but going cheap<span style="font-style: italic">cheap</span>, like a baby bird—listening more to the whirring drone of the fan overhead than the chatter of his friends. It was dark out by then and the bar was suitably subdued, lit only by the red bulbs behind the bar and candles set fashionably in jars on the tables. It had been a long exhausting shift, they’d lost a crate or two to a collapsed ramp and gotten an earful from the foreman before having to shaft off the pompous business fool they’d belonged to, shortly after one of their forklifts had lost its gearbox and ploughed into a neighbouring warehouse. Suffice to say Kuro was halfway asleep when he picked up on the slight crackle of demonic energy enter the building.<br/><br/>That in itself wasn’t unusual; there were almost always demons on the dock, usually for the same reasons he was, good listening posts and easy hiding places, but he lowered his energy output (a kind of spiritual breath holding) and eavesdropped nonetheless. It paid to be attentive and, whether he realised or not, he’d been listening out extra since his odd visit from the old monk on the mountain. It was almost forgotten, put to the backburner of his mind, before a particular topic piqued his interest.<br/><br/>“…you heard about Tora, right?” one said to the other, little more than two tables away Kuro’s sharper-than-human hearing could pick up every word with ease.<br/><br/>“Killed wasn’t he?” the second suggested.<br/><br/>“Yeah, everyone knows that! But do you know the details?”<br/><br/>“Naw… why? Was it a bit… strange and unusual or something?”<br/><br/>“Dude! He was put through! Started on some shitty unclaimed witch and she saw him off, but that’s not the interesting bit!”<br/><br/>One of them snorted, “Tora didn’t deserve to live if he couldn’t handle an unclaimed! A demon vanquished by the untrained! If she didn’t kill the fucker the shame should have finished him off!”<br/><br/>Kuro froze, hands still wrapped around the glass, eyes narrowing and skirting off down the lane to get a sneaky look at these boys. Like him both wore human glamours, one a bespectacled business type, the other had a shaved head and reeked of general thuggery. Two different oni from separate sectors of the City, this was a set up meeting, an information drop maybe?<br/><br/>It didn’t matter, they’d mentioned the unclaimed girl and now his moderately drunken mind whirled with everything the old monk on the hilltop had told him.<br/><br/>“See interestin’ part is,” the thug tantalized, “I know where she is, what she looks like…” there was a shuffle of cloth. He was taking something out of his jacket pocket.<br/><br/>Kuro made a quick excuse to his small gathering, something about taking a piss or filling his glass and took the opportunity to walk past and glance as the thug slipped a photograph across the table with one index finger, like a clairvoyant revealing a sacred card. He only had a second to look and memorize, hanging about for more than a moment was a sure fire way of getting caught out and Kuro was too low on the hierarchy for their presence.<br/>… But there she was.<br/>It was a yearbook snapshot with a name scrawled in biro underneath. ‘<span style="font-style: italic">Kirasumi’</span>.<br/><br/>He breezed by, trying to commit the face to memory, as he made for the exit. On the surface she looked like your standard bright eyed, doll-faced darling, the kind of girl you could see flitting across a sunlit schoolyard wearing hoodies with cat ears and giggling over manga, but with a few key differences; she had white hair (some probably accused her of being rebellious and dying it, but he was willing to bet it was all natural. Witches were so often blessed with strange mutations) and an odd sense of distance in her eyes. She didn’t just look at the camera; she looked straight through it, past the slick, vinyl surface of the photograph and into the eyes of whoever was looking at it.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">‘Presence.’</span>his inebriated mind announced as he stumbled out the door and a shock of cold air hit him,<span style="font-style: italic"> ‘Girl has presence!’</span>.<br/><br/>But could it be… well who the fuck else was it gonna be!? How many unclaimed were there here?<br/><br/>Street lights, neon and music waltzed all around and for a moment he had to balance himself against a nearby wall, face buried in his arm, stomach lurching in unease. Was it possible?<br/><br/>All this time he’d written off the monk as mistaken, the fates do not ask favours of demons or if they ever should it most certainly would be someone important, someone of standing. Kuro was old, old enough to have heard stories of the fates in action, old enough to know that if you could avoid getting tangled up in their affairs you bloody well did. Everything the Fates touched ended in tragedy and horror for someone somewhere, it was inevitable. Inviting them into the situation was like inviting a starving bear into a soup kitchen, the kind, misguided thought was there, but you could guarantee it wasn’t the miso that’d hold its attention, someone was gonna get mauled. The Fates had teeth and craved flesh, they always had, for why else was every passage of history so bloody?<br/>Why him?<br/>Why now?<br/>This HAD to be a coincidence… a wild coincidence was much more probable than divine providence, but… the monks words were burned in his head, as was the snapshot picture.<br/><br/>It was an insult!<br/><br/>“It’s a joke!” he slammed a fist into the wall, shaking his head, making a few passers-by jump. He’d known since he was old enough to comprehend it that he had no breeding rights, someone of his standing claiming a witch was punishable by death. It was just like the Fates to place her in his charge… but ONLY after making sure that every other demon in the area was aware of her.<br/><br/>He pushed off from the wall and threw a hand through his hair in agitation.<br/><br/>Kirasumi… how was she still alive? Still unclaimed?<br/><br/>He had to find her… it wasn’t fair, but even if he didn’t believe it, Kuro knew himself well enough to understand that it would haunt him to his deathbed if he ignored the issue… all his life he’d fought,<span style="font-style: italic">battled</span>to accept his worthlessness, spending your days knowing that your very existence was tantamount to nothing, sweet fuck all besides servitude to the upper clans… then<span style="font-style: italic">this</span>…<br/>No, it had to be looked into.<br/><br/>-------------------                        ---------------------------------                  ------------------------<br/><br/>It didn’t take too long to track her, Kuro had to call in a few favours and ask the right people, but he narrowed his search for the white haired woman down to one neighbourhood. That was the other surprising thing; she wasn’t a kid. He’d been informed that the image he’d seen was old, the young woman he was looking for was early twenties.<br/>Another thorn in the works he didn’t need…<br/>He’d all but given up for the evening, perching against a corner store wall and sparking up one last smoke, before<span style="font-style: italic">she</span>stumbled across him.<br/><br/>It took a moment for his brain to click. It was so completely unexpected. The door of the shop jingled and someone slipped past him, diving into the dark roads beyond the yellow glow of the shop window. Normally he would have thought nothing of it… and then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of pale, like a bedsheet strung up beneath the moon. He stubbed out his cig and kicked off the wall, beginning to tail her from a safe distance. For all he knew it could have been a fashionista rocking a pretty out there colour and Kuro had no intention of being arrested for stalking or ending up on a list somewhere.<br/><br/>It shouldn’t have been hard, he was more than human, he could move quietly, like smoke on the air, but he’d scarcely turned the corner when a wink of metal stopped him dead in his tracks.<br/><br/>“Show yourself!” the young woman demanded.<br/><br/>Kuro doubled back a step, the girl was no more than a few paces ahead, but the darkness down these little side alleys was swallowing, neither demon nor stalkee could catch a proper glimpse at one another, but good God, she held something in her hands, something long that had glinted like a gun barrel a second before. He lifted both hands in a universal gesture of surrender.<br/><br/>“You knew I was there?” he cocked his head curiously, squinting to make out her features. His heart battered against his ribcage like the wings of a frightened bird, but he kept still, calm. If she was going to kill him she’d have done so already… girl wanted to talk.