With his fishing line cast into a pond on the outskirts of a certain town, Houjun took a deep breath.

"Houjun, you're not very cheerful... What's wrong?" asked Nyang-nyang over his shoulder. The charming little seven year old girl's face wavered on the surface of the pond. "Your mask is slipping off..."

"Yeah." Houjun peeled off the torn fox mask.

"Houjun, you've gotten really strong!" Nyang-nyang said, trying to cheer Houjun up. "Yesterday you quickly defeated three huge sea monsters, didn't you? I feel safe when I'm with you!" Even though the child was praising him, Houjun didn't show a happy expression at all.

"...Nyang-nyang, you haven't changed a bit." The little girl in the water tilted her head. "Close to three years have passed since then, but... It's very strange."

"......" Houjun stared at the pond.

"That's not true. I've definitely grown..." As he watched the figure of the girl in the pond gained two or three years.

Without turning around Houjun stood and said to Nyang-nyang, "Well, we should be getting home soon."

"...Houjun." Upon hearing Nyang-nyang's anxious voice, Houjun spread out his kesa there.

"I'm no longer Houjun." Having said that, he turned to Nyang-nyang and laughed animatedly. "I want to prove that now..."

Plop!

Houjun and Nyang-nyang flew out from the kasa.

"Houjun, your body proportions are getting..."

"That's fine. I match you." Nyang-nyang, who had become ten, and Houjun, whose body proportions had become the exact same size, faced each other. And then they looked up at the landscape of Mt. Taikyoku, which they had visited countless times before during what was nearing three years.

"Come, let's go to the peak," Houjun suggested to Nyang-nyang. Without saying a word, the two began climbing the winding mountain path on the mountain, which always desolate whether it was spring, fall, or any other season.

After going awhile, they could see the peak. Houjun caught his breath and at once ran towards it. And then, when that old shrine was just coming into view, Houjun started and turned his head.

"...She's not there..." The shadow that was always waiting for him whenever he came there was nowhere to be found. Turning around, Nyang-nyang, who should have been just behind him, had also disappeared.

"......" Houjun folded his arms, closed his eyes, and gathered his chi¹.

"I'd like you to show yourself.... Taiitsukun." Houjun's voice echoed back at him.

"I'd like you to show yourself.... Taiitsukun." A gust of wind blew, and a cloud of dust enveloped Houjun's face.

Brushing it away with his hand and seeing what was in front of his face, Houjun yelled without thinking, "Daaaa-!"

"What's with that 'da!'" said the Sunakake baba floating backwards before him as she repositioned herself in front of him. Today instead of farming clothes she was clad in divine clothes.

"I'd like you to not startle me. Don't suddenly levitate..."

"Then you don't keep on always having manga-like body proportions." Upon being told that, Houjun hastily reverted to his normal stature.

While she was floating in mid-air, Sunabaa, whose sickening face was at Houjun's eye-level, laughed, "Anyway, I never told you my name."

Houjun answered, "When I was young my dad taught me about you..."

Somewhere in this world there was a mysterious mountain where you could know everything. That mountain's name was Taikyoku. And living there was the one who ruled everything in the world...

"He said you were Taiitsukun." Houjun meekly gazed at Taiitsukun.

"You're thinking that how could Taiitsukun be this old hag... aren't you?"

"...no...that's..." Since Houjun certainly couldn't make any excuse to Taiitsukun, who knew everything, he simply scratched his head.

"Well, no matter," Taiitsukun said after backing away from Houjun a bit. "You should have realized it a lot earlier." Houjun nodded silently.

It hadn't even been a month into his training journey before he noticed that the voice of the complaining old hag who had appeared at his destination when he had been searching for Nyang-nyang's house was the owner of the unknown mysterious voice of revelation from that dream.

"That entrusting me with Nyang-nyang, a young child, having me protect her life while escourting her to a safe house and surmounting numerous trials was your recipe for my training..."

"Hmm, so did you accomplish it because of that?"

"Yes," Houjun answered plainly, "because Nyang-nyang's home is here on Mt. Taikyoku."

When he was beginning his training journey and used the instantaneous teleportation to escape from the giant snake in the forest, for the first time he tried to bring Nyang-nyang back to her home, and ended up arriving at this mountain. At that time he had felt let down deep in his heart, but no matter how many times he tried it again afterward, they always arrived at this mountain and returned to the starting point of the journey. It was around that time that he remembered hearing about Taikyoku and Taiitsukun from his father.

"In other words, like you Nyang-nyang also lives here..."

"That's right." Taiitsukun nodded emphatically. "Nyang-nyang is a goddess serving me." And with those words, she hit her hand lightly. At that moment with a poof, poof, poof... All around Houjun floated numerous things like large round crystal spheres.

"......!!" Houjun's fox eyes bugged and the goddesses that flew out of the spheres circled about him in the air.

"Houjun! Houjun! Houjun! Houjun!"

"Meow, meow, meow² Nyang-nyang wasn't just one person..."

"No matter how long you were with her, you never took a good look at her, did you?" Taiitsukun said in an utterly amazed voice.

