Lesson Twenty Four: How Not To Panic

The rest of the week passed with deceptive calm.

Rei kept her distance. Not out of arrogance, as Sumire kept implying, but of fear. She chose corners of the room where no one brushed against her sleeves, hovered a careful step behind the others during walks, and floated to the ceiling whenever the class grew rowdy.

Honey tried to approach her often. He offered snacks, small talk, even just quiet companionship, but after a few seconds she would always drift away again and apologized softly without quite meeting his eyes.

Mutsuki and Youchan noticed. They shared a gaze that carried both worry and patience, silently agreeing that some things could not be rushed.

Speaking of things that cannot be rushed, more than half the term had already passed, and one truth weighed heavily on Mutsuki.

He had not tested them individually.

Yes there were journals, on the spot questioning during lessons, and group excursions, but not a single test about their own magic yet. And that was the reason they were all in the class. By being overpowered or not caring enough to control their power.

‘How am I supposed to measure Torii Heart’s power,’ he had once complained to Maria, ‘when none of them are built the same?’

Maria, ever practical, had responded with the kind of solution he feared most.

‘Then test what they share.’ Which for this week, was the emergency drill class.

Unfortunately for Mutsuki, that meant explaining the concept of emergency scenarios to nine yokai children who heard the phrase and immediately treated it like an invitation to perform heroics.

‘This is not a game. This is not a test of bravery. This is not a chance to show off.’ Mutsuki said firmly

Mon stood up on his chair. ‘What if bravery happens accidentally?’

‘Sit down.’

Gon stood on his desk. ‘What if we are very brave quietly?’

‘Sit down.’

Honey did not raise his hand. He was already nodding to himself with solemn understanding. Or seeing in his head the image of him being a hero.

‘Sensei, Honey is being weird.’ Akashi said as he kicked the back of Honey’s chair.

Youchan quietly prepared outdoor gear at the back. Rei sat perfectly straight. She looked like someone preparing to survive three disasters and an apology tour.

‘In the human world,’ Mutsuki continued, ‘evacuation drills are about order, calm, and following instructions. You do not run. You do not transform. You do not panic.’

Akashi frowned. ‘What if there is real danger?’

‘Then you trust your teacher.’

That earned a variety of reactions. Most nodded. One, specifically Kojiro, looked unconvinced.

‘Today’s drill is simple. We walk to the convenience store down the road. We practice route awareness, crowd behavior, and what to do if something unexpected happens. I will ask questions along the way, which is graded by the way, so be alert.’

Mon grinned. ‘Snacks?’

‘No.’

‘Evacuation snacks?’

‘No.’

‘Emergency morale snacks?’

‘Absolutely not. Give it a rest already.’

The disappointment was biblical.

Still, they lined up. Human forms engaged. Glamours tight. Ears, horns and tails tucked away. Rei’s disguise was flawless. No chill leaked into the air. No frost following her steps. Mutsuki noticed and quietly marked her control as passed.

The walk itself was uneventful, which in hindsight was the warning. The children politely navigated through the kombini this time. The same old staffers were pleasantly surprised at the different demeanour of the kids today. Each one was given some snack as a reward.

The happy children of Torii Hearts were halfway back with smiling faces and bags of snacks rustling when the ground shuddered beneath their feet.

‘Earthquake?’ someone shouted nearby.

A sharp pulse of distorted magic rippled through the air, wrong in a way Mutsuki felt instantly. Electrical poles rattled. A streetlight flickered. Cracks split the pavement in jagged lines, boxing the class in as startled humans scattered in every direction.

Mutsuki’s heart sank. This is not natural. A ley line rupture? It feels forced open.

It was an Anti-Mutsuki sabotage.

The villains responsible vanished almost immediately, slipping away amongst other fleeing adults with practiced efficiency, leaving only chaos behind.

To the humans nearby, it appeared as though a surge of luminous water or pale energy had broken through the ground and risen into a dome, boxing a random class in. The light shimmered and bent strangely at the edges, as if unsure whether it wanted to be solid or illusion. However, it never spilled outward. It never struck the people closest to it.

‘So this is what happens in emergencies,’ Kojiro said bitterly. ‘Humans leave you behind.’

‘That is not true!’ Honey protested. ‘They are going to come back and help!’

‘Evacuation formation!’ Mutsuki snapped. His voice cut clean through panic.

The trapped class worked instinctively as a single, breathing unit.

Inside the fractured street, more magic pressed outward from the ground like a rising tide. Mutsuki could feel it scraping against the edge of their formation, probing for gaps, for panic, for careless instinct. The children felt it too, even if they did not have words for it yet, and that was why none of them broke rank.

They did not fight the surge. They shaped it.

Honey anchored the center, feet planted wide, arms held just far enough apart to remind everyone where safety ended and danger began. Akashi grounded the back line, forcing the tremor of the earth to bleed downward instead of outward. Mon and Gon dropped their jokes instantly. They mirrored each other without speaking and used their transformation power to conceal the current situation inside the dome to onlookers.

Meow focused on Kishin, keeping him steady so fear would not ripple into power. Sumire regulated the water that surfaced from the cracked pavement, guiding it into controlled arcs rather than letting it burst free. Kojiro used his wind power to protect everyone inside and outside by stabilizing the fluctuating pressure so it did not lash unpredictably.

Rei raised her hand. A thin veil of cold air spread outward, stabilizing the rupture just enough to prevent it from widening.

Together, they kept the rupture contained. There was no screaming. No explosions. No wild transformations.

‘This is what everyone of you should be able to do. Use your powers for good.’ He managed to sneak in a little lesson while in the middle of patching up the rupture with his barrier magic.

