Steel Trap

The stairwell was plunged into semi-darkness. Only the emergency lights cast a sickly green glow over the concrete steps.

Aoi ran down as fast as her legs would carry her, heart pounding violently in her chest.
Twenty-five floors.
Twenty-five floors to reach the exit.

Through the Resonance, she felt Rei—his presence like a distant beacon, anxious, frustrated by the spiritual barriers preventing him from intervening.

Hold on, it seemed to say. I’m coming.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket.

She stopped on a landing, gasping for breath, and looked at the screen. Her editor-in-chief.

“You’re fired. Someone applied pressure. Don’t come back.”

A bitter laugh rose in Aoi’s throat. Of course. Kageyama… Not content with destroying her past, he was tearing away what remained of her present.

She pocketed the phone and resumed her descent.

Fifteenth floor.
Tenth.
Fifth.

She pushed open the lobby door.

The exit was right there. Fifty meters away. The glass doors leading to the street, to freedom, to Rei—still struggling to breach the building’s spiritual defenses.

She took three steps.

The lights flickered.

Aoi froze.

The silence was absolute—the oppressive silence that precedes disasters. Then she heard it. A metallic clicking. Then another. And another.

Shapes emerged from the shadows.

Dogs.
No—simulacra of dogs.

Bodies of steel and circuitry, glowing red eyes, maws bristling with metallic fangs gleaming under the neon lights. They advanced with mechanical precision, claws scraping against marble in a screech that sent pain through her ears.

Above her—wings beating.

Crows.

Dozens of mechanical crows descended from the upper levels of the lobby, their electronic cries overlapping into a shrill cacophony. Their steel feathers caught the light, producing blinding flashes.

Aoi stepped back. Then another step.

Thirty shikigami. Maybe more. They were encircling her, tightening their grip with a predator’s patience.

Rei!

She hurled the call through the Resonance, desperate.

A dog lunged.

Aoi raised her hands instinctively. A barrier of golden light materialized—unstable, flickering, but enough to deflect the attack. The shikigami slammed into the floor in a shower of sparks, then rose again immediately.

She ran.

Toward the exit. Toward the glass doors. Toward freedom.

The crows dove. She dodged the first, the second—but the third raked her shoulder. Pain exploded—sharp, burning. Warm blood seeped beneath her jacket.

She unleashed a wave of golden light. Two crows disintegrated. Three more instantly took their place.

A dog slammed into her from behind.

Aoi crashed to the ground, the air knocked from her lungs. Cold marble against her cheek. The taste of blood in her mouth.

She rolled onto her back, raised a barrier above her. The shikigami struck again and again, their assaults resonating like hammer blows against glass.

Her barrier cracked.

Her energy was draining fast.

Rei…

A dog slipped through a fissure in her defense. Its claws tore into her arm. She screamed.

A crow dove toward her face. She repelled it with a trembling hand, golden light sputtering like a dying flame.

There were too many of them.
She was too weak.

She was going to die here—in this immaculate lobby, beneath the smiling faces of idols staring down from the giant screens.

I’m sorry, Rei. I’m so—

The explosion of glass was deafening.

A side corridor’s glass wall shattered inward, sending shimmering fragments across the lobby. And through the crystalline rain, a silhouette landed at the center of the pack.

Rei.

Semi-kitsune form. Three silver tails raised like blades. Cold flames crackling around his fists. Eyes entirely gold, blazing with a fury Aoi had never seen before.

“Hold on, Aoi!”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

He moved.

The shikigami had no time to react. Rei was among them, silver flames carving lethal arcs through the air. One steel dog disintegrated. Then another. His claws sliced a crow out of the sky—two, three.

It was a choreography of destruction.

Every movement was precise, economical, devastating. He pivoted, dodged, struck—his tails whipping through the air to block attacks he couldn’t evade. The silver flames consumed metal like paper, leaving trails of ash drifting in the air.

