CHAPTER 17

Kou learned that Himiko’s parents actually agreed to help him, which was frankly surprising because he also knew that she told her parents that she was literally dating a vampire. There’s something amazing about exorcists letting their daughter fall into the clutches of a literal demonspawn. Maybe they’re just that confident in their own daughter. Kou wasn’t sure.

However, the important part was that Himiko’s parents had been incredibly helpful. Kou only learned this after the fact, but Himiko’s mother, Nadeshiko, was apparently a direct descendant of Abe no Seimei, a legendary onmyodo expert who elevated onmyoji from a simple court astrologer to the literal backbone of every courtly decision, a seer with such clear vision of the future that his predictions never missed. Vampires hadn’t arrived yet during that era of Japanese history, but if anyone back then could’ve held the title as the King of the Night, Abe no Seimei would’ve been that person.

Kou was pretty sure about this, as Abe no Seimei wasn’t completely human, either. His mother, Kuzunoha, was a kitsune. A human couldn’t be the King of the Night. Abe no Seimei, who wasn’t fully human, could.

That didn’t matter, though. Abe no Seimei was dead. It’s his descendant that’s the matter now—the woman who, according to Himiko, had both Abe and Kamo blood in her veins.

Her abilities were very helpful.

She was the first to confirm that Kou’s hypothesis was right: there was a problem with the local leylines. Or dragon veins, as they’d called it in onmyodo. This problem was what caused the nightwalkers to migrate en masse, although Kou wasn’t sure exactly where just yet.

That was also what Himiko’s parents helped with. Together with Himiko, they gave him reports of nightwalker sightings. Himiko’s range was limited, so she reported only those in Shinjuku; her parents, apparently, took to neighboring wards just to check. Kou had no idea what they were doing for living, but he just knew that he would have to buy them something extra when he was finally coming over to their place.

Well, in the future at least. For now, the dragon veins.

Things had escalated, both on the nightwalker and the human end of things. The nightwalkers didn’t all migrate—some were too tied to the land to make the move. Others were too emotionally invested in the place they stayed. Others had multiple reasons not to leave: beloved ones, little Contracts, curses, many reasons Kou couldn’t hope to list one by one. He had no idea how Himiko’s mom got all of these, but she didn’t have the blood of Japan’s strongest exorcists for nothing.

The issue was that these ones who stayed were starved. More than half had to stay for reasons beyond their control, so Kou couldn’t force them to flee just to keep themselves sustained.

However, the longer they stayed, the more their starvation got worse. Desperate people resort to desperate measures. Kou wasn’t sure how long it would be until somebody got hurt.

And, speaking of getting hurt, something much worse was going on in the human side.

The languidness in the air finally broke, and it was in the form of irritation.

The teachers were being unreasonable about the tasks—Kou had mentioned before that the number of tests at school felt abnormal, but whatever was going on here was definitely something else entirely. He knew this for a fact, he had Himiko check with seniors who were student council before she became the prez and they all confirmed that they didn’t have nearly as many tasks or homework.

It didn’t help that the teachers were also a lot less excited about class, so with the increased amount of homework and quizzes, the students were being pushed pretty close to the edge. Everyone was on edge lately. Kou had to spend less time patrolling and more time doing his homework, and he was getting more knocks on his windows to help solve nightwalkers who starved. He could no longer replace every ingredient with simple, physical versions, as not a lot of youkai actually consumed those kinds of things. He got lucky with tofu-kozo and azuki-hakari. That luck couldn’t last forever.

Half the time, the knocks were from injured nightwalkers who wanted asylum from a nightwalker that attacked them for food. The Absolutes did not bar this kind of attacks except if Kou explicitly said it wasn’t allowed, but Kou had neither the heart to let a desperate nightwalker get eaten nor the heart to let a nightwalker die of starvation.

He had been driving most of those nightwalkers away to the nearest clusters of mushiyoukai while providing them just enough chi to get to those clusters without dying, but there’s no way he could keep feeding them manually like that. He had to get to the bottom of the problem somehow.

All in all, it’s a good thing Kou didn’t need to sleep. He had to take more blood than usual, sure, but he also had the strength to keep going for the sake of all the nightwalkers that needed him. He had no idea what he was going to do once he’s all out of blood—but that’s for future Kou to worry about.

“You need to sleep, though,” Kou said over the phone. “You’re not a vampire. You need sleep. The students are already angry enough as is, I can’t have you lacking sleep and lose your cool when handling them.”

