/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I may have solved one problem, but I was still struggling with others. Yes, I understood that Yamame Kurodani was not an inhuman monster. She was a person, like any other, and she had her own goals, her own skills and her own relationships that went beyond simply killing and eating humans, but...

Well, she still killed and ate humans, and I was finding that to be a bit of a sticking point.

The silence after Yamame's speech seemed to stretch into infinity. It filled my ears and rang so loudly that I couldn't hear myself think. Yamame still wasn't looking at me, and I wasn't sure I wanted her to. I knew already that her habit of biting me was on pause, and I didn't know how long it would be on pause for. I don't think I could handle knowing a youkai was biting me, not now that I could remember what would have happened if I wasn't me.

Slowly, I found myself asking her something that I hadn't wanted to acknowledge, because it cast a dark shadow on our whole relationship. I asked her...what she would have done if my skin hadn't been too tough to bite. If I'd been just a regular human when I'd fallen into her web that day, just what would have happened to me?

Yamame looked up at me, and she seemed just a little crestfallen that I'd asked that question. I supposed she hadn't wanted to face it just as much as I hadn't. "I...would have bitten you." I asked her what would have happened then. "Why are you asking me that?" She finally said. "It can't happen." I needed to know. I needed to understand the youkai side of her. "Fine. I inject a venom and it liquefies your insides. Happy?" Not particularly, I said. I was a human, so regardless of the method, I'm not a particularly big fan of other humans being killed.

But even though I knew that Yamame would have killed me without a second thought then, it didn't change the fact that she'd helped me after that. She didn't need to come to Former Hell with me. She didn't have to help me through all the oni and help me after I'd met Satori Komeiji. She didn't need to make me clothes even though I couldn't really pay her.

But she'd done it anyway, and I couldn't forget that.

Could it work? I just wasn't sure I could handle knowing I was with someone who could, would and had eaten human beings, even if it was more like a drink than anything else. I had lost my family to youkai. I'd heard of human remains found out in the forests. I couldn't just forget that.

Yamame had decided something. "Look..." She said quietly. "I don't want to lose you." I didn't want that either. But, it wasn't so much friendship that I was worried about. "I know that your memories have changed things." I didn't know where she was going with this. "It's just...You were the first human who was just nice to me." I really did start to wonder how weak I was in the mental department, because I almost wanted to forget everything right there and then. "Most of my interactions with humans has been them trying to kill me, or them being terrified of me. You just treated me...normally." I squeezed my eyes shut.

I did like her. I wanted to keep her in my life. I just couldn't deal with the knowledge that she ate humans. It was fine when it was an abstract fact that I could ignore, but now it was up front and centre. I'd witnessed youkai eating humans first hand. I couldn't ignore it anymore. If only she could survive off something else.

If only...

Wait a moment. There was something there. In the back of my mind, some small, inconsequential words that had meant nothing at the time. I thought as hard as I could. It was right there - right on the tip of my tongue.

Fear. It was fear.