"Houjun, thanks for saving me from the giant snake!"

"Houjun, thanks for saving me from the snow woman!"

"Houjun, thanks for saving me from the kappa³!"

"Houjun, thanks for saving me from the pervert!"

"That's enough!" One after another the Nyang-nyangs zipping before Houjun were quietly driven away.

"Come to think of it now, each day I had the feeling that Nyang-nyang's personality had... changed subtly..."

Houjun hit his hand on his head, and Taiitsukun asked again, "If you had noticed that Nyang-nyang was a goddess here, wouldn't you have reached the goal more quickly?" Houjun shook his head.

"I think that until I gained confidence in my Suzaku Shichiseishi jutsu you would have remained quiet and given me more training..."

"Oh..." Taiitsukun seemed satisfied and nodded. "Well done."

Houjun faced the master of the mountain and quietly began to speak. "When I received this mask from Nyang-nyang, I felt like I had been reborn as a new person. Before then I hadn't been able to control my powers at all, but strangely I was able to start concentrating on my jutsu..." Learning to use his jutsu hadn't been easy. He had already wondered if he had reached his limits more than one or two times. Despite that, Taiitsukun began giving him sarcastic, though satisfactory advice, and due to him learning about his body, Houjun's jutsu had steadily improved. Three years had passed during his training journey. At eighteen he lost his family, his lover, his friends to the great flood, and at twenty-one he tried to take his own life. Now Houjun was about to see his twenty-fourth spring.

"Today for the first time I tried to use a jutsu without wearing the mask..."

"I see. It's because you brought Nyang-nyang here without relying the mask." Houjun nodded.

"I...," he told Taiitsukun, "I think I've already become Chichiri..." Upon hearing Houjun's remarkable declaration, Taiitsukun quickly soared up three meters into the sky. Houjun slowly gazed up at Taiitsukun.

"Listen carefully," a voice floated down from above

"Who do you have to thank for being here now?"

"That's... thanks to Taiitsukun."

"Just her?"

"And also thanks to Nyang-nyang..."

"And...?"

"......And......?"

"Fool! The parents that raised you, the people who have influenced you up until now... everyone!" Houjun straightened his back. "Haven't you forgotten one among them who saved you from dying at a critical moment!"

"......Kouran Ou..."

"That's right." Taiitsukun again came down before Houjun's face with a whoosh and came in close to his face.

"Go to where she is and thank her properly."

"...Un...understood..."

Taiitsukun quickly looked away and said, "In the meantime I'll prepare your diploma."

"......O...ok." Houjun blushed and hung his head really low.

"Good. To reach Seisengou, go down the mountain, turn right, and cross two mountains and a river..."

"Yay, together, together, together!"

Brushing aside the Nyang-nyangs, who had started swarming Houjun, Taiitsukun shouted, "That's enough, you're too noisy! You don't have a part anymore~" She hit her hand, and the Nyang-nyangs were again confined in the spheres.

"One more thing. Until you arrive at the village, don't use your jutsu at all," Taiitsukun informed him, narrowing her eyes to slits.

*

As if he were a child that had received a huge prize, Houjun joyously descended the mountain, and Taiitsukun sighed as she saw him off.

"Houjun, when you left Seisengou three years ago, you unconsciously used a spell jutsu flawlessly on the girl named Kouran. You really don't need the mask..."

Then one of the Nyang-nyangs in the spheres said, "And on this mountain he sacrificed his body trying to protect me from a boulder. He was already a Suzaku Shichiseishi..." Within their spheres the Nyang-nyangs agreed and kept nodding their heads.

"During these three years, you followed my command well and cultivated yourself by studying hard... With your will-power it might even be possible for you to defeat Seiryuu's Nakago..." Taiitsukun said, and then appeared on the ground on Mt. Taikyoku's summit standing like two Deva Kings. "But for you the final trial is still to come." Out of nowhere a sudden gust blew on the summit, the Nyang-nyangs' spheres opened, and they flew to her.

"Have you forgotten that abominable past!?" Taiitsukun said as she faced in the direction Houjun had gone. "There's no way you'd forget. No, you mustn't forget. That past is connected to the future through your power. Return to the Shoryuu River and then settle it. Can you do that?" Her voice became the voice Houjun had heard in his dream sometimes. Taiitsukun's body disappeared into a sandstorm.

"If you can't, I can't allow you to become Chichiri. Come, will you show me your full true power?" And then that voice, along with the sandstorm blowing in the wind, rose to the sky. "Suzaku's Miko has already appeared in Konan. The miko needs your power."

¹ Translator's Note: Chi is a Chinese concept that the Japanese have also adopted (called ki in Japanese). It is energy that can be gathered and used to do things with just one's mind. Back to reading
² Translator's Note: This is again a play on Nyang-nyang's name since in Japanese Nyang and meow sound the same. Back to reading
³ Translator's Note: A kappa is a creature from Japanese mythology. It's similar to a frog in that it's green and lives in water. It has a dish on its head containing water, and if the water is knocked out of the dish it will lose its power. Back to reading