Chapter 95: Mother-in-law
In the Inner Garden of the Imperial Palace, the air had gone still.
One woman possessed the grace of an imperial court painting brought to life: poised, elegant, and impossibly refined. The other was charm itself given flesh. Beside her, even the most seductive demons from the abyss would seem crude, little more than painted masks and cheap perfume.
Ryōyū and Tamamo-no-Mae faced each other across the table.
Neither spoke.
The silence stretched until even the flowers around them seemed afraid to sway.
On a nearby branch, Kiyohime tucked her wings close to her body and remained perfectly motionless. She had already reached the level of a Great Yokai, an existence feared by countless Onmyoji, but here, between her former master and her current one, she did not dare make a sound.
At last, Tamamo-no-Mae broke the silence.
"Speak," she said, her voice smooth and languid. "You did not come all this way uninvited merely to demand an explanation from me, did you?"
"An explanation?"
Ryōyū smiled faintly.
She picked up the teacup before her. Steam still curled from the surface. She took a small sip, then set it down with the same unhurried elegance she had carried since arriving.
"I said it before. What happens to the Imperial Family now has nothing to do with me. That line was drawn long ago."
Her gaze remained calm.
"I am only Ryōyū. If I must add a surname, then it would be Abe, not Angū."
Tamamo-no-Mae watched her in silence.
"So whether you erode the Imperial Family, control them, or do something worse, it has nothing to do with me."
"Then if you are not here to demand an explanation," Tamamo-no-Mae said, her expression unreadable behind that blurred veil of power, "you came because of him."
"Naturally." Ryōyū did not deny it. "You already knew that much. The fact that you have been behaving so obediently means you not only know he has returned, but you have likely seen him yourself."
Tamamo-no-Mae gave a slow nod.
Since Ryōyū already understood the most important part, there was no point in pretending otherwise.
"He has indeed returned."
Then she began to recount what she knew.
The Wedding Dress Tree Incident.
The Weird Wood Spirit Incident.
The Human Devouring Incident.
The fox curse.
The struggle hidden behind those events.
Gin Tsumugi's involvement in each of them.
Ryōyū did not interrupt once. She listened quietly, patiently, without a trace of impatience, no matter how small or tedious the detail. Her posture and expression were almost gentle, like a wife listening to news of a husband who had gone on a long journey and finally sent word home.
"When I first saw him," Tamamo-no-Mae said, "I found it difficult to believe. How could someone who had perished so thoroughly return to this world?"
Her eyes shifted slightly.
"But as time passed, Zenki and Koki appeared. Then more signs followed, one after another. Every piece of evidence seemed to prove that he had truly resurrected."
A complicated emotion passed through her voice.
"He has returned."
Ryōyū lowered her eyes.
"So his growth has been smooth. Even the descendants of the Tsuchimikado Clan have begun to notice something."
When she mentioned the Tsuchimikado Clan, a subtle change crossed her face.
There was nostalgia there.
Regret.
A trace of bitterness she did not quite conceal.
If the Imperial Family had not destroyed itself with its own hands back then, perhaps the Tsuchimikado Clan would have carried her bloodline and his. Perhaps the descendants of the Great Onmyoji would have also been hers.
Instead, another woman had been enshrined in the ancestral hall.
The world remembered someone else as his wife.
That thought left Ryōyū feeling stifled in a way that even a thousand years could not smooth away.
It was absurd.
She had been the rightful fiancée, yet history recognized another woman in her place.
Worse still, she could not even resent that woman properly.
During the years when Ryōyū had not been by his side, that woman had accompanied him through the hardest part of his remaining life.
For that, Ryōyū had to feel grateful.
And gratitude, in this particular matter, was frankly more irritating than hatred.
"Ryōyū," Tamamo-no-Mae said, pulling her from her thoughts, "you may rest assured. I will not seek my own destruction by interfering with his growth. I will not become his enemy."
She spoke plainly.
By now, if she still could not guess the reason Ryōyū had come, then she would have lived these thousand years for nothing.
Besides, Tamamo-no-Mae had never intended to stand against him in the first place.
Even those filth hiding in the dark, scheming from sewers and shadows, understood that much. How could she not?
"Are you satisfied with that answer?" Tamamo-no-Mae asked.
She had thought her frankness would earn at least a passable response.
