CHAPTER 2

There was something deeply comical about two teenage kids chasing down two large-bodied oni in the depths of the night, but Kou was simply not in the right mind to think about that. Neither was his sister, who spent a good part of the night grumbling and hissing to herself. She felt particularly irritable tonight. Kou wasn’t sure why.

That probably had to do with the two Japanese ogres they’re chasing down, but he reserved judgment.

“They’re still comin’ at us, Aniki!”

Oh. That’s the first time this entire evening that either one of them spoke intelligible words.

The call was rather urgent, and very sudden, because it was also their first time ever seeing the Enforcers in action. Kou had just finished up his stuff at school. The high school he attended and the middle school Chi attended were affiliated schools set in the same plot of land, so he always went to and back from school with her—sometimes she went home first as she wasn’t part of any clubs, but although she wouldn’t admit it for the world, Kou knew that she also made a habit of waiting for him. That day was such a day.

That evening, though, was nothing like their usual.

While they were still on the train ride home, the day suddenly turned gray.

The sunlight was there, just kissing the horizon, ready to say its goodbyes, and in the empty space in front of Kou, there suddenly appeared a figure cloaked in white robe. The figure also wore a farmer’s wide hat with a cloth that covered their face, with the kanji for shiki—meaning ‘ceremony’—adorning the cloth. The figure was kneeling, their head bowed towards the siblings, with one hand solidly on the ground and one rested on its one raised knee.

Kou could feel the Authority within him stirring into action. He knew the figure was bowing to him.

“An Enforcer,” Chi muttered anxiously.

“But why?” Kou asked.

“I beg forgiveness of Your Highness for this unsightly unprompted appearance,” the figure spoke. Their voice was weird—the closest Kou could describe it was like the sound of a thousand whispers coalescing into a single voice, loud enough to be heard clearly and quiet enough to require attention. It didn’t even sound human. “Two oni were spotted attacking a human being just a second ago. We are hunting them as we speak. How would Your Highness like to handle this?”

Chi stood up suddenly. “Oni attack? In broad daylight?”

“Yes.”

“Nii-chan—”

“I gotcha.” Kou grabbed his bag and stood up as well. “Enforcer-san, can you show us?”

“As you command.”

Kou scratched his head. “It’s not a command, though….”

All things in the world exist with portions dictated by a spectrum. On one end of this line, there existed things that were truly and exclusively physical—the entirety of the body of planet Earth, for example. Water, that’s mostly physical. Microbes were physical. Most farm animals were physical. Rocks are mostly physical. Bricks are entirely physical.

The majority of humans are mostly physical.

Vampires were a bit of a different story.

The Enforcer opened their palm, and both Kou and Chi took that hand. Images just appeared in their head—the attack of the two oni, their eyes reddened and their drools slightly dripping, their bloodthirst thick in the air and hunger for flesh even thicker; the victim, a deliveryman who just left his small truck, probably to clock out for the day; and the exact location of the attack.

It was close to home. Kou and Chi nodded at each other.

With that, the Enforcer disappeared and the world regained its colors. The sun sank.

The siblings could feel power surging in their veins.

All things in the world exist with portions dictated by a spectrum. The majority of humans are mostly physical. Vampires, however, like all nightwalkers, share half their existence with the other end of the line: they are also spiritual existences, which means they were also less pliable to the laws that restrict the physical. The laws of physics, for example.

The train stopped a few seconds afterwards. It wasn’t the siblings’ stop, but they left the train anyway—they just went for the closest shade of darkness they could find, making sure that they were out of everyone’s eyes, and disappeared into thin air.

They reappeared at the site of the attack.

Chi sniffed for a second. “That way,” she pointed in one direction—straight to where Kou knew would be the residential area in just a few blocks.

Two rampaging oni, deep in the night, entering the human residential area? That couldn’t be good. The siblings shared another nod, and with that, they gave chase.

