—Finally, this time has come.

The oni smiles, gripping the letter so tightly it nearly tears.

✧• ──────────── •✧

This is a story from long, long ago. Though, by the measure of an oni, it may feel like only yesterday.

Once, there was a small oni child. With innocent eyes that could not yet see all the mountain had to offer, he was an ordinary child who would tear up at the slightest stumble. For several years, there were no other children in the settlement, and the little oni was all alone. Yet he roamed the mountains freely, and despite a lingering loneliness, he never doubted that this was the world he was meant to live in.

One day, while running about as usual, he realized he had reached the foot of the mountain. He stood at the boundary shrine, a place he had been told to avoid because of its proximity to the human village.

(Is that... a human child?)

Looking down at the village from the shrine, the oni child fixed his gaze on a single human, unable to look away.

How adorable, how pure.

That human child, with an appearance so different from his own, left a powerful impression. From that day forward, the oni child's world was painted in vibrant colors.