The white light inside the hidden room was bright enough to be almost blinding.Nothing like the light in Hashira's bedroom, and nothing like the warm yellow glow of the villa's main hall. This place used cold light: white, even, leaving very few shadows. Under it, every crack in the stone floor, every patch of dry dust along the walls, every fragment of bone scattered across the ground was exposed with an uncomfortable clarity.Hikaru stood at the doorway, his gaze growing colder by degrees.The room had been carved deep into the mountain. All four walls were stone reinforced with old concrete. The ceiling held a ventilation system gone dark with age. On the left were several metal cabinets with heavy locks. On the right was a large cage made from black steel. The bars were as thick as an adult's wrist, and on several of them the scratches ran very deep, as though something had spent a long time trying to force its way out with claws or teeth.But what held Hikaru's attention was sti

The hidden room lay submerged in cold white light.Hikaru stood on the stone floor, his eyes carrying a faint gold overlay, looking at the nearly invisible threads of silk stretched through the air. They were fine enough that without a technique, an ordinary person would have no chance of detecting them. Some coiled around the bars of the cage. Some crawled along the stone floor. Some threaded into hairline cracks in the concrete walls and pulled down into the darkness below like dead roots.Soul-Binding Silk.The name alone dropped the temperature in the room by another degree.Maruhi stood a few paces away, unable to see the threads. In her eyes, the room held only white bones, the cage, dry dust, and old bloodstains. But she was perceptive enough to notice that Hikaru's expression had changed. The composed, slightly sardonic quality he usually carried was gone. His gaze had settled into something deeper, as though he had just seen something considerably more troublesome than a Wrai

Hikaru looked at Maruhi for a long time.In the cold room beneath the mountain, the white light was still bright enough to be almost blinding. On the grey stone floor behind her, shattered bone fragments lay still in dry dust, the black steel cage stood silent to one side, and the invisible Soul-Binding Silk continued its spread through the air, unseen by ordinary eyes.This was clearly not an appropriate place for a conversation between a man and a woman.And it was certainly not an appropriate place for a woman to ask him whether, after seeing the darkest part of her, he still intended to treat her only as a client.But Hikaru did not step back.He was not a child.In his previous life on Earth, he had lived to thirty-five. He had loved. Had trusted. Had believed he might have an ordinary family. Then the woman he loved, together with her lover, had killed him in cold blood. In this life, he had been reborn in Japonia at sixteen, lived four more years in this world, become an Onmyoj

The sharp sound rang through the room.The strike was firm and clear, not light teasing.Maruhi's body shook, her lips leaving his on a sharp breath. The soft curve of her hip beneath the kimono pressed back against the force, then trembled faintly as the warm sting spread through the fabric. Color flooded her face immediately, moving from her cheeks all the way to her neck. Her eyes were wide, filmed with a thin moisture, a look that held embarrassment and sensation both, as though she could not quite believe her own reaction had been that strong.She gripped his shoulder tightly."Hikaru..."Her voice trembled in a way she could no longer conceal.Hikaru held her, not letting her fall."Do you want to take it back now?"Maruhi's breath was uneven.She could take it back.She could still use a smile to conceal. Could still say a moment ago was only a passing emotion. Could still return to being Hashira Maruhi, the businesswoman who stood above everyone, cold and dangerous, needing no

Hikaru stood before the seven pillars, lighter still in hand, not yet put away.The red candle at his feet had gone out.The three sticks of Verdant Jade Incense beside it continued to burn quietly, threads of green smoke rising, winding through the cold air at the summit. The contrast was unmistakable. The incense could burn. The red candle could not. Hikaru was not foolish enough to misread the statement being made.He slowly put the lighter away."I apologize."He said it with genuine sincerity."I didn't know you disliked it."Urakami Shime did not answer.The white funeral veil covering her face shifted faintly. Hikaru could not tell whether that was a response from her, or simply the Yin Energy around her moving. But the pressure over the summit did not continue to grow. That at least proved she was not planning to drag him into her grave over a red candle.For now.Hikaru glanced at the candle once more.Red candles symbolized joyous occasions, weddings, bridal nights.And she