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"If I'm understanding you correctly," Ginko's voice came out even, muted by the sharp hissing of cicadas on the trees as he followed Yuzuki through the grove, "every time you hide these eggs for the festival hunt, they're taken away before the kids can come looking for them?"

"Mhm," the girl, no older than fourteen herself, nodded solemnly. There was an exhaustion in her eyes, the kind of look that was unmistakably irritated at the tedium of doing something over and over with no results. It was strange and specific, and Ginko knew it all too well. "We've had to postpone it for three days, because of it. The festival is happening tonight, whether the egg hunt happens or not..."

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Ginko considered her words for a long moment--he'd truly never heard of something this specific with a mushi involved. Things were spirited away all the time, yes (people, too), but specifically eggs...? "Can you tell me more about the eggs?" he asked, taking a drag on the cigarette in his mouth and letting it out. The smoke wound into the air, snaking through tree branches, and then came back empty-handed. Strange... not a single hostile mushi around.

"Mhm... just quail eggs, the little round ones. We started out painting them really intricately, but each time they disappeared, we got more and more lazy," Yuzuki muttered. "You can't blame us, honestly. It was nearly fifty of the things each time, and we need those for food, too..."

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Ginko was silent, perhaps for too long, because Yuzuki shot him a dirty look upon stopping short in a small clearing. "You aren't taking this seriously, are you?" she snapped, her face scrunching in an angry pout at his indifferent gaze.

"I just have to wonder," Ginko began, "if this is less of a job for a mushi-shi, and more of a job for a local authority."

"It's not just an egg thief! I'm telling you, it's uncanny! And besides, the paint tastes terrible--it's not like any animal would want them after that," she muttered, then sighed and sat down against a tree, thunking her head back on it.

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Ginko watched her for a moment, then silently crouched down next to her, adjusting his legs beneath him to a more comfortable position while he smoked. He cast a sideward glance at her, catching to somber look on her face.

"It's just," Yuzuki began, and almost immediately trailed off. She folded her legs up to rest her arms on her knees, hugging them close. "It's my last year to hide eggs for the kids. When I'm fifteen, I have to do more adult things... I love painting them, and I love seeing the kids get so excited about them. That's all."

Ginko exhaled after a long beat of silence, running his fingers through white locks. "Alright," he murmured, slow and thoughtful. "Here's an idea."

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Satomi's head shot up in surprise as Yuzuki burst through the door of the workshop, the intruding girl's eyes fierce with determination. "Satomi! Call Kohaku and Jurou, go find them. We have eggs to paint."

"Again?" Satomi's face fell, a sigh rushing out of her as she sank back in her chair, staring at the gardening tool she was fixing. "Yuzuki, I don't think..."

"The mushi-shi said to," Yuzuki barked back, her voice a little softer than before, and that certainly did get Satomi's attention. She was out of her chair and running towards the door hurriedly, not bothering to take off her work gloves.

"Alright, but you better fix that tool while I'm gone!" she called, as soon as she was out the door.

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"Eh? Satomi, weren't you supposed to be fixing that rake?" Jurou looked up at her with a squint from where he sat on his hands and knees in one of the gardens. From the looks of things, he was using a tiny hand rake instead, while he was waiting on the turn of the larger, more efficient tool. "Where is it?"

"Never mind that, where's Kohaku?" Satomi asked, already sweating from the transition from the cool workshop to the hot sun outside.

Jurou gave her a quizzical look, standing up and rubbing under his chin where the straps of his wide hat were wet with sweat. "Uhh... I think last time I saw him, he was going to the coops. You might find him there... what's this about?"

"Don't worry about it, yet. Don't go anywhere, I'll be back," she said, clapping her hands together in a kind of pleading motion before tearing off towards the coops.

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The coops were messy as they always were, with hundreds upon hundreds of quail and pheasant running around in different pens. Satomi ducked into three of them, devoid of any sign of Kohaku, until she finally found the amber-haired boy sitting in a pen in the fourth with his lap covered in quail.

She approached slowly, not wanting to startle him, but figured that wasn't going to be much of an option. The boy's eyes were closed, head leaned back against the wood of the pen. She sighed, and tapped a fingernail on the wood, making him blink open his wide eyes. "Kohaku," she whispered loudly, and as if her voice had had a second rousing effect, he jolted slightly, startling the quail away. "Yuzuki said she called a mushi-shi. He's gonna take care of whatever's messing with the eggs, so we're supposed to go paint more--no, wait, keep your eyes open!" she exclaimed, brows knitting as she watched Kohaku sink back into his trance.

