her hand to her right eye. She looked out her left eye and saw perfectly. Giddy terror went looping through her. “Oh! Oh! Oh fudge!”
He was a god. So, there probably was a monster. And he wanted her to deal with it. Because no one else could.
Pixii looked around with her newly healed eye. Almost everyone in sight was a child, some as young as eleven. She breathed out a curse.
“Chibi?” Inking called loudly. “Chibi? Are you okay?”
Pixii turned, her breath catching in her chest.
Inkling stood next to the jury-rigged fitting room. She pulled an inch of the fabric door aside to peer in. “Chi? Where are you?” She reached up and undid the clip.
“Inking!” Pixii caught hold of her and pulled her back even as the cloth dropped open. For a moment, Pixii saw a glistening cavern, like a giant throat, and then it was simply a tiny, yard-wide fabric booth.
“What the hell?” Inkling glanced down at Pixii and then scanned the area, completely ignoring Yamauchi. “Where’d she go?”
Pixii pulled Inkling away from the changing booth. “What happened to her?” Pixii asked Yamauchi.
“I don’t know.” Inkling clicked her ballpoint pen nervously. “I didn’t see her come out.”
“She’s been taken,” Yamauchi stated.
“What?” Pixii cried.
“I wasn’t paying attention,” Inkling answered the question first. “I was writing.”
“The yokai uses enclosed spaces to trap its victims within a maze. Once inside, its victim cannot escape. They wander deeper and deeper in, until they come to the killing chamber, where they are devoured.”
“How do we kill it?” Pixii asked.
Inkling gave her a startled, confused look.
“Sorry.” Pixii pressed her hand to her earpiece. “I’m LARPing. Why don’t you see if Chibi looped back to show the bloomers to the others?”
Sent toward safety—hopefully—Inkling started back toward the entrance.
“By its nature, I cannot reach the yokai,” Yamauchi explained. “Nor do I have the power to kill it here, in this place. A shrine maiden must enter its trap and seal it with an ofuda.”
“A what? What-a fuda?”
“Ofuda. A paper talisman that acts as a shintai that allows part of my essence to seal the yokai.”
“Oh, one of those.” She’d watched enough anime to know what he was describing, but didn’t know enough Japanese to know the word for it. “You have one of these here?”
“You will have to make one.”
“Make?” She would have asked if he was kidding, except she knew the answer was no. She’d done calligraphy in the past for cosplay props, but creating a magical holy artifact? And make it good enough that she could use it against a monster? “Are you sure there’s not a real shrine maiden around here somewhere?”
Luckily they were standing in the middle of all things Japanese. They found a calligraphy set two aisles down. It had four brushes, an ink stone, and a traditional sumi ink stick.
Pixii scanned the table. “I don’t know how to make ink. I’ve always used bottled stuff.”
“I will teach you,” Yamauchi pointed at a package labeled: mitsumatagami washi. “This is the paper you will need.”
“I’m getting it!” Along with all of the paper, she bought a Hello Kitty flashlight, the largest backpack that she could find, and a hardwood bo staff. She had a medical kit and her survival knife back at her room.
They also paused at the dealer selling the one-foot-tall samurai statue that housed Yamauchi and bought that, too. The man wanted a thousand dollars for it, but Pixii didn’t want to risk someone buying it and carrying it away. At least it was museum-quality work and worth the amount.
“You’ve made this?” Pixii hefted the statue, marveling at the fine details. “But you can’t make the ofuda?”
“I made my shintai in my own realm where I can fully manifest. Most of my spirit is still there, in my own realm. This holds only a small part of my essence. It could not hold all of my power; it would shatter to dust.”
Her fingertips were all stained black by the time they returned to the dealer’s room with the talismans. It should read: It bothered her, as her fingers felt like they had after she was wounded, when the blood on her hands dried.
She wished there was time to wash them; she rubbed her fingers together in a vain attempt to clean them. “We have to hurry; that thing has Chibi.”
“You must be on your guard.” Yamauchi’s wooden sandals made no noise as they hurried down the aisle. “All humans are aware of the spirit world to some degree. Only a rare