"What do you mean she's gone?"
Touko raised her hand to a clumsy salute, hitting her right horn with the flat of her hand in the process. "Just that she ain't there, Chief. The bridge was deserted."
Yuugi folded her arms. Since the rumour Parsee had abandoned her post had come from a human capable of crossing the bridge, she had assumed it to be true, but learning it was so for certain did nothing to improve her mood. "And you checked everywhere? Not just where she lives, but the surrounding area?"
"You know it, Chief. Nothing."
"Right." Yuugi raised her voice so that everyone within a mile's radius heard her. "We've got a missing Ministry worker at our hands, folks. Split and search every nook and cranny. Now!"
The vast majority of oni obeyed at once and scattered. Yuugi was just about to follow them when someone stepped into her peripheral vision.
"I don't know about this, Chief."
Yuugi turned to face Urara. "Explain."
Urara shifted uncomfortably, her shoulders squared, but her gaze never once wavered. "Since when have we searched for missing employees before the order comes in from above? We don't even know how long she's been gone."
"We will search now." Yuugi said firmly. "She's missing work, and I want her found. That's all you need to know."
"If the bridge princess is missing, the most logical conclusion is that she fell into the chasm."
Yuugi snorted. "Don't be stupid. She knows that bridge like the back of her hand."
Urara shrugged. "Then maybe she had enough of Hell and ran back to the surface. Weaklings sometimes think humans will accept them if they act like them."
Without another word, Yuugi lunged forward to grab Urara by the horns. Before the other oni could do more than blink, she lifted her off her feet and slammed her to the ground.
She re-folded her arms as the dust settled. "That is slander."
Urara scrambled to a crouching position. "How so, Chief?" Her eyes were pure steel. "You're too infatuated with that runt to see her for what she really is! You're weak, and I won't obey someone who—"
Yuugi took a threatening step forward.
Urara fell silent, but continued to stare up at her.
At length, she began to chuckle.
A sudden chill ran down Yuugi's spine. The sound was an eerie twin to the kind of despairing laugh Parsee let loose during her dark moods.
"We all see it, Chief," Urara continued in a low voice, smiling nastily, "Yuugi Hoshiguma, Deva of the Mountain, Terror of the Tengu, tamed and subdued by a treacherous weakling no different from a human—"
The stone floor an inch from Urara's knee was punctured by Yuugi's fist.
Urara stilled as bits of debris scattered all around her, her eyes wide. The few oni who had remained close by all turned to stare at her and Yuugi.
Slowly, Yuugi raised her fist. Her arm had sunk into the solid ground all the way to her elbow. She kept raising it till her hand, coated in a thin reddish layer of powdered stone, was at her eye level.
"We will settle this later, Urara, and you will wish you'd never been born," she growled. "But now, you will go and search for Parsee."
Urara stood up without a word, still maintaining eye contact. Very slowly, she turned and walked after the other oni.
Yuugi ignored the on-lookers commenting on the event and headed off in the opposite direction. She had wasted enough time as it was. Finding such a small woman in a vast space like Hell would be difficult, but the day she shied from a challenge was the day she lay down to die. And Parsee was still in Hell, no matter Urara's insinuations.
Still, as she stormed across the plains, hollering Parsee's name at suitable intervals till the walls shook, she couldn't help but wonder what had happened. Parsee had been acting peculiarly for months now, obviously beyond bored with her job. Even so, Yuugi knew she wouldn't abandon her post on a mere whim. Something must have gone wrong.
She came across a segment of the wall where several of the pillars holding up a protruding part of the ceiling had collapsed, causing a sizeable chunk of the infrastructure to cave in on itself. She was about to walk on, rolling her eyes and wondering why maintenance still hadn't gotten around to fixing it, when she felt a chill running down her spine.
She stared at the cave-in. Someone, or something, was lurking behind it, its malevolent presence so powerful it was almost physical. An escapee from the deeper pits of hell, or some other lost evil specter, perhaps?
Yuugi approached, looking for an opening, or else a spot she could turn into one without taking out what remained of the ceiling. Parsee or not, any unusual phenomenon in Hell might have been connected to her disappearance, and so Yuugi would investigate, and if need be, punch the suspect.
Further inspection revealed a narrow tunnel partially hidden behind a chunk of a broken pillar, much longer than she would have guessed. If she squared her shoulders, she could just barely inch her way into it, and so she did exactly that.
As she crawled onward, the presence of hatred grew into a heavy miasma. Likely, the entire tunnel was a trap, but she would show whoever had devised it what happened when you attempted to trap an oni.
After minutes of fumbling, she came across a small cave, little more than a crawl space. It was dimly lit through tiny cracks in the porous ceiling: one of the higher reaches of Hell had to be directly above, as the surface was still far away. The ceiling was too low for her to even sit up, but before she had time to get angry about it, she saw something colourful at the deep end of the cavern. A slight figure dressed in hand-me-downs, curled into a ball.
"Parsee." She attempted to approach, only the bump her horn into the ceiling. Grimacing, she lowered her head. "Parsee, can you hear me?"
Parsee twitched, then slowly raised her head upwards, hiding her eyes behind her arms almost like the light from the ceiling was as blinding as sunlight. She looked half dead, her already pale skin clammy and visibly yellow.
