The book shut, ending the saga of Miaka, Yui, and Tamahome.

Ending, also, that of Suzuno and Tatara, and that of Takiko, whose only flaw was in being too happy and gentle for the role she was forced to play.

And ending, finally, the interaction between Shoukai and Chikai that had lasted three hundred years of the former and seventy years of the latter.

The Four Gods drew a deep breath. Their game of wonder and mystery, played with pawns from another world that might or might not have become queens, was over.

It was time, obviously, to start a new one.

As the siblings and their friends trudged homeward, the book, forgotten behind them, glowed with a beautiful golden light.

Then it vanished, transported to another world, to call in other girls.

With a few... modifications.

[Voiceover by Suzaku, while the instrumental version of "Yo ga Akeru Mae ni" plays in the background]:
Both Byakko and I had paid certain... prices... to ensure that one each of our shichiseishi would be reborn elsewhere. My younger brother contrived that his Tatara and his miko would be reborn together; I simply arranged for Tamahome to be reborn in my Miko's world.

I've asked Byakko why he made his miko suffer an unnecessary lifetime without her love. He said that Tatara was already going to suffer, and it would cheapen their bond to make only one of them wait.

That's happened to both my little brothers now. It's dangerous, to start caring too much about the inhabitants of our pocket universe. We created them, after all. Especially the shichiseishi -- they're just shadows of different aspects of ourselves, embedded in mortal bodies the better to serve us. With each new game, sometimes the genders change, sometimes the general appearance; but always they exist only to protect and love the Chosen Vessel.

As for why I permitted Tamahome Sou Kishuku to go out from me and become Real -- I grew rather fond of Miaka. Even if she does sometimes act stupidly.

And so, having sent forth two from our pocket universe, we were forced to bring in two; to seek through the Shouseken for two similar enough that we might draw them in.

Indeed, to gain the person I at last found, I was forced to trade three artisans of not-inconsiderable skill for three Amazon warriors, all of the rather unlikely name of Guan.

But the trades were made, the order established, the dead called back, and we started action up for yet another round of our game. [end voiceover]

A Legend Begins To Move... Again?! Keiko, where have you gone?

"I feel sort of ghoulish," Yuusuke said, running one hand through his slicked-back hair.

"That's normal," Keiko reassured him. "I felt the same way when we were going through Great-Aunt Tomoko's things."

"I never realized Genkai had so much *stuff*," Shizuru put in, tossing her long hair over one shoulder.

The seven of them -- three former Reikai Detectives and the four members of the Urameshi Team Cheering Squad -- were cleaning out Genkai's temple. The old woman had set up her home as a youkai enclave in her will, and a few youkai known to Yuusuke had already volunteered to be caretakers. (Including Yukina, but Keiko and Shizuru had convinced her that it would not be a good idea.)

So all that was left to do was to clear out Genkai's belongings, providing space for more youkai to live and some furnishings for them to live with.

The seven had underestimated the sheer amount of *stuff* that could be accumulated in seventy years.

They had managed to go through a room and a half that morning, and only after several arguments, discussions, and so forth. Some of the things were so antique and/or esoteric that only Botan was able to identify them --if she was.

Whatever Genkai's organizing system, moreover, it defied logical explanation.

"What are *these*?" Kurama asked, unearthing a lot of large brass... items.

"A set of matched and graded phonograph horns," Botan told him.

Kurama looked at her and then at the phonograph horns.

"Why?"

Keiko lifted another knickknack down from the shelf, casually evading a pat from Yuusuke. It was not that she objected to his innocent pleasures. Quite the contrary. But there is a time and a place for everything, and this was *not* it.

She looked over at Kuwabara, who had paused in his task of hauling boxes out to the pickup truck (which his elder sister had "borrowed" from somewhere; Keiko chose not to go too closely into the question of just *where* Shizuru'd acquired such a thing or how she'd learnt to drive it) in order to talk to Yukina. More precisely, he was smiling goofily while she chattered on about something or other.

"Gangway!" Yuusuke called as he tilted the curtain rods leaning against the walls of the corner out in preparation to laying them flat.

