“Other victims,” he said quietly, tearing a clean strip from a shimmering blue robe. He examined Mugs’ wounds and began to dress them. Mugs had many questions about what had just occurred and Shin saw the words before they were spoken and he answered.

“There was another. The creature ambushed me in the darkness of their resting place. It threw me into a pile of bodies and tried to rip apart my chest. I resisted. Almost died. Stabbed it through the heart, like the one atop you…”

“That simple, eh?” Mugs shook his head. “Damn, if it wasn’t for you… I don’t even want to know what that thing would have done.”

“Disemboweled your corpse and dragged you into the same room where they eat, sleep, and defecate.” Shin paused. “I did not find the boy inside. Did you—”

“Yeah.”

Shin stopped for a moment, almost finished with the makeshift dressing. “I am sorry.”

Jaw clenched, Mugs grunted. “Won’t be your neck swinging from a tree for it.”

“He was… important?”

Mugs snorted. “Not entirely, no.”

“His father is important?” Shin guessed, with a nod of affirmation from his partner. “That will make life very difficult for you.”

“You don’t fuckin’ say.”

Shin finished the bandage and stepped back before starting on the other wound. “Who is he, if I may ask?”

“It’d be better if you don’t.”

“I see. Can you walk?”

“Should be able to,” Mugs grunted, testing his weight on the injured ankle. “Right. Time to go.”

But they didn’t leave at first. Shin insisted on seeing him: the boy with the desecrated corpse. They were back in that room again, and Shin’s only reaction to the butchery was a quick intake of breath. He stepped closer to the boy’s head and bowed, pausing before taking the straw kasa hanging from his neck and placing it over the boy’s disfigured face. He muttered a few words in Japanese.

Mugs was silent.

“He walks blind and mute in Yomi. May he find peace in its meadows.” He shifted away and glanced at Mugs’ brooding figure. “The boy needs a burial.”

“I know,” Mugs said quietly. “But he’s not getting one.”

“His spirit must be put to rest!”

“It already has been.” Mugs watched Shin closely. He had not been with the man too long but already figured this was the closest he had seen the respectable tracker to being upset; his agitation was clearly outlined by widened eyes and furrowed brow. “We put down his killers. Barely, if I might add.” He looked around uneasily. “And given what happened I say we put as much distance between this place and us with the four feet we still got before their friends pay a visit and gnaw them off. Make sense?”

Shin grabbed his kasa and strode from the room silently. If he was honest, Mugs felt somewhat guilty leaving him like this. Were this any other situation he would have begun the preparations himself without hesitation. But now he was injured, having just survived a trip into the den of cannibals, and most of all he could no longer stand to look at the boy’s body. He felt sick, knowing he would have to return with the news to a man he very much feared. A man you never give bad news if you enjoy the beat of your heart and the air in your lungs. Yes, he felt awfully ill at the thought.