CHAPTER 12

There was only one thing worse than the languidness haunting Kou’s school these past few days, and that’s the fact that he had to handle library duties alone. Not that he minded being alone, but chatting with that senpai of his had actually become something of a highlight of the day for him. She claimed to have communication issues, but she never seemed to mind talking with him—and she was always so fun to talk with. It got a bit lonely without her around.

“Oho, so you’re bold enough to talk about other girls while you’re with me now?”

In her place, Kou’s girlfriend volunteered to accompany him. It was also an excuse she could use to skip out on stuco duty, she said. Kou told her not to skip out at all, but she wouldn’t listen.

“I mean, I’m just friends with her,” Kou scratched his head. “Is that a no?”

“Hmm,” Himiko pouted. “Aren’t you going to be jealous if I were friends with other boys?”

“Aren’t you already? Half the students here are boys. Your secretary’s a boy, too. You’ll need to be friends with boys to do your duty and have a healthy social life, no?”

“So you’re not jealous?”

“Why should I be? Aren’t I already your one true love?”

Himiko was actually left agape with a blush that went from head to toe after Kou said that. “O-oh. Yeah. I mean, yeah. True. Mm-hmm.”

Kou just felt like tickling the sleeping dragon. “Are you jealous of Mamori-senpai?”

“I—I mean….”

“Even though you’re my one true love? Do I seem that untrustworthy?”

“I—I mean…! Mou!”

Himiko kept hitting Kou’s upper arm, and he couldn’t help but laugh. “Just kidding. We’ll probably need to keep it down, though, we’re in the library.”

“Ngh. It’s not like anyone’s here, anyway.”

That was true. Actually, it was weird. They’re swinging right back into the early tests, with quizzes and homework starting to bare their fangs—Kou could’ve sworn their school had a fetish for tests and quizzes because there’s no way the average high school did this many tests, seriously—which Kou expected to be the main reason behind the weird mood at school recently, but there’s no one in the library.

It was definitely not like this back in his first year. He could’ve sworn that the second and third years were just starting to flood the library around this time then.

So the mood wasn’t because of the increasing tests?

“Hmm. What kind of stuco president isn’t setting an example to the other students?”

“The kind you fell in love with since we’re in the first grade?”

“I’ve fallen in love since before you were even stuco, though?”

Himiko blushed again. She pressed her own temples with her left hand this time. “You could seriously say all that stuff without being embarrassed, huh?”

“Well … who says I’m not embarrassed?”

Himiko peeked at Kou’s face, and finally realized that Kou was beet red himself. She couldn’t help but giggle. “Hehe. Kou-kun, you’re so red.”

“I can’t help it, can I?”

If nothing else, Kou was at least grateful that Himiko was willing to accompany him for his library duty. He’d done the rounds and made sure that all books were accounted for—no borrows yesterday that needed to be recovered, no newly-returned books that needed to be logged, no books out of place—and no one had come to the library since, so there’s no change to the state of things or anyone that needed any lookup, so with the abject lack of Mamori Sakura, this day was shaping up to be just about as dreary as the mood at school. Himiko was the sole salve that kept the heavy air at bay.

Where has Senpai gone, anyway? It’s been at least a week at this point.

She mentioned communication issues—was she being bullied in class? To compound on her lack of ability to properly talk to people, Sakura was still pretty cute in her own rights. Kou was never a fan of ranking girls by their looks, but even he had to admit that if Sakura had looked up more often than she looked down, had she stood out a little bit more, she would’ve drawn way more attention than she liked.

It wasn’t exactly a unique story that a cute shy girl got bullied because she stood out and had no friends.

That said, though, Kou hadn’t heard anything of that nature. Sure, Sakura could’ve just hidden it from him and all, but this school had never really had talks about bullying within its walls. The kids could get a bit brutal with their mouths in the middle school division, but as far as Kou knew, the dynamics of each class as of present were pretty healthy. Hormone-fueled, maybe, but nothing as bad as a whole case of bullying.