"Abunai!" Shizuru yelled, catching one that had slipped from his grasp between the palms of her hands.

"Mou, Yuusuke!" Botan had had to jump out of the way as the rest came down with a crash. "Watch where you're waving those things!"

Keiko came to a decision.

"I think we'd better split up," she said. "This is taking forever."

"Hear, hear," Shizuru said. "Yukina, come with me; let's take the rooms you used to have."

"And I," Kuwabara began.

"No, Kazuma. Not you," Shizuru told her little brother. "This is a two-person job."

"I'll go with Keiko," Yuusuke offered.

"That leaves the three of us to finish up here, ne?" Kurama said, restacking the phonograph horns.

Keiko looked at him, perplexed. Kurama's long red hair, despite his rather vigorous activity, had yet to get in the way, get caught on anything, or be disarranged. She knew her hair had done all of the above. So had Shizuru's. Even Yukina's had, which proved that it wasn't a youkai thing. So how did he do it?

Still pondering, she followed Yuusuke, Shizuru, and Yukina out of the room. As the two other girls left to examine Yukina's old rooms and the rest of the guest quarters, Keiko caught a flicker of red out of the corner of her eye. She turned.

"What is it?" Yuusuke asked.

"I thought I saw a big red bird fly up those stairs," Keiko explained.

"How big?"

"Big," she told him, holding her hands several feet apart to illustrate.

"Maybe it was a youkai," Yuusuke said, looking speculatively at the stairs. "This is a youkai enclave, after all. But I wonder why it didn't check in with us?"

"Maybe it's shy."

"Or maybe it's up to no good." He sounded oddly cheered by the notion. "In any case, we ought to go explain the house rules to it." He set off up the stairs, Keiko following behind.

The stairs gave onto a small hallway, with four wooden Chinese-style doors leading off it. One of them was open a crack, and Yuusuke stealthily pulled it open a bit more and softly padded inside.

Keiko held her breath.

She was shortly rewarded by Yuusuke's voice cheerily shouting "Oi!" and then by Yuusuke himself, throwing the door wide open.

"Nothing in here but a gabillion books," he told her. "I guess we might as well sort them out while we're here."

"Right," Keiko agreed, entering and looking at the books. The shelves were literally floor-to-ceiling, and the room was dimly lit only by one tall, narrow window and by the light coming in through the door.

"Wow," she said quietly. Crossing to examine the shelf near the window, she found classic poetry volumes, Mishima Yukio, Edogawa Rampo, Yoshimoto Banana, and 'GERII TORUDOO' casually mixed together.

"I think she just put them on the shelves wherever there was space," Keiko observed. "It's going to take *forever* to sort them all out -- ouch."

"What?"

"My hair's caught on something."

"Oh, yeah. I see." Yuusuke stepped over to her. "Here, let me..." he reached around Keiko and began the delicate task of unhooking her long hair from the rough edge of the shelf.

Keiko held very, very still. Yuusuke was concentrating entirely on his task, and his breath was warm on her face. She became highly aware of his proximity to her own self.

Yuusuke finished with her hair and looked full at her, probably intending to say something on the order of "All done!" The words, however, died on his lips, and instead he dropped his arms to circle around her waist.

Keiko cautiously returned the embrace, sliding her hands up his back to rest on his shoulder blades. It hung there for an endless moment, and then he turned his head and kissed her.

Yuusuke had kissed her a few times before, but most of those had been excited smacks bestowed on the lips in moments of exhilaration, or sloppy busses designed more to annoy her or to concentrate her attention on him -- even if it were angry attention -- than anything else. This was a serious kiss, and something about the kiss or the light or the room or Yuusuke himself caused an odd warm sensation to blossom near her center of gravity. His arms tightened around her, and the two of them swayed slightly, bumping into the nearby bookshelf.

A large book fell off the shelf, bounced off their heads, and came to rest face-down on the floor. Startled, they sprang apart with a mutual cry of "Ouch!"

"Oh," Yuusuke said. "A book. I thought maybe you were mad at me."

"No, no," Keiko said, feeling a bit lightheaded. "*I* wasn't angry... That's odd."

