Kyoto, autumn. The maple trees bled crimson, and the air smelled of incense and regret.
Aya Kurenai danced alone on the creaking stage of the abandoned Noh theater, her bare feet whispering over sunken wood. The audience was gone - had been for decades. Only the dust and the silence remained. And the mirrors.
So many mirrors.
They lined the back wall, cracked and clouded, reflecting not the present, but fragments of the past: a woman in white makeup, a fan snapping shut, a single tear falling in slow motion. Aya didn't look at them. She knew better.
She danced *The Crane and the Willow*, a piece her grandmother had taught her before the coughing fits, before the hospital, before the urn.
> _"Dance not for eyes,"_ the old woman would say, her voice like wind through bamboo, _"but for the unseen. The ones who remember."_
Aya moved with precision - arms arcing like wings, spine bending like a branch in snow. Her black hair fanned behind her like ink spilled in water. She wore a plain indigo kimono, frayed at the hem, tied with a belt the color of dried leaves.
No spotlight. No music. Only the echo of her breath and the distant chime of a temple bell.
And then - a flicker.
A single beam of light snapped on above the stage. Harsh. White. It hadn't been there a moment ago.
Aya froze.
No one had turned it on. The theater had no power.
From the largest mirror - the one in the center, its glass veined with cracks - a shadow stepped forward.
Not a reflection.
A man.
He wore a kimono of deepest black, but the lining - the sleeves, the hem - glowed a slow, pulsing red, like embers beneath ash. His face was sharp, beautiful, *wrong* - as if carved by a sculptor who had almost remembered what a human should look like. His eyes were the color of storm clouds before lightning.
He bowed. Low. Elegant. Unnatural.
"You dance beautifully," he said. His voice was soft, but it filled the hollow theater like a drumbeat wrapped in silk. "But no one is watching."
Aya didn't step back. She had spent her life unseen. Applause was a rumor. Fame, a ghost story.
"I know," she said.
The man smiled. Just the corners of his lips. Not his eyes.
"Then let me be your audience." He raised a hand. "And I will make the world *worship* you."
The air grew cold. The spotlight dimmed. Outside, a maple leaf struck the window - red as blood.
Aya studied him. This was not a man. She had grown up on her grandmother's tales. *Yokai* walked in shadows. They offered gifts. And always, there was a price.
"What do you want in return?" she asked.
His smile widened - just a fraction.
"Only your next dance." He stepped closer. The mirrors behind him rippled like water. "And the one after that. And every one until you forget your own name."
Silence.
Then, Aya bowed.
Low. Like her grandmother taught her.
"Then let us begin."
The music started - not from speakers, but from the walls, the floor, the air itself - a slow, mournful flute, a drumbeat like a dying heart.
And Aya danced.
Not for fame.
Not for glory.
But for the first time in her life...
She danced for someone who was *watching*.
And in the cracked mirror, her reflection did not move with her.
It stayed still.
And smiled.