St. Protasio of Nagasaki

Noe scratched her head, puzzled.

“Onmyo…?—YEOWCH!”

Her probing of Justo was interrupted by a sharp pain which ran down her whole spine and arms, making her nearly jump as she arched and cradled her back.

“Why does my back hurt?!” she angrily asked the boy, knowing he was almost certainly the cause.

Justo gave a nervous laugh. “My fault. Never explained what knocked you out, did I? I just used some pressure-point techniques on you; put some ice on it or take ibuprofen and you’ll be straight.”

Seeing that that explanation satisfied Noe very little, he continued.

“Aaaanyhoo, long story short, I’ve got someone who can almost for-sure help you with this curse. She’ll be in Kumamoto on Monday, so we can go see ‘er together Monday night. Oh, and you were at St. Protasio, right? If y’catch me at school, don’t feel shy, alright?”

He extended his hand out as a sign of goodwill. Noe hesitated, broke eye contact for a moment, twiddled her fingers, and then brought her eyes back to him and put her hand in his.

“…Okay.”

A beat.

“So what do we do about the sword?”

Justo shrugged.

“Take it home with you, I guess?”

“I—I’m not doing that! What’s my dad gonna say when he sees me sneaking a samurai sword around the place?! …And besides, I don’t feel safe holding on to it. If I get possessed again…”

“…Point taken. I’ll handle it, then.”

He walked over to the sword, crouched down, and, as before, stuck his hand out over it. As if he had called forth a little sandstorm, all of the concrete dust swirled about the sword, forming a grainy coat over the whole thing. Then water came forth from Justo’s hand, mixing itself in with the dust and forming a thick paste. The boy lifted his hand, and the mixture dried. Concrete re-formed. Then he slung the thing over a shoulder, waved goodbye to Noe, and walked off.

* * *

Monday. Having come off of a three-day weekend, St. Protasio of Nagasaki Catholic High School was abuzz with an unusual energy; the hum of recharged social batteries and chatter renewed. It was difficult for teachers to get their classes to settle down at all, and the lunch break seemed to come sooner than usual.

The scene of Class 1-C was typical of this atmosphere. Cliques of students were coming and going through the sliding doors, looking for a spot that better matched their group’s “vibe”. Some played games, some recorded and shared videos on their phones, some simply talked—and then there was one particular group of three girls, seated by the windows in the middle rows of the room.

“Seven-four-two, seven-six-three…What ‘cha gonna do, Anna?”

“…Hit. Both hands.”

The quiet, but sharp flicking of cards.

“Nine…”

Gulp!

“And two. That’s one bust.”

Phew!

“Stand.”

“Alrighty. Got my nine, aaaand…an ace. Twenty.”

Two hands of cards flung across the table.

“D’AAAHHHHH! I know you rigged that friggin’ deck, Seri! Come on, show me your shuffle again!”

“Har-har-har! And that’s two thousand MikiCoins to me!”

“Nnngh…! This isn’t over!”

“Oh? I think it’s over when the house says it’s over.”

“No way, we got twenty more minutes! Deal Noe in! She’ll get blackjack on her first hand, just you watch—Come on, Noe! We gotta shake this bitch down for all she’s got!”

“…”

“Noe?”

“Hel-loooo? Earth to Numasaki!”

SNAP SNAP SNAP!

“—Hoo-whuh?!”

Serena Miki, Anna Ichicava, and Noe Numasaki—these three made up the freshman class of St. Protasio’s Gambling Club. Of course, no actual gambling could be done amongst minors, but Miki and Ichicava had a workaround ready: MikiCoin, an unofficial “tender” with an exchange rate of one MikiCoin to one yen, redeemable upon their class graduating high school.

Yes, these two were shrewd. Their plan after graduating was to attract investors into helping them start Satsuma’s first sports casino—though operations would have to wait until after sports betting was legalized in the country. Before their entry, the Gambling Club had been little more than a group who played card games for fun; now it was on the verge of becoming a schoolwide gambling ring.

And then there was Noe, the only other girl from their middle-school class who had joined them at St. Protasio. Noe, who, before Miki had snapped her out of her trance, had been listlessly staring out of the classroom door with a nondescript expression. She usually took part in Miki and Ichikawa’s games (refusing any payments in MikiCoin, albeit), but had only joined the Gambling Club because there was no “Animal Club” or anything of the sort at this school.

“Y’know, Noe,” said Miki, “I spoke with the club prez the other day about getting the funding for raising some club animals. We settled on chicks, but, ah, there’s a catch: we gotta raise them for cockfighting.”

Miki and Ichicava both burst into peals of roaring laughter.

“…Oh, okay,” responded Noe flatly. Then she went back to staring out the classroom door with the same exact look. Miki and Ichicava, in turn, stared at her as if she had been replaced with an alien.

“Dude…” said Miki. “That’s it?! ‘Okay’?! Who are you, and what’d you do to our churchmouse girl?!”

“Hm?” came the answer from Noe. “Ah, sorry. I kinda zoned out for a sec—DAH!”