Maybe Sakura just felt that she didn’t fit in? Was that why?

Or was it a family emergency?

It was a more reasonable excuse to use to not go to school. A lot less questions that way, too. That said, though, it’s not like Kou could just ask the teachers about her as well—they weren’t really acquainted anywhere else outside of the Library Committee. Kou had virtually never even spoken to her at all outside of Committee activity. He was chosen to be class rep again in second year, so it’s not like he didn’t go around a bit sometimes with stuff that would connect him with the senior class, but he’d never really seen her around, either. She wasn’t nearly as active as he was, which probably lent credence to her claim of having problems communicating.

“Are you that worried?” Himiko asked. Kou sighed.

“Honestly? Yeah … kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“I don’t really know Mamori-senpai outside of Committee activities. I guess we’re friends? Kind of? Committee-mates? Is that a thing?”

“What are you even asking….”

Himiko shook her head, but Kou knew that she understood how worried he was. The languid air was definitely not normal, making every gloomy thought feel gloomier than normal, and thinking of a missing senpai at this time wouldn’t have led to nice ideas. “That said, though, isn’t it weird that no one’s here? I haven’t even heard anyone look for you through the intercom. Didn’t you say you were here slacking off?”

Himiko laid her head on the counter. “Yeah. Now that I think of it, it’s pretty weird. This entire mood is weird.”

“Did you sense any magic?”

“Not that I could tell. Did you find any nightwalkers around?”

“Not that my nose could tell.”

“Wait, that super-nose thing was a real thing?”

“In a way. Nearly all nightwalkers have it. It’s not exactly a heightened sense of smell or anything, I think it’s closer to something of a sixth sense. But it feels a lot like catching hints of things that waft in when we breathe, so we usually just call it smelling things.”

“What other secrets are you hiding from me?”

“Nice try, Miss, I’m not giving you the secrets to my race—”

“Stingy.”

“—because I myself don’t know them.”

“How do you not know your own self?’

“Do you know precisely how tall you are right now? It’s kind of like that. I can feel the general gist of it, most of it stuff you already know, but that’s about as much as I could tell you.”

“Oh, about that, do you know that we actually grow and shrink throughout the day? You get taller during the night and shorter during the day.”

“Is that a human thing or do vampires have this too?”

“Shouldn’t you know better than I … oh.”

Kou just grinned. “And what about you? Do you need to know all this about nightwalkers to be an exorcist?”

Himiko shrugged. “Not really, no. If anything, most exorcists specialize in just dealing with ghosts, and most nightwalkers are mostly spiritual, so anything that could repel ghosts could at least repel them partly.”

“Like that heatwave thing you blasted that night,” Kou remembered. “I think you even managed to put my sister down with that.”

“Sorry….”

“Hey, no biggie. What is that, anyway?”

“Mmm … I’m honestly not sure. It’s kind of like how you don’t fully know your own traits, I think? Even if you ask me, I don’t know which part of the ritual worked against whom. Most exorcism rituals are just rituals on top of other rituals on top of other rituals, which is why most Vatican exorcists you ask would tell you that the Roman Rites is more like a guide than strict instructions to follow step-by-step. Different nightwalkers are susceptible to different parts of the ritual—even those of the same race can have individual differences. Most exorcisms are really just throwing darts and seeing what sticks.”

“Can’t help but notice you said ‘most’.”

“Because most exorcists are generalists. Specialists, though, know how to cut off the excess fat and keep their spells slim. Witch hunters like my dad are especially good at fighting curses. Onmyoji like my mom are great at casting protection and dealing with talismans. Vampire hunters … well, you probably know the deal.”

Everything Kou knew about vampire hunters was in the interest of his own survival, and that wasn’t much—but yeah, he knew the deal with them. “Kind of, yup. So unless I understand that entire ritual myself, I’m never going to figure out what kept my sister down?”

“Yeah.”

“And you also truncated the entire thing, too.”

“Mm-hmm. Wait, you knew?”

“My sister did.”