From the inside, it felt like standing inside a shaking bowl of light and pressure. Every sense alert. Every breath measured. From the outside, however, it looked like a group of trapped class.

‘Good. Everyone stay calm.’

The distortion surged one final time. This time, it aimed straight at Sumire. She panicked and tripped backward.

Mutsuki stepped forward to shield her but Rei was faster. She placed herself between Sumire and the rupture with palms out.

‘Do not worry. Sensei is handling it.’ Rei said calmly.

The cold sharpened without freezing the students. After regaining herself, Sumire guided water into Rei’s controlled ice field, reinforcing the barrier. Mutsuki completed the counterspell, snapping the rupture closed with a sound like a door slamming shut.

Silence followed as each of the class await for resurgence. A short moment where no one quite knew what to do next.

Only the noise of the humans who came running back after leaving filled the scene. They had arms full of supplies, and faces pale with worry rather than fear. First aid kits. Water. Blankets. Someone shouted for children. Someone else knelt beside a stranger.

Mutsuki turned to his class. They were shaken, breathing hard, almost crying, but still standing.

‘You did very well,’ he said as he knelt down to hug them all.

‘See! They came back! The humans came back!’ Honey beamed.

Akashi kicked Honey’s back. ‘Stop screaming “Humans” this or that. You’re a human too.’

Kojiro glanced at the returning adults. ‘So, they ran first, but they did not abandon us? It was to get help?’

Kishin nodded vigorously. ‘Most yokai do not hurt people who stay. Or who come back. That is… kind of a rule.’

When the danger passed, confusion set in it’s place. “What the hell was that?”, was the theme.

Mutsuki opened his mouth explain, to reassure those around him, and to organize relief, but he was so confused on which one to do first that the children had already decided for him and moved on their own.

Honey hurried toward the crying sound with his small hands raised so he wouldn’t startle anyone. ‘It’s okay,’ he said softly, ‘You’re okay. I’m here.’

A human child with scraped knees and tear-streaked cheeks, looked up at him in confusion. Honey crouched carefully, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket the way Youchan had taught him, and dabbed at the blood with gentleness.

‘Youchan says pressure helps,’ he explained seriously. ‘And talking too. What’s your name?’

Behind him, Meow knelt beside another child who had fallen during the panic. Her hands shook for half a second before she steadied them while breathing the way Mutsuki had taught her. She peeled open a bandage from the emergency kit Youchan always insisted on carrying and wrapped it neatly, tongue caught between her teeth in concentration.

‘I didn’t break anything. I can do this.’ She said.

Kishin hovered nearby, then gathered his courage and stepped forward to help an elderly woman whose cane had slipped out of reach. He retrieved it carefully, offering it back with both hands and a deep bow.

‘I’m strong now,’ he said earnestly. ‘So… please lean on me if you need.’

Akashi was already lifting a fallen signpost with restrained strength as he fought the instinct to transform. ‘It’s okay,’ he told the startled shop owner. ‘I’ve got it. Just stand back.’

Mon and Gon worked in tandem without even arguing for a change, as they redirected foot traffic away from the cracked pavement. Their voices were loud but controlled as they repeated instructions they had mocked not ten minutes earlier. ‘This way!’ ‘Slowly!’ ‘No pushing!’ Their magic stayed quiet, exactly where it belonged.

Kojiro fled to report to Youchan.

Sumire had positioned herself near the edge of the damage. She guided water to wash away broken glass and debris. She was very careful not to draw attention to how it moved. Afterwards, she cleaned a cut on a man’s hand.

Rei stood a little further while watching. She didn’t want to accidentally freeze anyone now. Still, when a woman nearby began to panic after realizing her young son was missing, Rei stepped forward.

‘Please breathe. He is close. Panic spreads cold faster than ice.’

She extended her senses outward, listening to the air the way Mutsuki had taught her in the past week. A moment later, she pointed down the street.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Beyond the vending machines.’

The boy was found unharmed moments later. Still clinging to a pole and crying more from fear than injury. The woman collapsed into tears of relief. She gripped Rei’s hands without realizing how cold they were not.

The community watched. They did not see yokai. They saw children helping children. Children helping elders. Children staying when adults had fled, and welcoming them back when they returned.

After taking into account where each child ran off to, Mutsuki stepped away to meet the arriving authorities. His posture relaxed in a way that suggested competence. He spoke calmly, choose his words with care and layered them with just enough technical language to satisfy questions without inviting deeper ones.

He explained it as a minor tectonic shift, a stress release along an old fault line aggravated by recent construction and underground utility work. He gestured to the cracked pavement, the flickering streetlight, the way the event had contained itself instead of spreading. A strange occurrence, yes, but not unheard of. Cities settled. Ground shifted. Tokyo, especially, was built on grounds that moved on a daily basis.

The explanation was accepted with the weary relief of people who preferred mundane answers over frightening ones. Notes were taken. Barriers were chalked up as emergency cordons. The incident was logged, categorized, and pushed into a folder marked “unusual but resolved.”

Behind him, the class regrouped. They were dust-streaked, tired with clothes rumpled and knees scraped, but they were upright.

This was exactly what Mutsuki had hoped they would become.

Not powerful for the sake of being powerful, but capable. Not fearless, but composed. Children who knew when to hold back, when to help, and when to trust each other.

When the humans finally dispersed, many glanced back and whispered among themselves about how lucky they had been that “those kids” were there. Some smiled, some waved, and all bowed.

The Torii Hearts walked home together after making sure everything had been sorted. The usual chatter did not vanish, but the students found themselves carrying a new weight.

They were unmistakably a little more grown-up now.

Torii Heart School had passed with flying colors in Mutsuki’s heart.