The Disciplinary Committee was usually more than enough to handle the kids who tried anything funny, but with the teachers they report to being as difficult as they were lately, they just increased the schism between the exhausted students and the cranky teachers. They had no choice but to request help from the stuco, who already had a lot on their plate, and Himiko was reluctantly drawn to the frontline.

The good news was that Himiko had such kind eyes and an amazing smile that could calm anyone down. The bad news was that she could only do so much as the troubles kept bubbling up.

Much like with the nightwalkers, Kou knew it was just a matter of time before something boils over.

There’s no way they could afford Himiko lacking sleep and becoming as irritable as everybody else.

And this was just their school. Kou couldn’t imagine how bad it’s got to be in higher-tension places like an actual workplace with all the adults stressing out over literally everything. It’s a miracle nobody seemed to really snap just yet.

“I’ll be okay,” she said. Kou shook his head although he knew Himiko couldn’t see him.

“No. You go get plenty of sleep. Both you and your mom and dad have been such great help. I’ll figure something out on my own end.”

“I’m not so selfish as to let my boyfriend tackle this big of a problem alone.”

“I’m not so selfish as to let my girlfriend lose sleep over this.”

“It’s important, more people ought to lose sleep over this.”

“More people have lost sleep over this. Difficulties sleeping comes with chi problems.”

Himiko groaned. “Fine. But I’ll be right with you as soon as you’ve got anything. Don’t leave me out.”

“Wouldn’t dare dream of it.”

Done with the call, Kou could finally brief the two oni staying over.

Unlike her very first impression, Tenka had been relatively docile throughout their stay. Her entire debacle with the Enforcers had probably left a strong enough impression to keep her in line. Either way, she didn’t really give any notable negative reaction as Kou informed her about the dragon vein blockade.

Both she and Onihime had, in fact, been very cooperative. Not only did they help increase their patrol range, Onihime was very proactive with her reports. She took note of everything she encountered and reported to Kou very precisely.

“You’re very good,” he said one night. “I’d almost hoped I could have someone like you around every day.”

Onihime blushed. “Your words are wasted on me, Milord.”

Not only that, even Onihime had been helping like Kou did, although he told her that she didn’t have to feed chi to starving nightwalkers like he did. Kou wasn’t sure that she followed that one specific command, however, and he caught Tenka glaring at him a few times whenever Onihime came back with an awkward smile like she was trying to hide something.

Truth to be told, Kou had no idea why the oni were still sticking around. He’s very grateful for the help nonetheless. He could really use all the help he could get.

“Speaking of which, when I told you about the dragon vein blockage, you weren’t surprised,” Kou recalled. Onihime nodded.

“I did feel that the place felt oddly dry. I thought that is just how human abodes are.”

“Does this mean you can sense dragon veins?”

“Somewhat. I believe I’m decent in the secret arts, although I wouldn’t know how well I fare compared to humans who studied these arts.”

Oh, an oni humbling herself? The Japanese folks of old would’ve been so surprised. “In that case, can I ask for your help with something?”

This help was the exact reason Kou’s patrol started early that night.

Right after he finished his call with Himiko, instead of waiting until the last train had departed, the Kokonoe siblings and the two oni left base almost immediately. Onihime had found something.

“I may be wrong,” she warned as they hopped over the rooftops, “but I’m fairly confident. The dragon vein branch around that area had stopped flowing.”

“How sure are you?” Chi coldly asked.

“Enough to want to lead us there,” Onihime replied.

“Do you think that’s where the blockage began?” Kou asked. Onihime shook her head.

“That, I can’t say for sure. I only realized that this general direction was where I felt the dragon vein to be strangely weak. I simply tried tracing a line of this weakness to where the chi felt strongest nearby, and slowly followed this line of thinking until I found a normal dragon vein.”

“Because you can’t detect empty dragon veins,” Kou surmised. “You could only detect chi, so you worked backwards and looked for empty spots in the map?”

Onihime nodded. “Something like that, Milord.”

That means she should be off to a good start—it’s difficult to know where the dragon veins branch off as they’re not physical rivers, after all, so the best spiritualists could probably just tell that there’s no dragon vein in the surrounding area, but they wouldn’t be able to tell where the original branching of the local dragon vein should’ve occurred. Since dragon veins were impossible to physically map, there’s no telling where to look.

