CHAPTER 14

It’s actually kind of funny how rarely Himiko and Kou ever interacted over the phone given that they’re already dating at this point, but Himiko always felt that there was something about their pace together that just felt so nice to the touch. Also, she knew they both preferred this, too. Despite how social she was, despite how much they wanted to see each other all the time, Himiko could tell that Kou was like her—he needed her own time alone, just recharging from the day’s events.

It’s also generally advisable for exorcists, real exorcists, to balance both times alone for meditation and times being social to maintain connection. The human connection was a very important part of an exorcist’s life: those who neglected this would always find themselves overwhelmed by the underbelly of the supernatural that they encountered in their journey. Having time to just be normal is good, so to speak, but so is having time to keep your skills sharp. The best exorcists tiptoe this fine line with anywhere between goodwill to incredible time management.

All that said, though Himiko was definitely a little giddy that Kou called her that night.

The topic wasn’t at all lighthearted or romantic, though—none of the usual pleasantries, none of the flirty ‘I miss you’s, none of those. Kou directly went to the point: “I think I figured out what caused the weird mood at school.”

“For real? Wait, why are you calling so late?”

“I was just getting ready to … sorry, what are you up to?”

Himiko giggled. “You only ask that now?”

She could almost feel Kou scratching his head, as he usually did when he felt awkward about a mistake he did. “I … yeah, I guess I should’ve started with that.”

Himiko laughed. “I’m just about to have dinner, my mom just called me.”

“Oof, sorry to get in the way of that.”

“No, don’t be. You starting with the punchline hooked me and now I have to hear this,” Himiko said as she pinched her phone between her ear and her shoulder, signaling to her mother outside the room that she’ll be there in a bit, right after the call. “So what did you find out?”

Kou dropped a whole explanation on her—starting with the fact that he did nightly patrols regularly. That was news to her, so Himiko couldn’t help but ask when Kou even found the time to sleep (and whether he slept in a coffin). He said he could actually go without sleep as long as he regularly kept himself healthy both physically and spiritually (and he didn’t sleep in a coffin). He’d apparently been patrolling the neighborhood for a while now, making sure that no humans and no nightwalkers crossed the line to being a pain in anyone’s behinds. Himiko appreciated that.

“So you’re like a secret guardian or something,” she said. Kou laughed from the other end of the call.

“You’re making it sound cooler than it really is.”

“You are cool.”

“My girlfriend is cooler. Anyway….”

The explanation continued—apparently, just a while ago, he encountered a hitotsume-kozo attacking someone. He fed the hitotsume-kozo, sent him to where he could find mushiyoukai to at least fight off his hunger for a bit, and that solved the problem for a bit.

His sister also encountered someone that night, apparently: a mikari-baba, a youkai said to work with hitotsume-kozo. Although she was often depicted as a simple rice-eater, mikari-baba was way more malicious than the simple prankster hitotsume-kozo—she was known to start fires with the flames in her mouth, and she was so greedy that just a little bit of leftover grains of rice would be enough to summon her to visit houses. Somewhat like vampires, there were ways to keep the mikari-baba from entering an abode. It was all traditional, though, and not a lot still followed these rites.

Unlike the hitotsume-kozo, the legends made it pretty clear that the mikari-baba was afraid of things with many holes. It was why, back in the day, villages in what today would be called Tokyo would put up bamboo baskets on the days that mikari-baba was said to descend upon them. The tiny holes on the basket were supposed to scare her away.

It was only in the modern day that this fear had a specific name: trypophobia, an irrationally extreme discomfort over things with patterns of small holes.

This was what Kou’s sister apparently made use of to drive away the mikari-baba. The hag-looking youkai was starved enough to attack someone in the middle of the night, just like the hitotsume-kozo that Kou encountered, and Chi didn’t have rice grains in hand to drive her away. Instead, she used her own claws to dig holes into her own arm, creating a trypophobic pattern, shoving it right into the youkai’s face to scare her away. That somehow worked.

Kou then went on for a few minutes just praising how clever his little sister was and how proud he was of her for not using violence to kill the mikari-baba, so Himiko couldn’t help but intercept. “Kou-kun, I know you love your sister, but you’re kind of going on a tangent right now.”

“Right! You’re about to eat dinner, sorry! Anyway….”

He continued the story. His next hint was an attack in the shopping district, some ways from Yanomori High to the Yanomori Station, by a tofu-kozo. Similar to the hitotsume-kozo, the poor creature was starved enough to attack a human being—except, this time, Kou could actually see what went wrong because tofu-kozo was supposed to have his own feeding mechanism.

“So I gave him some tofu, which he could use to keep his identity,” he explained. “I got to see directly with my eyes what went wrong from there—the tofu wasn’t coming back as quickly as it was supposed to.”

“Why’s that a problem?”

“Because the tofu-kozo also eats his own tofu. How would he keep himself fed otherwise?”

“Wait, you’re saying the tofu self-heals?”

“Yup. And it does that the same way non-predatory nightwalkers get their share of chi.”

“… are you talking about leylines?”

“I am talking about leylines.”

Himiko thought for a minute. “That … actually makes sense. If something happens to the leylines around here, it would mess with the humans as well. Heck, it’s going to mess with local shrines, too. Could this be why the Ouji Inari Shrine is weakening?”

“I’m not sure our local leyline reaches all the way to Ouji, but who knows? I can only say that something’s wrong with the local leyline. Or, at least, that’s my conclusion.”

“That sounds likely. Is there any way we can check this?”

“A few ways, yes. This is why I’m calling, actually….” Silence for a few seconds, as if Kou hesitated to continue.

“Yeah?”

“I … I think I need your help.”

Himiko smiled a little. “With what?”