Ryōyū shook her head.
"I am not."
Tamamo-no-Mae's gaze sharpened.
"If that was all I wanted," Ryōyū said, "there would have been no need for me to come here in person."
"Then what do you want?"
The softness in Tamamo-no-Mae's voice thinned.
She feared that man. That much was true.
But fear did not mean she would surrender every bottom line and allow herself to be pushed endlessly.
Ryōyū did not seem to care that Tamamo-no-Mae was displeased. She only looked directly at the blurred face before her and spoke with quiet seriousness.
"What I want is simple. Tamamo-no-Mae, I want you to fulfill the promise from a thousand years ago."
The air changed.
Ryōyū continued, "The promise you failed to complete after you were defeated by him."
The moment those words fell, Tamamo-no-Mae's expression changed.
Killing intent rose in her eyes.
The pressure of a legendary Great Yokai swept out without restraint.
It rolled across the Inner Garden, blanketing the Imperial Palace in a suffocating storm of spiritual dread. The sky and earth seemed to tremble beneath it. The flowers bent low, the stones hummed, and the very air tightened as though it were about to crack.
On the branch, Kiyohime froze.
Her blood turned cold.
A mountain seemed to descend onto her wings, crushing her in place. Forget flying, she could barely breathe.
Her Highness is angry.
So scary.
So, so scary.
The little blue bird that had become a Great Yokai trembled miserably on the branch, suddenly wishing she could turn into bark and merge with the tree.
Yet at the center of that storm, Ryōyū remained seated.
She calmly lifted her teacup again.
The pressure and killing intent that could make an ordinary Onmyoji collapse on the spot seemed unable to touch her. She drank slowly, even seeming to savor the taste.
After a while, Tamamo-no-Mae exhaled.
The killing intent receded.
The pressure vanished with it.
But her eyes remained dangerously sharp.
"Ryōyū," she said, each word carrying a razor's edge beneath the charm, "are you truly unafraid that I will kill you? Or do you believe your current strength is enough to rival mine?"
Ryōyū set down the teacup.
"You are Tamamo-no-Mae, a Great Yokai of legend. Not some half-formed thing crawling out of a roadside curse. If you wished to kill me, it would likely not take much effort."
Her tone did not change.
"But you abandoned the thought the moment your killing intent appeared, did you not?"
Tamamo-no-Mae said nothing.
She only stared at her.
"You are clever," Ryōyū continued. "That is why you know this is something you must face sooner or later. Killing me would only worsen the situation. It would solve nothing."
Tamamo-no-Mae's lips curved, but there was no warmth in the gesture.
"To lose freedom and live in humiliation? I would rather die."
Her answer was firm.
No hesitation.
No room for negotiation.
"And besides," Tamamo-no-Mae added, "if I did such a thing, I would be making an enemy of all Yokai. I am not Yamata no Orochi. I do not possess the power to ignore the entire world."
"Not necessarily."
Ryōyū shook her head.
"When that time comes, those fellows will no longer dare trouble you."
Tamamo-no-Mae paused.
The answer was not wrong.
That was precisely why it irritated her.
Even so, her stance did not change.
"No need to say more. I will not agree."
Her voice was final.
Ryōyū looked at her for a moment, then smiled faintly.
"Very well."
Tamamo-no-Mae's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Instead of coming here to annoy me," she said, "why not go to Kyoto and visit that mother-in-law of yours?"
Ryōyū's gaze shifted.
Tamamo-no-Mae continued, her voice carrying a subtle barb.
"She is one of the links those things in the shadows are trying to calculate. And that ugly fake—do you still intend to leave it wandering around this world, embarrassing him?"
"That," Ryōyū said, rising from her seat, "is something for you, a Great Yokai, to worry about."
She looked down at Tamamo-no-Mae.
"Think carefully. After all, you do not have much time left."
Ripples spread through the air around her.
Space folded like disturbed water, slowly covering Ryōyū's figure.
Then she disappeared.
The Inner Garden fell silent again.
Long after Ryōyū had gone, Tamamo-no-Mae remained seated where she was.
The tea before her had gone cold.
She did not touch it.
On the branch, Kiyohime waited, barely daring to breathe. She looked at Tamamo-no-Mae, then at the empty space where Ryōyū had vanished, and wisely decided that silence was the only survival strategy available.
.....
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