Despite their deeply intimidating name, the Enforcers weren’t actually capable of much. Not even Kou or Chi knew exactly how they functioned or how many of them there were. Sometimes, with most infractions even, they could appear and handle the problems on their own. Sometimes they were capable of killing nightwalkers. Other times, like just earlier, they couldn’t do much but inform the Kokonoes of what’s been going on. Kou himself never even saw an Enforcer until just now, and Chi had only ever seen them once.

He was the King, and unlike a lot of other things, the Authority didn’t tell him what’s up with the Enforcers. His Great Ancestor still refused to speak to him after that one time in his dream. His dad was out of commission. Chi was as clueless as he was.

That didn’t feel good at all.

It was with this silent annoyance, and a few other things from school, that Kou chased after the oni.

Much like the Enforcer’s memory showed, when the siblings found them, the oni were definitely out of their minds—they were somehow kept above ground level by the Enforcers, making sure that they couldn’t attack the humans down on the road, keeping them jumping on the rooftops, but Kou wasn’t sure how long they’d last.

“Nii-chan!”

“I know!”

Kou decided to lean—feel the supernatural half of his existence take hold, going through multiple layers of reality in the blink of an eye, and draw out what remaining power he had to feel himself joining the air. His body became lighter. His jumps became tighter.

It was almost like he was but a creeping mist.

The feeling was vague, as Kou wasn’t used to it yet, but he knew his sister was doing the same.

Kou decided to step a little stronger, jump a little higher, as if he was flying in the air. He had no wings, but it definitely felt like he did. Slowly, but certainly, the two oni came into clearer view, running just a few tens of feet ahead.

And that was it. That was as fast and as far their own abilities could take them. Any further than this, and they would both have to lean deeper—Kou knew Chi had no problem with that, given how in touch she was with her own vampirism, but Kou would be lying if he said he didn’t feel like hesitating.

Any further than this, and you’ll need extra blood, he reasoned.

“They’re still comin’ at us, Aniki!”

Oh. That’s the first time this entire evening that either one of those oni spoke intelligible words. Kou didn’t even notice when the light in their eyes changed—gone was the reddish tint in their eyes, gone was the insanity, gone were the bloodthirst and the visible desire to hunt for flesh. In their place, still running away mostly confused, were just two oni who were terrified out of their pants.

(Yes, they’re wearing pants. Kou knew to never underestimate nightwalker culture.)

“How far until we lose ‘em?!” the larger of the two oni replied.

“We can’t!” the smaller one whimpered. “It’s the Brocon Vampire!”

Kou groaned. Little dude just sealed his own fate.

Kou could almost hear bones crack right by his side, along with an audible snap of the nerves, compounded by a very loud snikt of extremely sharp claws stretching out of what used to be human fingernails in less than a second, and Chi’s presence just disappeared.

“Who—”

Chi reappeared again way ahead of Kou, her fangs bared, her claws outstretched.

“—the hell—”

The oni screamed in sheer terror as the young vampire gained on them.

“—are you calling—”

The raging vampire rained all her anger—

“—a BROCON?!”

And, with that, she sliced and diced her way past the two oni. Kou knew that Chi was the better vampire between the two of them—and, given her reputation, he felt that everyone knew, really—but he also knew that she had quite a few berserk buttons to go with her infamy. Even he knew not to push them whenever he could avoid to.

“You two broke one of the Four Absolutes,” she said as she washed her nails of oni blood with a quick swish. “Have some self-awareness, at least.”

“Nice catch, Little Sister.”

Chi recoiled in disgust at the pronoun. “Do that one more time, and I’ll never call you nii-chan ever again.”

“Soz, Chi. Nice catch.”

“Thanks.” she sighed, looking at the two incapacitated oni on the ground. Three Enforcers appeared next to them, kneeling per their usual pose in front of the vampires, as if awaiting orders. “You could’ve really gone faster, though.”