Himiko wolf-whistled. “Smart one, that girl. I like her.”

Kou shrugged. “Awesome. Now just to get your parents to like me and we can be family already.”

“Let’s get married after we graduate.”

“Let’s have enough kids to send a whole team to Koushien.”

“Let’s have stable careers while juggling housekeeping.”

“Let’s actually fix the economy and the declining birth rate.”

They paused and finally let out their suppressed laughter. “I thought you said we need to keep it down in the library.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Kou said. “No one’s here, anyway.”

Himiko smiled and held Kou’s hand.

The sun was coming down, and soon the final chime began to ring. Kou packed his bags and parted with Himiko, whose belongings were mostly left in the student council room. Chi would usually be waiting by the school gates during his shifts as Library Committee—Kou never really figured out why she wouldn’t just go home on her own, because it seemed that she would always find some way to occupy herself while she waited for Kou to finish—so as much as he wanted to wait for Himiko, he had to quickly make for the gates. She actually said she understood the first time he explained that, back in the first grade, and she’d just give him an annoying, knowing smile. Kou had no idea what that smile meant.

Per habit, Chi was already waiting there, arms crossed, nothing but chagrin on her face. “Sorry for the wait,” Kou bowed a little. Chi sighed.

“What, you’re not waiting for your girlfriend?”

“I thought you’d be waiting here, so I just couldn’t keep you waiting.”

Chi sighed again. She blushed, just a little. “I-it’s not like I’m waiting long or anything. Don’t make her blame me for your failure as a boyfriend.”

“She’s the one who told me to not keep you waiting, though?”

Chi sighed once more. This time, she avoided Kou’s eyes. “Oh.”

“We’re going to hit sundown in a bit. Come on.”

The two decided to take their time to the station—the day was dreary, the air was heavy; the least they could do was chill on the way home. Chi seemed to be deeper in thought than usual, so Kou couldn’t help but suspect that the middle school division felt as dreary.

… no, not just that. The entire place felt dreary. It wasn’t just Yanomori High School, it was the entire stretch of road from there to the station, the entire sets of junctions they walked past along the way, the same salarymen and overdressed women they passed on their trip back home. Everyone had the same darkness in their faces, the same look of overcast, as if they were too tired to run from an oncoming rain.

“It’s like this too in class,” Chi muttered. “Even Kurisu and Fukushi weren’t being funny today. Something’s wrong.”

“I could tell,” Kou said as he looked around. Everyone looked lethargic to hell and back. “Himiko didn’t feel any magic, though.”

Chi frowned when she realized that Kou was using Himiko’s first name, but made no comment about it. “So it’s a nightwalker? I didn’t smell anyone, though.”

“Neither did I. Are they too far from where we are? But we can see their effects. There’s no way you can’t smell them.”

“That … isn’t entirely true. I can’t tell when the kitsune did anything since the entire land smells like them.”

“Are you saying the kitsune did this?”

“It’s the only way I can explain why I can’t smell them at all.”

Kou thought for a while. “For what, though? They’re mischievous, they’re vindictive, they’re precise. They won’t do this kind of … what is this, mass hypnosis? It doesn’t feel very kitsune to me.”

Chi stopped in her tracks. “Hypnosis?”

“I mean, no trace of magic, right? Hypnosis is no magic, it doesn’t need to translate the spiritual to the physical.”

It was Chi’s turn to visibly think. “This scale is definitely not hypnosis, you can’t spread this kind of effect without magic. Unless….”

And the sky turned gray.

No—the entire horizon turned gray.

One robed hooded figure with a wide-brimmed hat appeared in front of the siblings, kneeling, and they immediately knew what was up.

“Your Highness—”

“Where?” Kou interjected.

The Enforcer wasn’t fazed. “Very near, Your Highness.”

“Show us.”

Like before, the Enforcer opened his palm. Kou and Chi touched him—the shopping district.

“It’s just around that corner—we won’t even need to teleport,” Chi said. Kou nodded.

“Let’s go!”

*