In that case, they’d just have to bruteforce it, like Onihime did. They’d just start with where nightwalker attacks became common, go to where the chi could be detected, and create imaginary lines until they find a normal dragon vein. This entire track would be where they assumed a dragon vein was supposed to be, the one that was blocked from the main vein, and they could simply follow this and check if there really was something blocking the flow.

If there’s nothing, they try again with another route. Rinse and repeat.

They’re trying out the first route right now.

… and it was in this route that Kou had his first ever encounter with a kitsune.

He didn’t even recognize them at first. The wee thing was so small, so tiny, not even the size of his arm, just something that could fit on the palm of his hand. Their tail was long, thick, and very bushy, making up more than half their silhouette.

Oh, the ears were also massive. Enough so that anyone could’ve mistaken them for wings.

Since when were there fennec kitsune?

The kitsune was so small that they’re so easy to miss, but their presence was so thick that Kou couldn’t help but think the creature was too amateurish. Most nightwalkers had thin presence until they wanted to make themselves known, not dissimilar to ghosts—if anything, they used this as their survival modus operandi to keep their identities alive. This kitsune felt like they weren’t privy to such an art.

Then, another presence.

Kou didn’t think. He immediately stepped sideways, parting from his group, away from the direction he was supposed to head to—and tackled the small kitsune.

Ka-BLAM!

“Nii-chan!”

Kou moved in time: a split-second late, and the little kitsune would’ve died. Right there, on the top of the small house where they were just a blink ago, was a huge gnash—as if a giant just brandished their claws.

In the middle of that gnash was a woman.

No … not quite. Chi, Onihime, and Tenka arrived quickly, realizing that Kou had detoured, and this moment of quiet allowed Kou the time to more closely observe the attacker.

She looked just like the average adult woman—long brown hair, slender frame, a thin face with high cheekbones … all normal, except for two things.

The first was that she was wearing a gray blouse and pencil skirts, like a salarywoman. No normal salarywoman could’ve left the gigantic gnash mark on the roof like that.

The second was that she had big, furry triangular ears and a very bushy brown tail tipping in white.

Kou blinked. She was also a kitsune.

The woman turned to Kou, as if only then realizing that he was holding her prey. Then, she locked eyes with Kou.

Like most nightwalkers in human disguise, her eyes were amber.

She grinned. “Mind not getting in the way of kitsune business?”

Kou took a deep breath to collect his thoughts. Calm down. No need to resort to anything bad. “I wonder what business that could be.”

“It’s kitsune business, not yours.”

She brandished her claws again—however, this time, Chi responded first by extending her own class. “Don’t even try, ashirei.”

By Kou’s side, Tenka had popped her magical paper fans, while he could subtly feel a surge of spiritual power swirling around Onihime.

Kou felt cold sweat tracing a line down his temple. The girls were more than ready to throw down. Chi even hissed. The kitsune finally noticed her circumstances, swept the field with her eyes, and sighed.

“Shame,” she said, throwing her hands up. “I’m not stupid enough to face a vampire and two oni head-on, I don’t want to die. So I’ll let you off tonight.”

She pointed at Kou—no, at the trembling little kitsune in Kou’s embrace.

“But that little one must die, so it’ll do you good to remember this. We kitsune are vindictive, and I’m here under the orders of Fushimi Inari Shrine. You do not want to draw our attention.”

With that, the kitsune woman disappeared. Kou felt like he forgot how to breathe for a second, but then sighed a breath of relief. Chi retracted her claws again, and Onihime’s presence thinned back to normal.

“How did you know she was an ashirei?”

“She smells like a fox.” Chi glared at her brother. “What were you thinking?”

“I stop all killings. Like usual.”

“You stop all nightwalker attacks on humans or the opposite. You don’t stop nightwalker predation.”

That was true. The Absolute technically allowed this. That said, Kou had his own opinions about the circumstances. “Do you really think that was predation?”

“What else could it be?”

“I dunno. ‘Predation’ isn’t it, though.”

Chi frowned—but she didn’t say another word. The kitsune said it herself: I’m her under the orders of Fushimi Inari Shrine. The Fushimi Inari Shrine, located in Kyoto, was the head shrine of all Inari shrines—and the very center of power for the kitsune.

She was under orders from the kitsune powers. She was attacking another kitsune.

She was there on kitsune business.

Mind not getting in the way of kitsune business?

“Milord,” Onihime asked gently, “what do we do?”

Kou looked again at the little kitsune in his arms. They’re still shaking. “What do we do, huh….”

*