Heh, so you have also dedicated a bit of your talent to Twelve Kingdoms? Nice one-shot with the battles and the character's inner turmoils well developed and portrayed like in The Wounded. Too bad we couldn't get to see Rakushun play a bigger role but I understand this story focuses on Yoko.

Nice job and I hope to see more of The Wounded soon!

So, this is where it all begins to fall apart.

Nice twist, running into Yo-ou like that. After all, at this point there's nothing that says it couldn't have happened. Plus, as she travels, in the anime we see no such conflict; how is it then that she becomes able to kill so unflinchingly?

There has to be some sort of precursor to make her numb to the idea... even when she fought Sugimoto and the wolves, she was hesitant. How could she change so quickly?

She'd have to willing kill someone along the way, right?

Wrong? Eh, who knows... but well done, just the same!

That was good, really good. You captured the feeling of Youko's insane paranoia very well. My only grip is that it was a little too coincidental that Youko ran into her predecessor in the forest.