A dog leapt for his back. A tail intercepted it, hurling it into a pillar that cracked on impact. Three crows dove in formation—Rei cut them down with a single arc of flame, their mechanical bodies exploding into incandescent fragments.

The lobby became a battlefield.

Shattered neon lights rained from the ceiling. Giant screens exploded in showers of sparks. Marble cracked, columns trembled, glass crunched beneath their feet.

Aoi struggled to her knees, bracing herself against a pillar. She wanted to help, but her body no longer obeyed. Her injured arm hung uselessly. Her vision blurred.

Through the chaos, she watched Rei fight.

There was something beautiful in his violence—that feline grace, that raw power channeled with surgical precision. Centuries of existence condensed into every movement.

The shikigami fell.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Twenty.

But they kept coming. Reinforcements emerged from side corridors, stairwells, elevators. Kageyama had planned generously.

Rei began to tire. His movements lost their fluidity. A gash appeared on his cheek. Then another along his side.

“Rei!” Aoi cried.

He turned his head toward her—just a fraction of a second.

A dog seized the opportunity. Its jaws clamped down on Rei’s leg.

He growled in pain, smashed the creature with a flaming punch. But more were coming. Always more.

No. No, no, no.

Aoi drew on her last reserves. Golden light erupted around her—not a barrier this time, but a wave. It swept across the lobby, repelling the shikigami, buying them a few precious seconds.

Rei seized the moment. He leapt to her side and scooped her into his arms.

“Hold on.”

He launched himself toward the shattered window he had entered through.

The shikigami pursued them. Diving crows. Leaping dogs. Rei dodged and parried, his tails forming a shifting shield around them.

They burst through the window. Cold night air struck them.

Rei climbed the neighboring building’s façade, leaping from ledge to ledge, from handhold to handhold. Tokyo streamed below—vertiginous, indifferent.

Aoi clung to him, her face buried against his chest. She felt his heart beating—fast, powerful, alive.

They reached a rooftop. Rei finally stopped, panting.

Silence fell. Only the wind, and Tokyo’s lights glittering like fallen stars.

Rei set her down gently. His hands were trembling—from exhaustion, restrained rage, relief.

“You could have died.”

His voice was rough. Broken.

Aoi looked up at him. Blood ran from his cheek, from his side. His flames were gone. His tails had vanished. He was just an exhausted man looking at her with eyes that held something she didn’t dare name.

“I know,” she whispered. She breathed slowly, as if something inside her chest had finally loosened. “But for the first time in a long while… I feel lighter. Like a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying just disappeared.”

Rei closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

He helped her sit against a ventilation chimney. Examined her injuries with gentle—almost tender—motions.

“Nothing fatal,” he said at last. “But you need rest.”

Exhaustion washed over Aoi. The adrenaline faded, leaving crushing fatigue behind. Her eyelids closed despite her efforts.

The last thing she saw before slipping into darkness was Rei’s face bent over hers. His unreadable expression. His hand brushing a strand of hair from her forehead.

Then blackness.

***

When she woke, she recognized the place.
The minimalist room. The futon. The low dresser. The calligraphy scroll.
Rei’s machiya in Yanaka.

He was sitting behind the shoji, an unmoving silhouette against the first light of dawn.

His phone rang.

He answered, listened. His body tensed.

“Kuzunoha.”

Half-asleep, Aoi heard a woman’s voice on the other end—warm, teasing, dangerous.

“Rei-chan~ It’s been a while. I heard you found yourself an interesting little human.”

Rei didn’t reply.

The voice continued, amused:

“I’ll be waiting at Café Lumière in Ginza. One p.m. Don’t keep me waiting.”

The line went dead.

Rei remained motionless for a long moment, staring at his phone as if it were a bomb.

Then he murmured, to himself:

“What does she want…?”

Outside, the sun rose over Tokyo. A new day was beginning.

And for Rei, it started with an appointment he would have much preferred to avoid.