While she was speaking, a paper airplane had smacked her on the left side of the head—which was odd, as that was the side of her facing the classroom window. Miki certainly took note of this as Noe bent out of her seat to scoop the thing up.

“What the—?! Did that come from outside?!”

Meanwhile, a different kind of surprise lit up Noe’s face as she unfolded the paper. Her eyes grew wide for but a moment, before she suddenly bolted up out of her seat.

“Sorry, guys,” she said, “I’ve got to go. I’ll be back for math!”

And with that, she was out the door. Ichikawa picked up the unfolded paper from her desk, on which it simply read:

Meet me up on the roof

—Justo

“Get a load of this!!” Ichicava raged, shoving the paper on Miki. Upon seeing its contents, her face lit up as well—not with surprise, but with fury.

“That damn Noe…” she strained, strangling the paper’s edge. “She’s gone and gotten herself a boyfriend!!!”

* * *

Up on the rooftop of St. Protasio, under a spotless May sky. This was the first time Noe had gotten a good look at this space; after all, she had only been in rixeo for a few months now, and most students were deterred by the large “NO TRESPASSING” warning printed on the door. And the space was…underwhelming.

Perhaps it simply held some mythic status in Chinese tung-hwa, and the Japanese-Satsuman equivalent in anime, the school rooftop, that Noe thought it would be some secret garden and not a super-flat expanse of concrete and paneling, save for the A/C units dotting the landscape. Oh, and Justo squatting in the middle of them.

“So you can manipulate air too, huh?”

“Bet ‘cher ass,” shouted Justo as Noe approached him. “Air’s one of the four basic elements; I’d be a pretty shoddy alchemist if I couldn’t. And controlling its flow’s one of the easiest tricks in the book. All you gotta do is heat and cool the air around you to control the pressure.”

“Easy as in I could do it?”

Justo scratched his chin. “Maybe. Hell, with the right technology you could do the same thing, probably. The real challenge is learnin’ to make those processes happen within your body, and the only way to do that is with magic.”

“Magic?!” The mere mention of the word set Noe at unease.

“Eeeasy. This ain’t the hexing, spellcasting kind of stuff you’re thinking of. It’s just a name we use. But, yeah.” He got up to his feet. “That part, I couldn’t teach ya. But, supposing you could learn that stuff, air and water are the easiest elements to control—prob’ly ‘cos we’re in contact with them almost all the time. Hard to master ‘em, though. Then there’s fire and earth. Harder to learn, but once you’ve got the hang of ‘em you can—”

“THERE YOU ARE…” a gravelly voice suddenly broke out through the still, humid air. Both Justo and Noe turned to see where it had come from.

“JUSTO IJYUIN!!!”

The voice in question was paired with an equally rough face. His uneven brow, crooked nose, and chipped teeth suggested that this man had seen his fair share of brawls, and a fair share of fists thrown at his face. This countenance was topped off by a mullet dyed red.

“Just when I thought you’d skipped town, I catch you outside ‘a class wit’ a donzera.”

CAN PEOPLE STOP CALLING ME—

“You know it’s lunch right now, right, man?”

“NnnnnnT’HELL WIT’ THAT! First I take revenge for Toma, then I take your woman!”

After this very flagrant violation of the Ninth Commandment, the young man let out a bellow, and charged straight for an unconcerned Justo and a flustered-slash-irritated Noe, fist winding up for a powerful sucker-punch.

Justo, indeed, seemed fairly confident he could take a hit from this hulking brute of a lackey, as he initiated some strange sort of ritual; he scraped at the ground with his hand, stood back up, dusted off his shoulders. He took one step forward, then another, then—

THWOOM!

Just as his foe was within range, Justo lunged forward with a burst of speed and body-checked him with his shoulder. The delinquent let out some unholy noise from his vocal cords, the wind knocked out of him, and then passed out.

“I didn’t know you were actually a delinquent,” said Noe, with a hint of a dull sort of surprise.

“So everyone seems to think I am,” lamented Justo. “Let’s get outta here before Meat-Boy comes back askin’ for Round Two, though.”

* * *

As the two made their way down the stairs connecting the school’s corridors to the roof, Noe took the opportunity to once again grill Justo.

“You used alchemy back there, didn’t you?” she asked.

Justo chuckled. “So you did catch on. Y’might actually have some potential.”

“Yeah… Turning the concrete black to blend in with your uniform was clever, but how’d you do it?”

“Story for another time. You’re one of three people at this school who know I’m an alchemist, includin’ myself, and I don’t intend on spilling everything to you right now.”

“‘Three’? Are you including that Sachi girl?”

“Oh, her? Naw, she barely even goes to school. But on the subject of, ah, her—you able to come with me tonight?”

“…Yeah. Took a lot of arguing with my dad, but I finally convinced him I was just going to a music show with my usual friends.”

Justo chuckled again. “A convenient alibi. ‘Cos we really are going to a music show!” Then he pulled two tickets out of his uniform jacket and flashed them to Noe. She could not make out much of the text on them, but it probably said little compared to the image they both bore: four attractive and dolled-up girls, roughly of high school age, in frilly Chinese-themed outfits.