"I don't know or care what a mushi-shi is... they've suffered enough, having so many of their babies taken by the mean spirits of the forest," the boy muttered, shaking his head slowly. "I'm not helping."

Satomi's expression flatlined, and she sighed, putting her face in her hands. "The eggs aren't babies, 'Haku, they don't have any babies inside... come on, this is our last chance to prove to the elders that the egg hunt can still go on!"

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Kohaku didn't answer, instead welcoming a quail that hopped up into his lap and settled down. Satomi's brows knitted, and she let out a heavy sigh, hurrying out of there before she got the urge to drag Kohaku out herself. Instead she stalked back towards Jurou in the field, and with enough explanation, he dusted off his hands and joined her in meeting Yuzuki back at the workshop.

In a short time, they'd gathered, washed, painted, and set out to dry around thirty eggs, a decent haul considering their limited time and low resources. Exhausted but wearing a smile on her face, Yuzuki set out the last egg, painted with colorful swirl patterns and natural speckles beneath the veneer of paint. "Perfect," she sighed, nodding to herself and checking the status of her friends. Satomi had accidentally rubbed paint on her cheek while trying to tuck her long hair behind her ears, and Jurou's clothes, already ruined with dirt, had been more ruined with red paint--but he seemed focused on the last egg he was painting, clumsy as his hands were.

It wasn't long before Ginko found the workshop, and found the kids, and the eggs. He blinked at their handiwork, surprised by how much they'd gotten done between the three of them. "Huh. Alright. This should be plenty to lure the mushi out."

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"Mushi...?" Jurou mumbled, all of this terminology new to him. "Is that what's been taking the eggs? Some kind of animal?" He finally placed his last egg down, and looked like he was about to collapse--his eyes were tired, as if staring at too-close things was a difficulty for him.

"Not quite an animal, but you're almost right," Ginko explained, managing a small smile at the kids' interested faces. Yuzuki seemed to know the most out of all of them. "Think of it as... a spirit. That's the easiest way I could describe it... sort of like a spirit that can interact with the physical world. Moreso than that, they're... sort of like the first things ever created. They've been here for a long time, and they can cause all sorts of trouble, or good things, for people."

Satomi's eyes widened, looking a little perturbed. "And you think... you think those things are what are stealing our eggs?" She seemed incredulous at best, and worried at worst.

"Well," Ginko began, glancing at Yuzuki, whose confident smile twisted into something embarrassed. "It's possible." She seemed to relax at that, and Ginko shifted his cigarette to the other side of his mouth in thought. "Either way... we need to hide these. How is that usually done?"

"Well... Yuzuki's been doing it on her own lately, since everyone else has more duties," Satomi reported. "But if we all help, I'm sure we can get it done faster. It's a special occasion, anyway," she added, with a small smile in her friends' direction. "Last time we'll get to do this, for sure."

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Ginko's expression flickered, something calculating in his eyes, before he finally, almost reluctantly, nodded. "Alright. Yuzuki, you said the egg hunt's scheduled for sundown?"

"Mhm," she said, grabbing a large paper fan from the wall and gently wafting a breeze over the more freshly painted eggs. The first ones they'd done had already dried. "I'd say these should be dry enough in about ten minutes... and then..."

"We probably have two hours at best, before the sun starts to sink over the horizon," Jurou nodded, gathering some of the dry eggs into the pouch in the front of his workclothes, careful with them as he filled his pocket.

Ginko picked up a few as well, then held them out to Satomi. "You two go on ahead... take the southern forest, behind the creek. We'll take the northern," he said holding up his fingers, splayed, with two eggs in each between his fingers.

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"Remember to keep 'em low. Only one or two kids know how to climb trees, so that'd be kinda unfair," Yuzuki piped from her spot by the roots of a large tree, carefully nsetling a pair of colorful eggs among the moss there, beneath large, fanned leaves.

Ginko placed one of the few eggs he'd taken (Yuzuki had ended up carrying most of the remaining ones) in what looked to be an abandoned animal den, hidden by soft ferns. He stood up with a crack in his back, peering at the sky, which was beginning to fade to a shade of sharp orange. "Almost time... the kids should be gathering at the gate to the town soon, right?"

Ginko looked over at Yuzuki, blinking as he noticed her eyes were closed, wavering slightly. "H-hm?" she mumbled, blinking them open and looking up, a small smile on her face. She looked exhausted, suddenly. "Yeah! Yep, real soon... sorry, I'm running out of steam. Haven't been sleeping too great lately."