Would she appear?
Despite all the evidence, Tetsu no Sosuke still felt uneasy now that the moment had come.
Shinobu Kocho stood beside him, silently watching his profile without a word.
The seconds ticked by. Suddenly, a sensation gripped his heart.
"She's here!"
Tetsu no Sosuke took a deep breath. On the far side of the slope, a woman with loose hair and only one eye walked slowly into view. She searched up and down the hillside, gazing into the distance, but her lone eye looked hollow.
She did not know why she was here, or what she was searching for.
But until she found it... she could not let it go.
That longing drove her back here again and again, searching, hoping to find something that had once been sweeter than anything else.
Something that pleased her more than human flesh and blood.
Two sets of footsteps approached from the other side of the slope. Nakime frowned slightly. She did not like being disturbed at a time like this. On this day, in this place, she did not even like to eat people.
But that did not mean she would not grow angry when disturbed.
Yet when she turned her angry gaze toward the footsteps, her eye went unfocused for a moment.
That face seemed to belong to the distant past, buried deep in her memory.
And now, it had suddenly appeared before her...
She reached out both hands without thinking, as though trying to grasp something. Then clarity abruptly returned to her eye.
She took a small step back. She wanted to leave!
"Oh? Why?"
The voice suddenly sounded beside her ear. Nakime turned toward Tetsu no Sosuke, its source. "You come here every month looking for your child, so why was your first instinct to leave when