"What?"

"The book. Usually when they fall open like that, the pages sort of balloon up. But these kind of stuck to each other." She bent down curiously and picked the book up. "See, I can't even get a fingernail in between the pages... well, except for the first one."

"What's it about?" Yuusuke asked, leaning over.

Keiko moved back into the light from the window. "Yon-kami-ama -- no, ten -- chi-no-shou," she spelled out slowly from the book cover. She turned back to the place where it had fallen open as Yuusuke sat down beside her.

"This is a story of a girl who, having gathered the Seven Seishi of 'Suzaku,' acquired the power to make wishes come true. The story is itself an incantation. She who finishes the book will acquire the same powers as the heroine and her wishes will come true. As soon as the page is turned, the legend will become the truth and begin."

"Don't stories usually begin when you turn to the next page?" Yuusuke asked.

"Usually," Keiko agreed, looking at the book.

She turned the page.

Instead of more words, she was met by a vortex of red light. Long tendrils leapt up from the crimson roil to wind about her, whipping her into the book's gate so swiftly that she barely had time to scream, the image burned onto her retinae of Yuusuke's face changing too slowly from puzzlement to shocked comprehension an his outstretched hand closing just short of her wrist.

"KEIKOOOOOOO!" Yuusuke screamed.

- Eyecatch: SD Keiko standing on a ladder, neatly tacking up 'fu-shi-gi.' The four kanji are in a crumpled mass at the bottom of the ladder: SD Hotohori, Tamahome, Tasuki and Nuriko come dancing on from the right and knock the kanji into position with their special attacks: Hotohori w/sword, Tasuki w/tessen flame, Tamahome by throwing coins, and Nuriko just boots it ^_^. This startles Keiko so that she wobbles back and forth on the ladder; Hotohori reaches out to catch her, and is knocked silly by a rei-gun as SD Yuusuke jumps in from the left and catches Keiko. She looks bemused for a moment, then smiles and spreads her hands. -

Say what one will about the Urameshi Team of Reikai Detectives -- and the self-appointed Urameshi Team Improvement Squad -- one cannot fault their readiness to come to the assistance of one of their own. Within a minute of Yuusuke's scream, all five of his friends were attempting to pour through the door at once, demanding to know what was wrong and what they might do to remedy it.

"The book," Yuusuke said, still rather shocked.

"The book what?" Botan asked.

"It ate Keiko." Yuusuke gave the book his evilest I-Am-Actually-A-Truly-Evil-Youkai-And-You-Are-LUNCH glare. "This red light came out of the book and dragged her in. Give her back!"

The book, as one might expect, just sat there.

"Kaese! Keiko o kaese!" His angry voice took on an almost pleading overtone. "Keiko o kaeshite kite!"

"I don't think it will on your say-so," Shizuru observed dryly.

"I could -- " Kuwabara began, activating his rei-ken.

"NO!" Yuusuke jumped up, fist cocked. "You might hurt Keiko!"

"Or destroy our only chance to get her back," Shizuru pointed out. "Nice going, Kazu."

The rei-ken fizzled. Kuwabara rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed.

"Which one was it?" Yukina asked. She had quietly walked around during the altercation to look at the book cover.

"Which one of what?" Yuusuke responded.

"Which one of the four gods? It doesn't sound like Gembu..."

"Suzaku." The word came out in almost a whisper. "She was reading something about Suzaku right before she turned the page and it sucked her in." He clenched his fist so tightly that his fingernails dug deeply into the flesh of his palm. "He's *dead*! I killed him! If this is some plot of his to get back at me -- to hurt *Keiko* -- "

"It's not the same one!" Yukina laid a hand on his arm. "It's not the same Suzaku as the one you fought -- Kazuma-san told me about your fight with the four lords of Youma, but these are a *different* four!"

"In Chinese legend, they're the masters of the four directions and the four seasons," Kurama offered.

"Then how come you didn't know what they were like?" Kuwabara challenged him.

