Oni out!
@coolheadedhozuki
Meet Katsura Kotarou, Age Seven, Head of the Katsura family (and only member at the moment), a samurai with a storied descent from glorious ancestors, brilliant scholarship student in his domain’s elite school. (And although he doesn’t think of himself in this way, an impoverished orphan who stubbornly insists he can take care of himself)
He has no idea where he is. All his life he’s lived in a small town in Western Japan. They say that there are Sky People in Edo, but he’s never seen anyone but humans in his town. This place, with people of all shapes and colours milling around, is so confusing. How did he even get there?
Then he sees a familar sight in this shopping arcade. But it’s not a fellow human.
That is ... That has to be an oni!
Grandma taught him all about oni. She’d told him some of the scariest stories, but also reassured him with her tales of how great samurai could take on even the most fearsome oni.
This one isn’t any bigger than him. A starter-oni, maybe. You started by defeating the Level One monster and moved up until you met the Big Boss.
How did you go about defeating an oni, though? Would smacking the oni with a wooden sword do anything at all? It might just make him more angry.
Setsubun. He already knows a surefire way to get rid of Oni. But where can he get roasted soy beans around here?
His eyes alight on a jar of jellybeans, with a sign asking people to guess how many are in the jar. Maybe jellybeans will work just as well. Quickly, he screws off the lid of the jar, and grabs a handful, then he runs over to where the oni is standing.
“ONI OUT! LUCK IN!” he shouts, throwing the jellybeans in the oni’s face.