[WP] A monster hunter came to your village to deal with a threat nobody knew about until his arrival. Shortly afterward, people started disappearing. You suspect that the monster and the hunter are two sides of the same coin.
*****
In the hours following that discovery, searches were made, all in an effort to find Sakura. The cloth was pink with butterfly embroidery on it, her favourite kimono. There could have been different outcomes, but we were sure the blood on it was hers.
Two days later, and we didn't find a trace of her anywhere. Save the piece of cloth, it was as if she had just vanished from the village.
It was five days of extensive searching, scouring and visiting of neighboring villages to ask before we finally went with the news to Kaoru. Her daughter was simply nowhere to be found. She made it easier for us by not bawling, because that would have made us feel like failures. But it wasn't any less heartbreaking to see that she had resigned to her fate of having lost her only child.
Sakura's funeral ceremony was held two days later, and that piece of cloth was the only thing cremated. Rain didn't fall that day, but the dark clouds that blanketed the village reflected how dark and conflicted our souls were.
For the first time, it felt as though we were no longer safe in this place we'd known as home for years. Tears flowed freely amongst the women, and the men had to be strong and console, even though our innermost desires wished to let the tears go.
And there I was, two days shy of 26. I knew there and then that I would find out what happenef that fateful night; I would only stop if I found out...
...or if I died.
Although there were a lot of creeks, forests and rough hillsides were intruders and abductors could have come into the village, I didn't necessarily want to consider this option.
All of those options were too extreme for someone who carried a girl who must have been struggling, across. Except if she was knocked out. We knew that the slave traders did this sometimes, but none of them had been sighted within this province.
So what was it that we missed?
Something nagged at the back of my mind. Something that told me Sakura never left the village, and that we had missed something in the search.
Of course, the hillside and forests were searched less thoroughly, but this was understandable. We were ill-equipped to conduct searches in those extreme locations. There were at least three different species of venomous snakes in those areas, and they were so extensive, that we thought that it was impossible for anyone to have carried a living girl through.
Even the slave traders didn't do that.
So if most of the external aspect was covered, what else could we have done? Did we miss anything?
"When not around, search within," my father always said. I had no idea why those words had to come to mind now, but they made a lot of sense. In the week leading up to this tragic event, no stranger had come into the village to live, and in the week after, no one had left.
It was safe to say the abductor(s) and possible killer(s) were still in this village. And it was intriguing to think about what they could have done about the body.
I just sighed. All this thinking had gotten me exhausted as hell, and it was the end of the week.
Keisuke must have gotten a fresh batch of sake ready for us by now, and it wasn't a crime to indulge myself, even if it was just for today. The investigation could easily continue the next day.
Getting to the square, the place was already alive. Pretty lanterns everywhere, a roast going already and beautiful women at every turn. It was heaven for s young bachelor like me, and I sat down, raising a toast before I drank in the scene.
The monster hunter had become tipsy already, and was entertaining everyone with his drunken antics, and between the buzz from the drinks and the ministrations of the lady in my lap, I was soon asleep.
The shrill scream woke me up. No, it woke all of us who slept off at the square. The scene spoke of the depravity that had occurred there, stuff that cannot be said in print. But rest assured that it took us all some time to get ourselves together before we ran to source of the scream.
It just laid there in the sand, inanimate, ordinary, and yet making our blood freeze.
A slipper.
"Th-that's Izumi's..." one of the food vendors said.
Izumi was one of the best dancers who was also present last night. She had slept at the square with us, just a few metres from my feet actually.
"We were together in that sleeping bag..." Her friend Akira said. It was her who screamed.
I didn't need a soothsayer to tell me that the mysterious abductor had struck again.
*****
I've got a good feeling this will be a short series, but I'm eager to see how I can work with this prompt and create a nice story from it.
Like and comment ❤️.
