Wanted to draw a Youkai!AU EraserMight for the longest time. I love love love Asian aesthetics and folklore, probably because I grew up on these types of tales and dramas. Hyakki Yagyou translates roughly to "Night Parade of a Hundred Demons" --- it's an idiom/concept based off of Japanese folklore.
When I finish this, it may be story time once again 😌📖
In sorrow, there is pride || twst wonderland youkai!au
Synopsis!
An au from @twstedforyou where our beloved NRC boys are instead beloved familiars who'd kick a whole ass country into the air for you-
Flower in the mirror, moon on the water - the subtle and profound beauty of simply living strikes you hardest when you meet a seemingly lost cat in the middle of your family's estate.
Status: a child [semi affectionate]
Please take note that this is not my own idea and the original concepts belong to the glorious @twstedforyou my god their blog is the stuff of dreams and aspirations-
AN: For @sup-poki‘s youkai!au, another possible version of it featuring fox spirit!kaito. It’s gotten away from what it started out as but I gave it a shot, hope that’s okay!
Shinichi groaned when he thought about what his life had become: poisoned, pestered, and haunted by one of the most annoying spirits on the entire planet, surely. Creeping through an empty school building, sliding doors aside slowly in case something happened to jump out and attempted to give him more trouble than it was worth, all while trying to ignore Kaito’s form chattering behind him.
“Can you feel the anger here? It reminds me of that time you got mad about the vending machine during break,” Kaito continued, twirling his flute between his fingers and poking at Shinichi’s school bag slung over his shoulder.
“If you remind me, I’ll just get annoyed again.” Shinichi swatted at Kaito’s wandering fingers, wresting the crinkly snack package out of his grasp and stuffing it into his blazer’s pocket instead. The incorrigible youkai had been dogging him even more than normal lately, circling around him like a fly and sucking on sips of his patience until he was almost dry. It was one thing to distract him during class, but this was a serious case that he wasn’t taking at all seriously.
“Everyone else seemed to love it! Did you see that kid in 3-B’s stash afterwards? Now that’s what looting means!” Kaito’s delight was visible despite the mask hiding his features, his cloak flowing behind him as if carried by the wind of his glee. “Not whatever you were doing with that whole ‘stay back’ routine.”
“There was shattered glass all over the floor, and someone had to make sure no one got injured from the rush.” Pushing another door to the side, Shinichi stepped into the abandoned club room and set down his bag. Something was wrong, he couldn’t tell where the youkai was or if it was even moving. There was nothing to do but sit down quietly and concentrate, hopefully without any distractions although he knew that was unlikely as long as present company existed.
Kaito, true to form, took to prowling the corners of the room, knocking on the shelves of knick-knacks left over from the old cultural club and poking through boxes of faded tourism pamphlets, until Shinichi wanted to burst from the constant noise.
“Can you not be quiet for a single second? Is that part of your contract?”
“I’m investigating! That’s what you do as a detective, right? I’m doing what you humans do.” Leaning on a display full of daruma dolls, Kaito flicked a dusty paper ball towards Shinichi, who didn’t blink as it landed in his lap.
Sighing, Shinichi got up and lobbed the paper ball back at Kaito before throwing the snack after it. Kaito caught it with one hand, head tilted to the side as he studied the plastic like it was a vermin youkai he’d caught sneaking along the classroom’s drainpipe.
“This one was from the top shelf,” a short silence followed that revelation, “You raided just like everybody else!”
“I did not, it was left over after it got cleaned up. Now stop moving around, I can’t get a lock on it.” Shinichi closed his eyes, taking a step towards the door as the skin on the back of his neck prickled. Something was close, or perhaps moving away? He couldn’t tell, and it was more frustrating than the sound of Kaito munching through the crispy treats. After months, he’d thought he would have a better handle on how his ability worked but it still felt as wispy and ethereal as smoke, coiling itself around him and leaving him confused in the center of the dense fog.
“Can you tell where it is?” he asked finally, wondering if there was anything left of the snack for him after two minutes in Kaito’s clutches.
“Do you have a psychic sense for other humans spying on you? No. Well, the same goes for us. I don’t have a magic compass for youkai, that’s what you are in this partnership. I’m the charming fox who nobody can resist.”
Shinichi had to admit he couldn’t exactly refute that logic, considering he didn’t know how he could do what he could anyway. That didn’t mean he agreed with Kaito’s assessment of their unplanned collaboration but he was ready to leave and arguing would only make it take longer to get home. Kaito could get clingy when it came time to say goodbye, something Shinichi wondered about when Kaito wasn’t there to distract him with his inane tricks.
“Listen, I’ve got to—” He turned around just as the weak shadows by the window resolved into a bloated face that blocked out the light with its broad head and teeth as big as a hefty brick. It lunged at him before he could do more than stumble into the folding chair he’d been sitting on, the teeth snapping together with a force that sent him flying backwards as his vision blurred. Its maw opened wide again, dark tongue slithering over its sharp front incisors. A pressure on his chest, a lurch, a sound like keening.
Shinichi’s eyes cleared in time for him to see the daruma’s jaw clench, its eyes rolling like demented bowling balls in their sockets while it ground its prey between its rows of teeth. And what lay trapped in its mouth, molars crushing his arm and legs, was Kaito, face bare for the very first time and Shinichi’s first glimpse of his mouth was as another pained whimper escaped it. The fox mask lay in pieces on the floor, shattered by the force of the daruma’s bite and Shinichi was sickened to think that might have been what kept Kaito’s head from being pulverized immediately, and left him only with streaks of blood in his hair and down his neck, while the rest of his body looked like that of a rag doll’s or a chew toy’s, a comparison that Shinichi hated was the first to come to mind.
