Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Kazemaru and Miharu ❯ Chapter 23

Kaito stared despairingly at the servant who knelt before him. She had offered nothing new, the same account as four other maids, and they were getting nowhere. He looked to the priest he had hired, who shook his head. She was telling the truth. He nodded to the scribe.

 

“Thank you, miss. You may go. Send in the next one,” he instructed the guard at the door as the handmaiden bowed and left the room. In walked a young girl with a round face, looking somewhat uneasy. Kaito seemed to recall that this one had been rather close with his daughter, although he had heard they had recently had a bit of a falling-out.

 

“Please state your name,” the scribe instructed her after she knelt.

 

“Emi, my Lord.”

 

“And you are a handmaiden to Lady Miharu, correct?” he asked.

 

“Yes, I was her head assistant.”

 

Kaito's ears perked up. Maybe she would know something.

 

“Did you witness the abduction of Lady Miharu on the day the palace was attacked?” the scribe continued.

 

“Y-yes,” she said nervously.

 

“Please tell your account of her abduction to Lord Nakamura.”

 

The girl shifted uncomfortably, staring down and to the left, rubbing her arm a little and licking her lips. “Well, uh… she was just kind of carried off, you know? He—the yokai just swooped down and plucked her right off the ground, screaming.”

 

Both the priest and the scribe immediately turned to face Kaito, but he didn't need them to know she was lying. It was nothing like what the other girls had said.

 

“Guards,” he said quietly, “Take her arms.” Two guards came forward and knelt on either side of Emi, holding onto her arms tightly.

 

“Nanaho, please recite for me one of the other girls' testimony.”

 

“Yes, milord,” the scribe bobbed a bow to him, and turned to face Emi. Kaito stood, walking towards the girl.

 

“Lady Miharu crawled out from underneath a walkway she had been hiding under, when a few yokai started fighting over her. The one yokai killed the others, and then used a chain to jerk her over to a place where there was less fighting. He began to approach her, and she looked very scared. But then I think he cast a spell on her because she didn't look scared anymore and ran towards him. He picked her up and flew to the roof, where he secured her to himself and then took off.” The scribe finished, lowering the board he held.

 

The girl was trembling now.

 

“You know something about this, don't you?” Kaito asked slowly.

 

“Yes, Nakamura-sama,” she said, shame in her voice.

 

“Why didn't you say something? Aren't you aware that Lady Miharu's life is in danger?!” he fumed.

 

Emi looked away. “Lady Miharu… ordered me not to…” she said quietly.

 

Kaito froze. The men in the room all looked at each other, surprised. Kaito calmly took a hold of Emi's chin and jerked it back to face him.

 

“You will tell me everything you know about my daughter and this yokai, understand?”

 

A single tear slid down her cheek.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AN

Just a warning, from here on the story gets much darker, which is part of why I'd been avoiding writing it for so long.

I guess I made up for last chapter's super-longness with a nice short one, huh?