"Because I only realized they'd named themselves after those when we ran into Seiryuu," Kurama explained patiently. "I'd never been to Youma before because they had nothing worth stealing, the word 'gembu' is used in Makai thief slang for any crossbreed between two different types, and 'Byakko' just means 'white tiger.' *There's* a lot of imagination."

"They're used in Chinese astrology, too," Shizuru added. "For instance, Kazuma was born when the moon was in one of the Suzaku star-waystations -- I forget which -- and I was born when the moon was in the Seiryuu star-pattern Nakagoboshi."

"Keiko went into the book," Yukina continued, "so it should tell what happens to her."

Most of the people in the room looked at her blankly.

"*I* see," Botan said. "If she got sucked into the book, maybe she got sucked *into* the book, and is now a character in the story; so we could read the story and find out what's happening to her while we're figuring out a way to get her back!"

"Soo desu yo," Yukina agreed.

Keiko found herself on the side of a bank overlooking a wide dirt road. The bank, and indeed the entire landscape, were covered with grass, dotted here and there with trees.

"Yuusuke?" Keiko called rather uncertainly. "Yuusuke?"

Nobody answered.

"What happened? Where is this place?"

Still no answer.

"Whoever you are, you're going to be *really* sorry when my friends catch you!"

If whoever-it-was that had kidnapped her was in any way alarmed or unnerved by this threat, they certainly were giving no sign of it that *she* could discern.

Marvelous. Another youkai trap.

She supposed she should have realized from the phrasing of the book, but it was just so unbelievable that such a thing should have been casually stored on a bookshelf in *Genkai's* library --

Genkai's library.

Where she and Yuusuke had been -- had been --

"ALL RIGHT, THAT DOES IT!" she yelled, really infuriated now. "YUUSUKE AND I *FINALLY* HAVE AN AIBIKI, A *REAL* AIBIKI, AND YOU GO AND RUIN IT! I'M GOING TO *BLENDERIZE* YOU!"

She kicked a perfectly inoffensive stone. When whoever was responsible for this was caught, she was going to insist that they hit it a few extra times for her. Or perhaps hit it herself.

When Keiko had calmed down, a little later, she considered her options. She could, of course, always sit down and wait for the Urameshi Team to rescue her.

Nah.

She decided to go hunt for either a way out (preferable) or whoever was responsible for sending her here (they might be too powerful to assault directly, but she could perhaps eavesdrop or engage in a little constructive hindering).

Keiko rounded a corner of the bank and the road at the same time. A carriage drawn by two horses was approaching. It resembled a large box set on top of a wagon bed; the windows and the front entrance were curtained by thick sacking. Two men were on the driver's bench, dressed in clothes resembling those of the actors in *Legend of the Three Kingdoms* or some other Chinese period drama. They were smiling and joking among themselves.

She warily approached the wagon, doing her best to keep behind the scant bushes growing on the slope.

"Well, Chuuin," one of the men remarked as the wagon drew closer. He looked directly at Keiko. "What have we here?"

"Exactly, Shunkan," the other responded. "What *have* we here?"

Keiko straightened up and slowly took a step back.

"Run away! Run away!" The voice of a woman within the wagon was shockingly loud. "In the farthest possible direction of away!"

Her cry was instantly followed by the sound of a heavy blow, and the unknown woman screamed.

"Hey!" Keiko ran *towards* the wagon, hands clenched. "Who do you think you are, anyway?"

"We're in the woman trade," 'Chuuin' smirked, "and you're the *second* piece of free stock to come into our hands this trip -- "

Then he wasn't smiling anymore, because Keiko had hit him rather forcefully on the jaw. She spun to his companion, feinted a blow to the throat, and hit him in the solar plexus instead. Then she grabbed the curtains behind the seat open and peered inside.

"Miss? Are you all -- "

A pair of hands closed around her throat. Keiko grabbed at the thumbs, trying to pry them up and off as the third member of the team of girl-sellers stepped outside, lifting her up.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. There had to be a third person to hit that woman --

She managed a comparatively feeble kick to his groin -- she didn't have the strength for a proper one -- but it was apparently enough for this man, as he dropped her on her rear end in order to grab the kicked area.