He scrambled to his feet, half-expecting to hear that familiar jingling laugh and a few spare notes from Kaito’s flute, but there was nothing but the sound of tearing flesh and a fox’s muted cry.
AN: Another few hundred words for @sup-poki‘s youkai!au, featuring I guess more sadness!
Part 1
Shinichi would be ashamed to admit he wasn’t the first to act, the sight of Kaito’s body being crunched between the daruma youkai’s teeth and that voice he’d only ever heard piping up over the teacher’s right at the most important part of the lesson and whispering gossip overhead from two aisles over into his ear was now choked with the blood welling out of the corners of his mouth.
The first attack came from the flute at the daruma’s feet, after slipping from Kaito’s suddenly feeble fingers it had rolled to a stop next to a chair and begun to bubble with a turquoise green. The wisps that formed from the stream of light flowing out of the flute’s holes gathered from a dozen, then two dozen, to coalesce into a single bright mass, which engulfed Kaito’s torn body in a blaze. Its previously watery appearance was a deceptive facade when it came to the heat of the flames they became, flowing over Kaito’s clothes and one even nestling into Kaito’s palm as the daruma’s teeth became stained with soot as much as they were with blood.
But its hands gripped Kaito relentlessly, fingers in a vice around Kaito’s limp arm as it opened its mouth for another bite that Shinichi feared would tear Kaito in half. He cast around for anything, absolutely anything he could use to do something that would make it let go but all that he had at hand was stacks of souvenirs featuring kitschy baubles and rusty keychains of years past, the most he could hope to do was make a good case for why this room needed to be cleaned, and thoroughly.
By his foot, however, he found a paperweight, barely recognizable as such, likely knocked over from one of the cluttered displays and lying in wait for some unwary soul to slip on it or stub their toe. But it was perfect for what he needed.
One kick, aimed carefully, and it landed in the daruma’s filled-in left eye with enough force to send a crack running across its face. The shriek of rage that it let out as it recoiled from the impact was enough to make Shinichi flinch but he leapt forward once he saw the fingers loosen and snatched at Kaito’s blood-soaked robes to pull him close and out of the maw’s reach.
Stopping only to pick up the flute, Shinichi scrambled out of the room with Kaito clutched in his arms, head lolling in a way that Shinichi could only hope was mere unconsciousness and not a state closer to death. The hallway felt interminable, stretching ahead of him until he thought he’d been running for too long to only have reached the stairs. He kept readjusting his hold on Kaito, afraid of letting any part of him go even as he knew that each movement was likely to make things worse or at the very least only engender more pain.
Where could he go from here? The thought that he would leave him at school never crossed his mind, not with the daruma on the premises and not where he couldn’t be sure that he could get to easily. The forest bordering the grounds afforded no good options either, he couldn’t think of a single place he could bear to leave Kaito in this state. And that state only appeared worse the longer he thought, until he took a deep breath and admitted it to himself.
He wasn’t going to leave Kaito, period. No matter where he ended up taking him, he wasn’t going to leave his side until he was certain the too-quick-for-his-own-good fox was going to be okay.
He reached the gates of the school and stood, panting, looking down the street first one way, then another. His house, that was only place to go. Gods knew his parents had enough space, and while the professor next door certainly wouldn’t be able to treat him, he would at least have supplies, though if human medicine worked on youkai, then Shinichi didn’t know one way or the other.
In the time it took him to get home, Shinichi’s thoughts took the same figure-eight track the entire time. Despite knowing he should be planning ahead, thinking of what he should do once he got there, all that came to mind was the feeling of hands pushing him out of the way, hands that had tugged at his hair to get his attention, had slipped over his eyes every morning as if he couldn’t tell whose playful voice was asking him to say his name, and had saved his life after barging into it months ago uninvited.
“You’re so quick, why couldn’t you save yourself too?” he asked, the whisper fading into the afternoon air as if it had never been and Kaito didn’t answer.
His meditation was cut short, there was something very dangerous lurking around. Youkai were easy to take care of, but this felt different. It was much more threatening than any other spirit he had to deal with.
The wind gusted past him, causing the wind chimes to rattle uncontrollably. He quickly found his legs as he stood up from the garden and saw clouds looming over the town like an omen. It was obviously time for him to begin the hunt.
His thin frame was covered by a traditional Japanese robe, green and white that had small cherry blossoms dancing at the seam of his pants. He wore a pair of wooden sandals and tied his hair back into a loose ponytail.
“Kakyoin-sama... There is a strange energy coming from the forest!” A voice called to him from outside the shrine.
“Then tell everyone to hide. Do not go outside,” He called, his voice being covered up by the sounds of the wind pushing up against the building. In his hand he held a solid golden staff, to ward evil spirits. He exited the shrine and whispered a chant, slapping the paper onto the door. “Do no evil..”
The village was silent except for the clacks of his shoes. He neared the forest and reached out a hand.. Only to be taken back by the quick zap of energy from a barrier. He took a moment and jammed down his staff, causing the barrier to break. He took out another sacred sheet of paper and laid it on a tree, “Let me pass,” he spoke softly. He knew that if the monster was going to be tough, he wouldn’t have the energy to leave the forest. It was normally blocked because in the evenings evil spirits ran rampant. Even he seemed to forget how powerful his border skills were.
He saw smaller youkai climbing up trees and trying to escape whatever was hidden... He bit his lip and stretched his hand out in order to get a grasp of just how dangerous things could be.
It was something more powerful than he had ever witnessed.
In the middle of the forest laid a small body of water. Kakyoin bent down and ran his hand through the ripples. There was no sound.
“Come out now, fiend. I am Noriaki Kakyoin. May you pass without fighting. Leave my village now before I am forced to make you come out. I am the priest and the one who has the powers to combat you!”::
