Mochimaru x Benizakura

The sky that day felt like it had forgotten how to rain. Heavy clouds brooded above the Tsukimori abode like spirits not yet convinced they should move on. Something in the air made the shrine bells chime on their own. Even the wind seemed unsure of its direction. Yuna sat cross-legged on the veranda, Mochimaru cradled in her arms like a plush baby. Its ridiculous stitched face leaned into her chest, and she idly traced the button eye with her thumb. Then her mother called her inside. Airi sat in the crafting room. No tea. No thread. Just silence, thick and expectant. On the table, there was a small, obsidian case. It pulsed faintly, like it was breathing. “I want to tell you something,” Airi said, her voice low. “You’ll probably want to slap me after.” “I’m already suspicious,” Yuna replied, not sitting down. “You should be.” Airi opened the box. Inside was a folded talisman soaked in dried blood. And beneath it… the faint scent of old perfume and burning incense—but wrong. Twisted. Like someone trying to imitate elegance while hiding rot. Yuna stepped back instinctively. “…Mother?” “I have a trace of Maerachi.” There it was. Said like a whisper. Said like a sentence. Yuna’s eyes widened. “But… but you always said it skips—” “It usually does. It almost skipped me. But not entirely.” Airi lifted the talisman. It flared for a second, whispering in a tongue that didn’t belong on this side of life. “It was weak in me. Barely enough to sense. Just enough to... experiment.” “Experiment?” Yuna blinked. “Like... the hobby kind? Or the ‘ethically-questionable-mage-in-a-cave’ kind?” Airi laughed. “Both.” Yuna didn’t laugh. “I tried to seal demons, Yuna. I succeeded once. Barely. I used too much blood. Nearly blacked out. I’ve always regretted it.” She paused, her eyes clouded with some distant, remembered pain. “But you—” Airi looked directly at her now, the way a blade looks at a whetstone. “Your Maerachi is stronger. Much stronger. You’re not like me.” “…Am I still your daughter?” “Only if you swear not to turn me into a frog.” “I make no promises.” Airi walked to a sealed cabinet and unlocked it with a key she pulled from her hairpin. Yuna’s brows lifted at the casual spy movie energy. From within, Airi withdrew a sealed gourd-shaped container and a second, sturdier talisman—this one still alive, pulsing with spiritual heat. Inside it? A demon. An Oiran demon. A courtesan of shadows. Deadly. Beautiful. Immensely proud. A spirit who once seduced her way through the bones of generals and poets alike. Mid-ranked, powerful, bound with difficulty years ago. Yuna could feel it even before it was unwrapped. The room darkened slightly, as if the walls were holding their breath. “Her name was Benizakura in life. Keep her name. It gives you control.” Airi set Mochimaru gently on the table. “…Wait—” Yuna blinked. “You want me to put that inside him?” “Yes.” “…He’s made of cotton.” “He’s made of your love, which is stronger than cotton.” “…Don’t say things like that, it’s embarrassing.” “Focus!” The chant Airi whispered into her ear was jagged, old. It didn’t rhyme. It didn’t need to. “Kono utsuwa ni yadoru kage, awaremi naki mono yo. Chi to tomo ni kizamare shi sadame, Kono katashiro ni ima, tojikome yo. Atsume yo, yami no koto no ha. Shizume yo, arashi no ibuki. Tsunagu wa, kami no shimesu ito. Toki wa michita, towa no fūin. Kore ni, osamare” English Version “Shadow that dwells in this vessel, you without pity. Your fate, carved with blood, Now, into this doll, be confined. Gather, words of darkness. Subside, breath of the storm. The thread that binds is shown by the gods. The time has come, an eternal seal. Into this, be contained.” Yuna slit her palm slightly, her blood dripping onto Mochimaru’s head. The gourd shattered. The demon, even in spirit form, was gorgeous—long black hair, pale skin, kimono that bled ink and sakura petals. Her eyes opened slowly, lascivious and cold, as if disappointed in the whole affair already. “So,” Benizakura murmured in a voice like perfume soaked in poison. “A child.” “She’s stronger than I ever was,” Airi said. “Pity.” The demon turned her eyes to Yuna. “Will you beg me for power, little dollmaker? Or shall we dance first?” Yuna didn’t blink. She pressed her bloodstained thumb between Mochimaru’s button eyes. “I’m not asking,” she whispered. There was a flash. A shriek—not hers, not her mother’s—and a burning wind blew outward. The dolls in the room rattled violently. The windows shook. Yuna’s hair flared upward as if caught in a storm, and Mochimaru’s threads glowed crimson. Then it was done. The light vanished. Mochimaru blinked. No—something behind Mochimaru blinked. “I feel weird,” Yuna muttered. “You’ve just become a warlock.” Airi shrugged. “It’ll pass. Or mutate.” Mochimaru… no, Benizakura… rose slightly in the air, her stitched mouth curled into a knowing smirk. “I shall protect you,” she whispered. “But only because I’m bored, and you’re