"Come on out and *help*, you two!" he shrieked at the wagon. "She's almost as much trouble as the other one!"

Two *more*?!

Oh, shit.

She noticed that 'Shunkan' was getting up and the other one stirring.

Oh, SHIT.

One of 'you two' emerged from the wagon. He was built rather on the general lines of a bear, and he was wearing mismatched but rather functional-looking armor. He leered at her, chuckling softly.

Yuusuke, it would be extremely useful if you would arrive in the very near future...!

"Thieves, fire, murder, rape! HELLLLP!" Keiko yelled, on the theory that it could not possibly hurt and might actually even help.

"EKIKYOU NO RAI-BUN NO KA!" A largish metal coin embedded itself in the armor-guy's temple. She looked at the others, noting that a second coin had clipped the throttler on the head and that a third was embedded in 'Shunkan's' arm as she heard a male scream from within the wagon.

Keiko prudently walked over to the man she'd socked and stepped heavily on his groin, while his co-driver jumped up and down squealing with a hand clapped to his arm.

She turned to look in the direction from which the coins and shout had come from. A woman in the unlikely outfit of a court lady was running towards them, her robes caught up in one hand and several apparent guards hastily following her.

Then, incredibly, the three coins shot *back* to the lady's hand, prompting another shriek from the girl-dealer still on his feet as two of his fingers were mangled by the coin's exit.

Was she a youkai?

A skinny girl about Keiko's age hopped out the front of the wagon, an iron plate dangling from the chains attached to the manacles on her wrists. She swung them in a short vicious arc that ended at the dealer's neck, the chains hitting it with a nasty sound.

"Why didn't you run when I told you to?" Her eyes were green and direct, and her white-blonde hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck into a thigh-length tail.

"They were hitting you!" Keiko answered.

"Look, a ten out of ten for style, but a *three* for common sense, ne?"

Yukina's suggestion, incredibly, seemed to work.

At least, if this 'girl from another world' was in truth Keiko, it did.

The fact that she had considered waiting for the 'Urameshitai,' as the book had called it, would seem to be a positive indication.

Even more so was the slightly earlier passage which Yuusuke had read, in which she had yelled at the author of her fate for depriving her of the aibiki she had finally been having with her 'otoko.'

"*Aibiki*?" everyone (except for Kurama and Yukina) had asked. "Were you --?"

"Uh... I suppose you could say it was," Yuusuke had answered.

Kuwabara had grinned suddenly. "Urameshi, you stud!" he yelled as he cheerfully elbowed Yuusuke in the ribs.

"Kono-- " Yuusuke had snarled, socking Kuwabara one. It had quickly developed into Chapter Two-hundred-and-something of their endless fight.

Botan had retrieved The Book and taken over the reading from there on. She was still interrupted by various comments and advice meant for Keiko ("Keiko, you idiot, 'run away' means RUN AWAY!" "Go for the eyeballs!" "I'll KILL that bastard...") but at least Yuusuke and Kuwabara were paying attention, Yuusuke seated on Kuwabara's prone form.

The woman in the rust-red robes halted as she came up to them, letting go of her skirts and pocketing the coins after wiping them on a handkerchief she produced from her sleeve. Her red hair was done in two loops on either side of her face, hanging to her chin, before the tails were let fall to her knees.

She *must* be a youkai, Keiko realized. Who else but a youkai (well, possibly a female oni, but she'd never seen one, and wouldn't they have fangs? If this woman had horns, they were hidden under her headdress, but her mouth was devoid of fangs) would be walking around with 'oni' *glowing* on their forehead? Even if the red glow *was* dying...

"Do female oni have fangs, Botan?" Kuwabara asked.

"Oh, yes. Longer than Hiei's," Botan told him.

Kuwabara scowled reflexively at the mention of the little shrimp.

"Would this woman be a youkai?" Kurama asked.

"I don't think so," Yukina offered. "I think she's involved with Suzaku. Isn't that one of his moon lodgings?"

"Yeah, the second one," Shizuru said.

"What happens next?" Yuusuke asked impatiently.

"Are you all right?" the red-haired lady asked politely.