“Yeah, but that’ll mean I must sleep longer and drink more blood. We can’t afford that in this economy.”

“Our mom’s buying us blood until we move out of the house, what are you talking about?”

“Adverse effects of addiction?”

“The need for sustenance isn’t addiction—argh, why am I even arguing with you?!”

“Chi.” This time, Kou used his serious tone. His sister noticed that. “Don’t kill them.”

Chi replied with a glare. “They broke one of the Four Absolutes.”

“Did the human die, though?”

“No, but—”

“Do the oni usually do this?”

“No, I don’t think any oni would dare come to any human center of power like Tokyo ever since Minamoto-no-Yorimitsu slaughtered Shuten-douji, but—”

“Precisely.” Kou took a deep breath, getting his thoughts in order. “This is weird. I could’ve sworn I saw hints of bloodlinking when they attacked.”

“Hints of what?”

“I know, it’s impossible, all nightwalkers in Japan are tied by Contract to the Authority. But you know exactly how bloodlinked humans look like—these two looked the same.”

Chi fell silent, her eyebrows furrowed, her hand on her chin. “Are you saying that the Authority is weakening?”

“Either that, or someone found a workaround.”

“Or,” Chi glared again, “these oni were just going rogue and weren’t bloodlinked or the like.”

“Maybe, maybe not. At this point, there’s no way to know for sure—if they’re already conscious again just a few minutes in, even if they were bloodlinked, I guess that bloodlink can’t be very strong to begin with.”

“Nii-chan, that’s still bad news. Oh, no, that’s terrible news.” Chi’s expression was grave. “A creature can’t be bloodlinked to more than one master, and all nightwalkers in Japan are linked to the Authority. If someone found a way to bloodlink with nightwalkers despite that, there’s no telling what else could happen. I hope it’s just a case of them going rogue, but if you bring bloodlinking into the equation, we may already be too late.”

Kou looked around. Ah, there actually was one way to be sure. “Enforcer-san,” Kou turned to the kneeling figures. “Who do you recognize as King?”

“You, Your Highness.”

“Do you feel any less of my Authority?”

“We do not, Your Highness.”

“Do you feel the presence of one stronger than I am on Japanese lands?”

A second of silence. “We do not, your Highness.”

That second of silence felt very uncomfortable, but Kou decided to let it slide for now. He knew Chi thought the same thing.

“Fine, I won’t kill them,” she said. “We can press them for information.”

“Or,” Kou said as he finally opened his schoolbag—it’s almost magical how the thing stayed on even when he almost literally turned into mist, “we just keep tabs on them. I have some shikigami here ready to use.”

“Huh? Since when could you use human magics?”

“Mom taught me.”

“She taught me too, but you were always bad at it.”

“Ah…,” Kou unleashed a few pieces of paper in the vague shape of small human silhouettes, and the pieces just floated around the two oni and disappeared—they would stick with the oni after the monsters regained their consciousness. “These ones were … uh, gifts.”

“Gifts? From who?”

The two siblings finally decided to just let the oni be right there. Not like mostly-physical humans could perceive them, to begin with, but it’s also not like spiritually-sensitive humans would deliberately look at random rooftops in Nerima just to find these two specific monsters, so why not? “From … well, my girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” Chi punched Kou in the arm.

“Ow!”

“You snagged a witch girlfriend? Nice catch, Bro!”

“Ah … about that.” Kou scratched his head. He didn’t expect to have to breach the topic so soon. “It’s less a witch girlfriend, and maybe closer to … a witch hunter girlfriend?”

Chi stopped on her tracks. “Sorry?”

“Yeah. Um. The shikigami were made with white magic.”

Her expression hardened immediately. “Please don’t tell me—”

“Ooh, yeah.” Kou took a deep breath, then stared into his sister’s eyes. “You probably knew her already since the middle school division apparently gossiped a lot, but yeah. I’m dating Yamato Himiko, and she turned out to be an exorcist.”

*