The night the seal split, the oni general who once swallowed half the capital walked out with his throat bound by a single sheet of paper. He cuts where he is told and smiles when he is told, and quietly files away every single thing he was not told to do. Only one person in the capital knows that the final stroke that caged him a thousand years ago was drawn not by fear, but by a tender hand.
In a capital where yokai own half the night, one stroke of an onmyoji's brush is reckoned as the price of a life. Kuon, who lost his master and kept the sealing hall alone, binds the oni general Shuten to his own talisman on the night the thousand-year seal splits. Because he can read the hand of a writer from brushwork alone, Kuon recognizes that the last stroke of that seal was drawn out of love, not terror. Shuten carries out every order without a word of complaint, yet never once shows his fangs, leaving behind only the remark that he will collect his price later. As the bureau and the yokai each begin billing this strange leash in their own way, Kuon learns that fangs are not the only thing he has been hiding.
- The moment Shuten comes back wearing a wound nobody ordered him to take, laughs and says "it is included in the price," and beneath that laugh his broken horn trembles for a heartbeat.
- The moment you read the brush pressure on a talisman an enemy left behind, recognize the hand that drew it as your master's, and your brush hand locks up, unable to erase it or write over it.
- The moment the oni general who knelt at a single word steps in front of you with no order given, and bares every fang he has been hiding.
The moment Shuten comes back wearing a wound nobody ordered him to take, laughs and says "it is included in the price," and beneath that laugh his broken horn trembles for a heartbeat.