interesting.” Yuna exhaled. “Charming.” From that day forward, Mochimaru was more than a stuffed toy. He was her shield. Her watcher. And when darkness approached, Yuna didn’t flinch. Because something older and angrier now flinched for her. It began subtly, as most quiet hauntings do. The moment Benizakura nestled her spirit into Mochimaru’s cotton-stuffed body, something shifted around Yuna. The air near her grew dense, fragrant with cherry blossoms that weren’t there. Her shadow grew longer than the sun allowed, and the dolls in the east wing stopped facing forward—they all began facing her. The seal on her palm was invisible to ordinary eyes, but it pulsed gently beneath her skin—like a heartbeat that didn’t quite belong to her. Every night when she lay in bed, she’d hear a lullaby drifting through her thoughts: no lyrics, just the sound of geishas walking barefoot down moonlit corridors. And beneath it... something lurking. The day after the sealing, she woke to find Mochimaru perched on her windowsill, staring out into the garden. He hadn’t been there when she fell asleep. “…How did you get up there?” she asked groggily, rubbing her eyes. Mochimaru slowly turned his head—just enough to make the seams groan. Then, as if nothing happened, he flopped forward face-first. “Oh, good,” Yuna muttered. “Cursed plushies with a flair for dramatics. Just what I needed.” Her siblings began to notice something was off. Ren, the youngest of the brothers, caught her talking to Mochimaru in the garden, crouched like a priestess and whispering. “Who are you talking to?” he asked from behind a tree. Yuna didn’t even look up. “My self-confidence.” “…Weird name for a stuffed rabbit.” “That’s what makes it ironic.” Ren narrowed his eyes. “You're acting spooky again. You haven’t even threatened to set my homework on fire in days.” “Spiritual growth.” That evening, Airi called her into the crafting room again. The scent of sandalwood hung in the air, and candles flickered in shapes that moved too smoothly to be random. “You've bonded with her, haven’t you?” Airi asked, turning away from her loom. Yuna sat beside her, fingers fiddling with a spare talisman. “She talks to me sometimes,” Yuna admitted, “but not like a friend. Like... a woman bored out of her eternal mind who occasionally tells me I’m not completely useless.” Airi nodded. “She’s protecting you. That’s how Benizakura works. She cloaks her guardianship in disdain. She only respects strength.” “Then we’ll get along awfully well.” The next time it happened, it was during a walk to the back of the shrine. Yuna had wandered out in the twilight, Mochimaru dangling lazily from her hand, the clouds overhead stretched thin and violet. She was halfway through rereading a weathered tome about ancestral rites when something snapped in the forest beyond the torii gate. A crackle. A whisper. A shadow. Three malformed spirits—hungry, tangled remnants of forgotten regrets—slithered between the trees. Their mouths were too wide. Their arms were too long. Their legs didn’t exist. They moved like smoke wearing skin. Yuna froze. Her breath caught. They grinned. And then— Mochimaru’s button eyes glowed crimson. The stuffed body flew from her arms like it had been yanked by unseen hands. Mid-air, the cotton toy unravelled into long, blood-stained ribbons, and from it emerged a ghostly shape cloaked in a floral-patterned kimono, hair cascading like midnight waterfalls, eyes glowing like twin sakura moons. Benizakura. Her voice rolled over the clearing like soft thunder. “You dare slink toward my vessel?” The spirits shrieked. One tried to flee. Another charged. Benizakura raised a single finger. With a sudden clap of pressure and wind, all three spirits slammed into the shrine's barrier. Their forms distorted, then unraveled like wet paper left in the rain. Yuna watched, eyes wide. Benizakura turned her head, only just. “…Weak. I barely needed to lift a hand.” Then she snapped her fingers, and the spirit retreated back into the stitched body of Mochimaru, who flopped lifelessly into the dirt once again. Yuna swallowed hard. “…Thanks?” The button eyes blinked. “Next time,” Benizakura whispered from within, “try not reading forbidden texts next to cursed trees. I like a nap, not a siege.” That night, Yuna stood before the mirror, lifting her palm to examine the mark beneath the skin. It glowed faintly again. She traced it gently. She wasn’t just a girl anymore. She was a bearer of Maerachi. A living seal. A demon’s jailer. And something else—something deeper—was stirring inside her, like threads tightening, like a stage being built for a performance she hadn’t agreed to. But she wasn’t afraid. She was the girl who made dolls and bound monsters or perhaps a monster. The girl who bled on buttons and woke spirits with names almost. The girl with a bunny plushie that could punch a demon through three walls. She grinned to herself in the mirror, eyes gleaming. “Let them come,” she whispered.