"Parsee." She was alive, at least, but what had possessed her to crawl into a place like this? Yuugi leaned forward, scraping her knees against the rocks on the ground. "What happened?"
Parsee removed her arm and blinked at her, like a suddenly awakened owl. Her face, already haggard, went entirely white.
"Stay away!"
Her voice was shrill and only one step away from uncontrolled panic, a far cry from her usual high-pitched but calm tones.
Yuugi halted at once. "Okay, I won't come any closer. What's wrong?"
Parsee's shoulders relaxed, but she looked away and curled back down to hug her knees. "I don't know." She leaned against the wall. "I don't..."
Yuugi had seen behaviour like this before: sometimes, non-oni fatally wounded in battle would give up on life and crawl into some nook to perish alone. Only, there was no blood in sight, and when she sniffed the air, the only smells were those of earth and dust.
She frowned. Where were the mind-readers when you needed one? "Are you hurt? Did some stupid human try to attack you?" Those scoundrels were always playing underhanded tricks on youkai, after all, and just because there were no visible injuries didn't mean someone couldn't have inflicted one on Parsee's spirit.
"No..." Parsee shuddered violently.
With a sickened pang, Yuugi realised she was lying. "Parsee!"
She made another attempt to crawl forward.
"Stay there!" Parsee thrust her open palm towards her, as if it could act as a real barrier.
Yuugi halted again, and not only because she had said she wouldn't approach. The miasma she had sensed from the outside was so thick she was finding it difficult to breathe, but she still couldn't see any possible source for it.
One thing was for sure: she had to get Parsee away from it. "Come out. This place is hurting you."
"I'm not hurt," Parsee insisted. "I just... had to get away for a while."
Yuugi took a deep breath, loud enough that the exhale made the loose earth around her shake. "Away from what?"
Parsee stared at her, with glowing eyes Yuugi had by then come to expect whenever the bridge princess was distressed. She let out a shuddering breath.
"It's closing in."
"No kidding. That's why we need to go."
Parsee gave her a blank look, then shook her head. "No. It's much safer here."
Yuugi considered the situation. Either Parsee was somehow entirely insensate to the miasma, or else she sensed it much better than Yuugi did and knew its source was elsewhere. Neither possibility explained what the source actually was.
She cut to the chase. "What are you hiding from?"
Parsee continued to shook her head. "I tried to leave it behind when I left home, but it's followed me ever since. If I stay in one place for too long, it will find me. That's why I had to get away."
If anything, Yuugi was now even more confused. "Is it some kinda evil spirit? We have ways to deal with those."
Parsee shook her head again.
Yuugi sighed. This was going nowhere fast, and if she was suffering from a shortness of breath, the presence had to already be gnawing at Parsee's spirit. "We'll talk about this later. First, we really need to get out of here."
"How come?"
She really couldn't tell? "I don't know why you can't sense it, but there's something rotten lurking here." She extended her hand. "Come on. Whatever's waiting outside gets to answer to my fists if it tries anything funny."
Parsee hesitated. Then, very slowly, she unfurled herself and reached over the place her hand in Yuugi's.
At once, Yuugi pulled her in close. The beating of the bird princess' heart was like a bird's. "Okay, I've got you."
Parsee said nothing and leaned her head against Yuugi's shoulder.
They remained still for quite some time. Curiously, Yuugi noticed that the miasma, though not entirely gone, had faded to background radiation typical of the seedier corners of Hell. Whatever the case, it no longer troubled her breathing, and from the even rise and fall of Parsee's chest, she was much better, too.
"Okay." Yuugi gave her a determined squeeze before easing her grip. "Let's go."
It was much harder to retreat from the tunnel while trying to guide Parsee through it at the same time, but somehow, it felt easier.
And for a long while after the incident, everything was fine.
Parsee had been a good worker for the span of several human lives by then, and her eccentric getaway was easily brushed under the rug. Even the enma had bad days.
Furthermore, she did her best to regain the administration's esteem. There were no further hiccups; no news of any interruptions or accidents.
And yet... whenever Yuugi visited her, she greeted her with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. She said all the right things and sometimes even followed her to the city despite the sour looks the other oni aimed at her, drinking quietly and following the revelry with no visible emotion beyond a vague tiredness.
They spoke no more of the cavern incident, not until a night when one of the younger oni successfully cajoled Parsee into a drinking contest. She rarely drank much, and barely stayed on her feet as Yuugi escorted her home.
"It's found me," Parsee whispered, her nails digging into Yuugi's arm as she stumbled by her side. "I can feel it watching me all the time."
"But what is it?" Yuugi supported her as best she could, but when Parsee stumbled on a third step in a row, flailing like a newborn fawn, she found it easier to pick her up and carry her. "I have to know to fight it."
Parsee shook her head against Yuugi's shoulder, her eyelids heavy. "I don't know."
This had to be a lie, but her voice was so slurred Yuugi couldn't find it in her to be cross. "Is it watching now?"
"No." Parsee closed her eyes. "But it'll be back..."
Upon reaching Parsee's home, Yuugi could do little more than place her on her bed and give her a kiss on the forehead. If anything truly was watching, it had better take it as a sign of protection.