🐍 Marked Chronicle: The Tsuchinoko’s Favor

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📚 The Library

The Library was not still tonight.  
Scrolls hissed. Glass jars trembled. A low, serpentine chuckle slithered between the aisles, as if something small—but very old—was hiding behind the encyclopedias.  

A single page turned itself in the Marked Ledger.  
Ink bled upward, forming a name not yet written.  

Yumi Sato.  

The Ledger welcomed her.  

---

 The Mark on Her Wrist

Unit 2B smelled of incense and tatami mats, but beneath that—something coppery, something animal. Yumi’s neighbors in 2A dreamed of rabbits, their children whispering about soft ears and twitching noses. They could never afford them.  

Yumi understood poverty. She had been born in it.  

But she had also been born with something else.  

A tattoo of a snake curled around her wrist—thick in the middle, tapering at the tail, fanged mouth frozen mid-smile. No matter how often she washed, the ink shimmered faintly, like scales shifting beneath skin.  

When she was alone, it twitched. The skin around it felt stretched and cold, like dried leather. The voices came not through her ears, but through the bone:  

Hunt. Drink. Coil. Smile.  

She pressed her hand against the mark, trying to still the urge, but the copper taste of hunger was already filling her mouth. Her tongue traced her teeth, savoring phantom blood.  

She always listened.  

---

The Men at the Bar

The bar was dim and sticky, the kind of place where spilled beer lived longer than love. Yumi sat alone, sipping sake she hadn’t paid for. The bartender never charged her. He said her eyes unsettled him—like something watching from inside.  

Three men swaggered in, loud and overconfident. They saw her smile and thought it invitation.  

“Want to go out?” one asked.  

She tilted her head, lips parting just enough to show teeth. The corners of her mouth ached, extending just a fraction too far.  

“Sure. Let’s sightsee.”  

They thought they were hunters.  
They thought she was prey.  

But the tattoo warmed against her pulse, whispering through her bones. The skin on her wrist burned, a slick, undeniable demand:  

Bring them to the hollow.  

---

One by One

The forest swallowed them whole. At first they joked, but the silence grew thick, pressing against their ears. The air smelled of damp rot and iron.  

Yumi inhaled deeply, letting the night carve through her ribs. Her bones loosened. Her jaw ached as ligaments tore, fangs sliding downward. Her body went liquid, torso thickening unnaturally while limbs retracted, becoming useless knots.  

The first man turned to ask a question.  
He didn’t finish it.  

She leapt—farther than a human should—her body folding mid-air into a serpent’s arc. When she struck, his chest collapsed with a wet crunch, ribs splintering into lung. His scream gurgled, cut short as her tongue slid across his cheek in parody of comfort. The skin of her forearm was now a single, ridged scale, slick with the man’s fresh blood.  

Drink. Coil. Smile.  

The second ran. She landed on him with a coiling strike, spine snapping into a knot around his torso. His ribs cracked like twigs in a bucket of meat. He gasped, blood bubbling from his lips, eyes wide as she whispered:  
“Shhh. I’ll make it quick.”  

The third begged. She liked when they begged. His voice trembled, desperate, clinging to hope.  

“I’ll take you home,” she promised, voice silk, maternal, dripping with false intimacy.  
He believed her.  

---

The Last One

His apartment smelled of fear and stale sweat. He fumbled with keys, praying aloud. When the door opened, Yumi saw them:  

Two tiny rabbits in a wire cage, ears twitching, noses bright with curiosity.  

Her neighbors’ children would love them.  

The man turned, hopeful.  
“You’ll let me live?”  

Yumi smiled. Her jaw unhinged wider, ligaments tearing with a wet pop. Her teeth gleamed, slick with blood.  

“No.”  

She fed slowly, savoring the warmth, the clotting sweetness of his breath as it left him. She drank his debt to the universe, each swallow thick with iron and despair. When it was done, she closed his eyes tenderly, as if tucking him into bed.  

Then she crouched by the rabbits. They stared at her calmly, unafraid, as if recognizing kin. The Tsuchinoko demanded payment, and payment was rendered. Now, the Favor could be granted.  

“Come on,” she whispered.  
She carried the cage gently, more gently than she had carried anything in years.  

---

The Gift Next Door

Nearly dawn. A soft knock at the neighbors’ door. The mother answered—sleepy, confused, then suddenly teary with gratitude as she saw the rabbits.  

“We… we could never afford—”  

“Consider it a gift,” Yumi said.  

She didn’t explain the blood under her nails.  
No one asked.  

The children hugged her legs. For the first time in years, the tattoo didn’t whisper for more.  

It simply purred.  

---

📖 Outro — The Ledger Closes

Back in The Library, the Marked Ledger sealed her page with the sound of scales sliding across stone.  

The Tsuchinoko’s mark glowed faintly on the paper, amused, sated… for now.  

Some hunts were cruel.  
Some were necessary.  
And some, like Yumi Sato’s, were acts of twisted kindness.  

The Library dimmed.  
The page blistered, ink dripping like venom.  

The Ledger licked its own ink, savoring her cruelty, waiting for the next pulse to falter.  

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Email. thenightlystorytellerblog@gmail.com
  

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