The night of Kyoto flourished. After all, it was a festival. Colorful lights lit up the city, as hundreds of people crowded to watch as dozens of people danced throughout the streets with flowers plastered across their bodies. They wore rainbow-colored clothing in order to truly stand out. It was a starlit night where even children gathered. The Red-Light District thrived with customers, as brothels, strip clubs, bars, and more, excelled in visitors. Colorful lanterns painted the streets, and musicians stood out in arrays to light the atmosphere with music.
"Come on, Inohara! We don't have all damn day!" Inohara, a middle-aged woman, nervously crept up. Her body lithe, she had clear, tanned skin and back-length black hair which complimented her face, which possessed amber eyes and supple, red lips. In all matters of the word, Inohara was very gorgeous, especially for a woman of her age. She held a long flute to her mouth and started to vigorously play the flute. The beautiful woman played an especially amazing tune which echoed throughout the air. She played on and on, showing no signs of distress, and while she did so, the man unsheathed a small knife and made multiple shallow cuts across her flesh, drawing blood before making another after ten seconds. Eventually, her body had been riddled with cuts and blood, and though shallow, they popped blood vessels, which made them look much more severe than they actually were. After a few minutes, Inohara dropped. She'd passed out of exhaustion from playing the flute too much, and from thin air manifested a being.
Levitating was a large figure with pale, ashen skin and a long, black blanket which completely covered his face and lowered to the bottom of his torso. The blanket had multiple black characters of no human language, but within a second, they manipulated to form multiple kanji;" 欲, 絶滅, 殺人" or "Greed, Destruction, Murder" which this being is said to embody. It seemed that these characters warped to fit the language of the man. Sticking from this blanket were two razor sharp, red horns, and if you were to look at the skin which was revealed, you'd see multiple black cracks on its body, like shattered glass. The monster stood at the massive height of 300 cm(9'10ft), and its weight fit its height, as the being stood with muscles engraved into his body like stone. It possessed four arms, each arm ended with claws like large fishing hooks, all across the arms were various eyes with pitch black pupils. Like a moon, the entity was surreal; it looked so close, and yet, so far, like a distant dream. The monster's aura was indescribably evil, to the point where it gnawed away at the man. He wanted to turn away and run as far away from this being as he could, as the entity shrouded the area in such pitch blackness, that the middle-aged man couldn't see anything.
"I am Mara, the Emperor of all Yōkai. For what do you, a putrid mortal, invoke me into this realm?" The being spoke with a highly condescending tone, it seemed as though "it" didn't yearn to be in the man's presence, forced, like a horse made to run a race. The man had a clear lump in his throat, gulping as masses of sweat dropped from his face. The two entered a stare off, like the ones that you'd see in a Western 1700s comics, and the middle-aged man was losing. "I am Sakamoto Murasaki, and I wish to strike a deal between the two of us. This deal is as follows." The sensation of dread wrecked Sakamoto's body, which caused him to speak at a lower, weaker tone than usual.
Mara waited impatiently. It seemed like every second past was a year he'd spend torturing Sakamoto in the afterlife. He looked like a busy worker to a child; he clearly had things to do, and merely humored himself for a few minutes. Sakamoto took the initiative to continue. "I run a brothel with merely four workers, and customers are heavily scarce. I beckon you to bring prosper to my brothel; to make it the most successful brothel in all of Japan, where even noblemen visit. Should you do that, I offer to you my firstborn child."… Silence ensued. For thirty seconds, not even a single sound was muttered, before Mara suddenly appeared directly in front of Sakamoto, as though the being had teleported. "I accept." It was all that Mara said, reaching his lower right hand to the face of Sakamoto and piercing his forehead with his claw, drawing a long, horizontal line which dripped with blood. "This is a permanent deal, and the effect will take place in one week." Mara's deep voice echoed from his lips before he'd sink into the ground, nowhere to be found. With his disappearance also followed his malicious miasma, which made Sakamoto feel like he'd just been rescued from asphyxiating from an hour.
Afterward, the Murasaki family experienced indescribable wealth. The brothel that Sakamoto ran had dozens of beautiful women, and hundreds of customers visited, even nobles. True to his word, Mara was the cause of this, but he'd collect his dues.