Life as a ronin was difficult, but he had become accustomed to going from here to there, being a sword in the service of the highest bidder. His last assignment forced him to be there, looking for someone he knew he would not find, but there were still enough remnants of honor left in him to keep his word.

In that gloomy, humid and dark place the air was heavy and dense, the wind brought smells that took him to his childhood, when he went to see the parade of foxes. The same feeling of smallness and helplessness overwhelmed him for a moment, but his character was no longer that of that curious and unconscious child. He had fought battles, killed and bled, looked into the horror of death and war in the eyes, and survived. He was not easily frightened. But something in that place stripped him of courage. He had barely penetrated that place when he felt that cold in the mouth of his stomach, that sweet taste of death, that chill in the back of his neck. The forest welcomed him with open arms and when he entered it, he closed them tightly. As soon as he had entered the forest he became disoriented, but he did not give it importance, because it was early and the sun shined strongly on that spring day.

He was to look for the son of a wealthy silk merchant, who had disappeared along with his lover and those they last saw in the vicinity of the forest. Toshiro asked why he had not sent men to look for them in the forest, but between detours and babbling the merchant told him that no man from the surrounding area would want to step on that forest, and a shadow of fear and shame covered his face. Toshiro didn't ask any more, because he knew that war and famine led people to make desperate decisions, and that people had the scars of both still fresh.

Thus, Toshiro stepped decisively into that immense forest that was dozing under the shadow of the great Mountain and now he regretted having done so. Now he also understood the inordinate amount of koban Rotten leaves cushioned the less and less determined footprints, trees twisted and their branches floated giving the forest the appearance of a living being. The remains of an abandoned female garment cleared her mind and she resumed the search, managing to focus and ignore her surroundings. He went a little further, and a known smell offended his nose. After an area in which the trees seemed to close, he found some carved stairs almost melted with the mossy ground and after lowering them he entered a small clearing surrounded by tall trees whose tops prevented the light from touching the ground. There they were, the two young men, or what was left of them, semi-devoured and mutilated. Its members were scattered by the clearing, but that was not what horrified the tanned ronin. Their bodies were part of a carnage area, filled with bones and human remains that covered the forest floor like a carpet. In that gigantic ossary he was aware that perhaps he had made the worst mistake of his life, because when making a tremendous effort, he entered the carpet of bones to collect some remnant of the young people as proof for his client, he felt that the heat left his body and that his forces disappeared. Then he heard it. That female voice of indefinite age. That melody of flutes with impossible notes that drilled his brain. The laughter and cries of abandoned children. The pleas of dying elders... Toshiro, his face bathed in tears, appealed to a last hint of sanity and in an act that he had repeated hundreds of times, he unsheathed his blade with the speed of lightning, which he whistled cutting through the air. This simple act, precise and mechanical, made him regain consciousness, bringing him out of the darkness in which he found himself. Then he saw her, on the other side of the clearing, advancing towards him on the crisp bones, carrying a flashlight in his hand, and her white face was death, and she was surrounded by a court of nightmarish creatures. It was then that the parade of foxes returned to his mind, he remembered how he was discovered and persecuted, how he was hunted down and tortured without him being able to defend himself. But not this time he was a child. He smiled because he knew that he was going to die there, but that he would not die as a weak child, nor as a dishonored samurai. He was going to fight monsters and his approach shone in that forest full of death. He raised the saber, and screaming, charged against the darkness...

The next day, at dawn, some peasants saw him leave the forest and lose himself on the roads to the south. His gaze was lost, his face pale. a strange silver menpo hung from his obi. The peasants whispered to the conclusion that this was actually a yurei and that Toshiro would never actually leave the forest ...