“I want to know how the nightwalkers move around your area. They should all follow the energy flow of the leylines—if they’ve been moving towards certain areas, or if they’ve been avoiding certain areas, we can probably map which leylines we’re having problems with and how much of an issue we’re looking at.”

“Still at the gathering info stage, are we?”

“I haven’t read a lot of literature on blocking or unblocking leylines, so….”

Himiko giggled. “That’s fair. Alright, I’ll see what I can do after dinner. I can’t really patrol as late as you do since I’m not a vampire, though.”

“Anything helps. Sorry for imposing this on you.”

“Not a problem. Hey, actually, what if I tell this to my parents? They’re exorcists too, they can probably help.”

Kou hesitated. “Wow. Are we at that level yet? Didn’t we just start dating?”

“You’ll have to meet them eventually, why not just make it early?”

“You want to introduce your vampire boyfriend to your exorcist parents?”

“That sounds about it, yeah.”

“I’m not sure if you’re being bold or reckless.”

“I’ve got a lot of motivation. It’s my one saving grace.”

Kou groaned a little, and Himiko knew he was pouting. “Alright. We need all the help we can get, anyway. This could be a whole problem if it leads to more attacks. The mood also makes the people a lot more irritable, I’d hate it if this gets worse.”

“I can’t wait to introduce you to my parents.”

“I’ll make you the happiest girl on Earth.”

“You already do.”

“You and your sweet words. Okay then, off to dinner you go. I’ll tell you if anything else comes up.”

“Got it.” Himiko could feel her face growing hotter for a bit, but she decided to just let the words out. “Hey, I love you.”

Kou coughed. “I—I love you, too!”

And that signaled the end of their first ever phone call after they’ve started dating.

With that, Himiko finally left her room to join her parents on the dining table.

Their family was a single-child household, so they’re really just waiting for Himiko to join them for dinner. Her father, large and muscular and imposing with bloodshot eyes and a thick set of mustaches that could intimidate even yakuza, was sitting there with deep breaths, his mind seemingly preoccupied—his eyes were locked on the blank part of the table.

“Ten-chan, your dinner’s not there!”

That would be Himiko’s mother—apart from the color of their hair and eyes, Himiko was a nearly-identical clone of her. Unlike Himiko, her mother had jet-black hair, and her eyes were the same deep black eyes shared by most Japanese people. She was still wearing her apron over her homely T-shirt and trousers, hiding the build and scars that would expose her as an experienced onmyoji ritualist. She tapped on her husband’s plate, as if trying to show him which way he was supposed to stare.

“Ah …,” the father snapped back to reality. “Sorry, Nacchan. Where’s Himiko?”

“I’m here,” Himiko said. “Goodness, you guys could really flirt a little less in front of your kid.”

Contrast his terrifying build, Tenji blushed and made a sheepish smile. “Can’t help it. I love your mother.”

It was Nadeshiko’s turn to giggle as she slapped Tenji’s arm. “Oh, Ten-chan, you flirt!”

Himiko rolled her eyes. She frankly couldn’t blame them—for one, it’s great to have a functional family with functional parents, and she knew she was blessed with parents who at least loved her as much as they loved each other. For another, they’ve been in love since they were kids. Himiko had lost count of the number of times her dad told her the story of how they met as neighbors, of how he insisted to marry Nadeshiko despite the fact that she wasn’t Christian, about how he got in trouble with the Hypatian Order because of his choice to marry not only a non-Christian, but also an onmyoji at that: an actual, literal witch, when he was none other than a witch hunter himself.

And he was a special one, as was shown by his golden eyes. Himiko tried probing him about it a few times, but he never liked talking about it. He just said that he had the blood of a number of Christian saints, so their lineage was holy, hence the golden eyes. Himiko wasn’t a Christian, though, so she didn’t think much of it until she began her own training as an exorcist.

So a special witch hunter, one in whose veins flowed the blood of Saint Peter, Saint George of Lydda, and Charlemagne—among some other names that Himiko couldn’t bother to memorize—decided to quit the secret order still dedicated to eradicating witches and, to further rub salt on the wound, even marry one himself. What a romance.

His wife’s side was also not without its own share of turbulence. Her maiden name was Kadenokouji Nadeshiko, which was a highly unusual name: the Kadenokouji surname was rare as was, and the fact that it was written with five kanji letters also made it very unique. The name had its own history, being the surname chosen by the Kamo clan of onmyoji after they came into the hire of the Hojo court way back in the history of Japan, which somehow still survived to this day even after the decline of the Kamo clan practitioners.

Apart from the Kamo clan, there existed only one other clan who rose into prominence in the practice of onmyodo: the Abe clan, the very clan that produced the legendary Abe no Seimei, Japan’s strongest onmyoji in history.

The Abe clan eventually gave birth to Nadeshiko’s mother, while the Kamo clan eventually gave birth to her father.

The result was a child that not only intensified and peaked the conflict of two ancient lineages, but also ended up being the ender of that feud after she decided to marry not another onmyoji or any other family of renown, but a simple Christian man who was once her neighbor.

Himiko sighed. Her parents’ romance could be an entire drama film of its own, what with the family intrigue and talk about lineages and everything. Sometimes, she couldn’t help but wonder if her own story with Kou could be something like that as well—the story of a young exorcist, blessed with the blood of holy saints from her father and the blood of augurers from her mother, who fell in love with a considerably powerful vampire of all people. She just couldn’t help it. There’s something exciting about that.

For now, though, she had three other priorities in mind. First, she was to eat the dinner her mother had prepared. Second, she had to tell her parents that the district could be in danger.

Third, she had to ask for their help.

The story of Himiko’s family was a long one, but as of the moment, Himiko was more concerned about the present than the past. Maybe, another time, she could also worry about the future.

Maybe another time.

*