"Yeah. Thanks, you two," the blonde said. Keiko suddenly noticed that the girl was wearing barely anything; merely trousers cut off at her thighs and a sleeveless tunic similarly cut off and knotted under her breasts, aside from her boots.

"Thank you very much," Keiko said, clinging desperately to manners as some fixed point in all this. "I'm quite all right now. Those jerks were trying to kidnap me!"

"They *did* kidnap me," the other girl chimed in. "I was traveling and minding my own business, and they overpowered me and chained me in that wagon to sell on the block like a water buffalo!"

The guards had caught up to them during the underdressed girl's indignant speech. More were rounding the next bend, escorting two litters. The curtains of the fancier one were flapping wildly in the breeze.

"Tsubone-gimi," the leader of their group of guards said -- at least, Keiko assumed him to be the leader, as his armor was more elaborate than the others' -- almost apologetically, "the trade in women is recognized by the Dragon Throne. Your... special status doesn't allow you to interfere in legitimate trade."

"Yes, but this *wasn't* legitimate trade," the court lady said. "These two young women weren't sold to this scum: they were victims of a snatch-and-grab."

Keiko and the other girl mutely nodded.

"Soo ka?" the guard captain asked, a smile beginning to creep across his face.

"And that's thievery, isn't it?"

"Why, yes, Tsubone-gimi, I believe it is." He turned to the other guards. "Question them. We have to verify this, after all." His smile was grim.

"Now, what's all this?" The voice, from the litters which had finally arrived, was light and officious.

The three women turned to look at the speaker, who was leaning out of the other, less adorned litter. Keiko judged him to be between twenty and thirty, with a pretty, plump face and long pink-gold hair.

"Ooh, cute guy!" the blonde girl hissed.

"We're investigating a possible case of grand larceny with intent to swindle, Mon'yuu-san," the captain reported.

"Ah. Good work, men." Mon'yuu retreated behind the curtain.

The captain returned to his business.

"He's not bad either," the girl in chains remarked, speculatively staring after him.

"You're an Amazon, aren't you?" the taller woman asked.

"Hai! Bao Guan, yoroshiku onegaishimasu!" she carolled, introducing herself.

"I'm Yukimura Keiko," Keiko said, moving aside to avoid Bao Guan's wildly swinging chains.

"And my name is Sou Kakyuu, an Imperial Concubine of the Inner Court. But everyone calls me... Tamahome."

Keiko looked at the smiling woman. She seemed friendly enough, but --

"Tamahome-san, are you well- or ill-disposed towards humans?"

Tamahome looked at her oddly. "You make it sound as if I weren't myself human."

"Well, you aren't, are you?" Keiko asked. "Humans don't have glowing red characters on their foreheads -- even though yours has sort of died down to a red-black shimmer."

Mon'yuu's head popped out so quickly that he nearly fell out of the litter. "Tamahome-gimi! It was GLOWING?"

[ED: "Daydream Generation," sung by Mawatari Matsuko IthinkIthink]

CULTURAL NOTES

Genkai's books: Rather the equivalent of jumbling Shakespeare, Wodehouse, Ngaio Marsh, Rebecca Wells, and Gary Trudeau together.

Aibiki: Japanese culture has no native idea of a date: the idea and the word were introduced by the Allied occupation. What they did have was the o-miai (meet someone to see if the two of you could stand getting married to each other on the basis of what you learn at that meeting) or the aibiki, which involved two (usually young) people sneaking off together to, ah, explore all the interesting differences between boys and girls.

Tsubone-gimi: Tsubone means 'the apartments of a court lady' and is a polite way to refer to one. -Gimi is a very honorary suffix, reserved for members of imperial and royal families (and, I speculate, their highest-ranking concubines.)

Ya-ho! Botan-chan desu! In our next episode, we find out the secret of Tamahome-san's character! Also, Koenma-sama gets shocked, and Keiko tachi get thrown in a *dungeon*?! Eeksh, that Crown Prince gives me the creeps! His elder brother is really cute, though; what are the rumors about him and Tamahome-san? See you next time! Tanoshii wa ne!

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