Kikyo

By the time night fell, Xu Zhiqiu had finally found a village.

In the night, glowing fireflies drifted through the grass, their lights blinking on and off.

The village was quiet. Only the light spilling from the houses revealed that people lived there.

Xu Zhiqiu crossed a wooden bridge. In the stillness, the burbling water sounded especially clear.

Xu Zhiqiu approached a house where a light was still burning, raised her hand, and knocked.

Knock, knock, knock.

After a while, rustling came from inside, followed by a voice asking, "Who's there?"

It was a young girl's voice. Xu Zhiqiu lowered her hand. "Hello. I've been wandering here from another village. It's late now, and I was passing through. I'd like to stay here for the night."

"All right. Wait a moment." The girl was wary and did not rush to open the door.

Xu Zhiqiu waited for a while. There were plenty of mosquitoes at night, and with the wound on her neck, they seemed eager to burrow through her clothes and strike straight at it.

They buzzed around her.

"Kaede, what's wrong?" A cool female voice came from inside the house.

"Sister, there's someone outside."

"Oh."

A little while later.

Creeak-

The door opened.

Before her stood a delicate beauty in white robes. Xu Zhiqiu met her pitch-black eyes. She had a tapered face, and her glossy black hair fell in a long hime cut, with a few strands resting over her shoulders. A faint chill emanated from her, making her someone to admire from afar rather than approach.

"Could you let me stay for the night?" Xu Zhiqiu asked again, her eyes pleading.

While Xu Zhiqiu studied her, the delicate beauty studied Xu Zhiqiu in turn.

Her tangled hair hung loose, her face was haggard, and her clothes were stained with dirt. She also smelled of blood, so she must have been injured. She was not a demon, either. The beauty's gaze shifted downward to the sword in Xu Zhiqiu's hand, and her brows drew together slightly.

Noticing her gaze, Xu Zhiqiu hurried to explain, "I picked it up from a dead bandit on the road."

A little girl stood beside the beauty, clutching her older sister's robes as she stared in puzzlement at the disheveled woman before them.

With a slender hand, the beauty pulled the wooden door open and stepped aside to make room. Her cherry-red lips moved slightly. "Come in."

"Thank you!" Xu Zhiqiu was delighted. The huge stone weighing on her heart finally dropped away.

Xu Zhiqiu followed the cool beauty inside. The house was simply furnished, with quite a few dried herbs on a wooden rack.

After leading Xu Zhiqiu in, the woman sent her younger sister to fetch water, then went into another room.

Xu Zhiqiu set down the Samurai Sword and sat cross-legged on a straw mat, resting her bundle against her stomach.

When she turned her neck, a sharp sting shot through it. She grimaced and reached up to touch the spot. Her fingers met something sticky. Looking down, she saw blood.

"Don't touch your wounds." The beauty came out of the inner room carrying some supplies, crouched beside Xu Zhiqiu, and set them down.

Xu Zhiqiu looked at them. Bandages and some medicine?

The little girl came over carrying a wooden bucket.

The beauty picked up a wrung-out towel and looked at Xu Zhiqiu.

Xu Zhiqiu immediately understood what she intended. She pulled her collar aside to expose her injured neck and let the woman tend to it.

Having the wound cleaned hurt a little.

Noticing Xu Zhiqiu trembling, the woman asked, "Did you encounter a demon?" There was not a trace of doubt in her voice; she asked with certainty.

Xu Zhiqiu did not intend to hide it from her. "Yes. I ran into a demon while fleeing for my life, but I killed it."

The cool beauty paused in her cleaning for a moment, then continued applying medicine to Xu Zhiqiu's wound, giving a quiet acknowledgment. "Mm."

Xu Zhiqiu turned her head, looking at that impassive face from the corner of her eye. The longer she looked, the more familiar it seemed, though she could not explain why. So she asked, "What's your name?"

"Kikyo," the beauty answered.

"I'm Xu Zhiqiu." Xu Zhiqiu gave her own name, then turned to look at the little girl sitting nearby, grinding medicine. She thought she had heard the beauty call the girl Kaede earlier. One was Kikyo, and the other was Kaede.

"What's this village called?" Xu Zhiqiu asked again.

"Kaede's Village," Kikyo answered patiently.

After treating the wound on one side, she moved on to the other.

"Kaede's Village?" Xu Zhiqiu murmured. Suddenly, a jolt ran through her mind. Wasn't this Inuyasha, the show I watched before?

As though she needed to confirm it over and over, Xu Zhiqiu stared blankly at Kikyo as she applied the medicine.

She looks like her. Exactly like her. This is Kikyo.

"What's wrong?" A flicker of puzzlement crossed Kikyo's eyes under Xu Zhiqiu's intense gaze, and she gently asked.

"Nothing." Xu Zhiqiu came back to herself and lowered her eyes, thinking over the plot of Inuyasha. She had watched it once in elementary school and rewatched it a couple of years ago, but her adult memories were rather fragmented. She could only vaguely recall the broad outlines of the story.

If she really had crossed into the world of Inuyasha, then judging by the current timeline, this should have been fifty years earlier. Kagome had not appeared yet, none of those events had happened, and the main story had not begun...

Then she suddenly remembered the bandit named Onigumo. She had not considered it before, but now that she knew this was the world of Inuyasha, she recalled seeing what looked like a mark on that man's back when she finally left him. If that man really was Onigumo...

Onigumo was the predecessor of the main villain, Naraku.

Naraku was truly a character who inspired both love and hate. She hated his schemes and machinations, but loved his handsome face. All in all, he was cunning and cruel, willing to use any means to achieve his aims. After all his plotting, he finally became a true demon, his looks took a dive, and he began the downhill slide toward his demise.

Like Onigumo, he fell in love with Kikyo, but he believed that love belonged to Onigumo. Proud and stubborn, he refused to admit it even to his dying breath.

Only after Kikyo vanished to save Kohaku did Naraku gradually begin to understand his own heart. In the end, wearing a world-weary expression, he calmly faced his true feelings: all he had ever wanted was Kikyo's heart. His story finally drew to a close there.

Yes, all he wanted was Kikyo's heart. He wanted Kikyo to fall in love with him. Setting aside how he repeatedly plotted the death of the woman he loved to escape those feelings, his goal depended on breaking up Inuyasha and Kikyo as a couple. How could such an obsessive approach ever succeed?

It would have been a miracle if Kikyo did not hate him to death. How could she possibly have water in her brain enough to fall for such a scheming, prideful man?

When Xu Zhiqiu watched the show as a child, she had despised Naraku, that sly old bastard. Later, when she grew up and watched it again, her feelings had changed.

Everyone hated Naraku for his treachery and cunning, for being unable to bear seeing lovers happy together. Yet in the end, they all became more or less like him.

Unable to win someone's affection, she had been even more insecure than Naraku. Naraku at least popped up in front of the protagonists from time to time, while she could only bury that unrequited crush deep in her heart, keeping it hidden from everyone to the very end. Sometimes, a dark thought even crept into her mind: If they broke up, could I slip in while she was vulnerable?

Of course, those were only the irrational thoughts of youth. As she grew older, she gradually learned to let go. Sometimes she even cursed her younger self for being so pathetic. Thankfully, she had never meddled in someone else's romance. Other people's affairs were their own; if someone did not like her, then they did not like her. A person had to have basic moral principles.

All in all, perhaps because their experiences were somewhat alike, she still felt a little sympathy for this beautiful, powerful, yet pitifully insecure villain.

Only a little sympathy. Kikyo must have suffered eight lifetimes' worth of bad luck to have saved him.

If possible, she did not want Kikyo to die, but she also knew this was an ending that could not be changed, whether because of the culprit himself or the Shikon Jewel lurking behind the scenes, coaxing evil thoughts out of people.

Everything was still unknown. What role could an unforeseen variable like her play in the story?

The deep night was pitch-black and silent, its stillness eerie and frightening.

Only a single oil lamp burned inside the house.

After changing into clean, comfortable clothes, Xu Zhiqiu felt considerably better in both body and mind.

Looking around the quiet house, she yawned. With the scent of medicinal herbs lingering in the air, her eyelids gradually drooped, and she finally drifted into sleep.