CHAPTER 26

When Kou opened his eyes again, his body felt like it had melted into goop. That was a first. In all of vampire history, in fact. Have you ever heard of a vampire falling sick in classical media? The worst that had happened was probably something closer to Count Dracula being emaciated because he hadn’t drunk blood in a long time, but Kou was keeping up with his intake.

And it’s not like his last outing was particularly tiring, either. Well, yeah, there’s the beeline they made all the way to Minato basically on foot, and he did technically fly all the way up to the top of the Tokyo Tower pretty much immediately after that, but he still had way more in his reserves. By his own measure, he could probably do that twice or thrice over, and he’d still have a lot to spare until he had to increase his blood consumption.

The nights had been particularly exhausting and dangerous, after all, so Kou was pretty mindful about stocking up more power, just in case.

The entire debacle was done, though. So why did he collapse?

It’s not like Chi collap—

Kou just shot straight out of his bed as soon as the thought entered his mind.

Chi.

He vaguely remembered his sister catching him when he lost consciousness, but she had been through pretty much the same deal he did. They were in it together the whole way.

Did she collapse, too?

Kou’s eyes slowly adjusted. His room was dark—he could still see thanks to his bloodline, but he knew that it was dark. There was a tiny crack between his door and the sill, meaning somebody was probably here just a little while ago. Light was peeking through this little slit, creating a straight bright line from outside to his desk.

There weren’t a lot of sounds, but it wasn’t eerily silent. Someone was going back and forth out there. The steps sounded light, deliberate … like Chi.

Carefully, Kou drew his blanket down and put one foot after the other on the floor. Good, they’re functional. He could feel them. He could move them.

Huh, he was blanketed on the bed. Was that also Chi’s doing?

He tried standing up—no problems there, either.

He had even changed his clothes. When did that happen? No way Chi would go that far.

So Kou pulled on his door.

His eyes adjusted quickly. Nothing in the corridors in front of his room. The silhouette of Chi pacing back and forth in the living room—oh, so it was her making the walking noise.

Kou walked normally, to his own surprise. He didn’t know what to expect after a collapse, but it felt nice to feel his body working like normal.

He walked to the living room.

Chi turned immediately the moment she felt his presence, but Kou’s attention was drawn instead to the black-haired woman sitting on the sofa just in front of the TV. The woman had long hair that reached the small of her back, but her side-swept bangs and grin were unmistakably the blueprint Chi got hers from. “Yo, Onii-chan.”

Chi glared at her, but Kou just melted into a smile. “Welcome home, Mom.”

“Good to be back. How are you feeling?”

Kou moved his arms around just to be sure. Nope, nothing felt wrong. “Pretty good, actually. What happened? You’re home early.”

“Aww, can’t even bother to give your mom a hug?”

Kou chuckled, then actually went to his mother for a hug. She warmly received it, and they stayed like that for a while as she patted his back.

“Your sister was worried to hell and back,” she whispered. Kou knew that his mother was probably the person who most often teased Chi about being a brocon, but instead of laughing, Kou instead felt that the statement was like a knife that stabbed him. It stung a lot.

As soon as she let him go, Kou immediately went to Chi. “I’m sorry. Are you alright?”

She blushed a little, but then turned her face. “Yeah. You sure you’re good?”

“Pretty much.”

“Good, then.”

With that, Chi actually stopped her pacing. She grabbed a seat on the dining table and sat down. Huh, maybe she was that worried. It’s always nice to see her when she’s being spoiled like this. Kou couldn’t help but give her a pat on the head.

Chi did not appreciate that. “Stop it!”

“Oh, come on, I know you’re happy,” Hougetsu quipped from the sofa. Chi just frowned at her.

“Why does everyone keep thinking I’m that much of a brocon?”

“So you’re not denying that you are a brocon?”

Chi was flustered, but she gaped and shut her mouth a few times in disbelief. It’s like she realized a little too late that she had no comeback to that. Kou laughed a little—it’s nice to know that some things never changed.

“So why are you here early, Mom?” Kou asked as he sat down. Hougetsu shrugged.

“Chi-chan called me, of course I had to come home.”

Chi rolled her eyes. “You never even picked up when I usually do.”

“I never could. Extremely lucky this time, huh?”

Kou knew that Chi hated to admit it, but he also knew that she didn’t disagree. Heck, Kou would’ve probably done the same if Chi was the one who collapsed.

“So …,” Kou didn’t know how to smooth himself into the topic, but it was time to address the elephant in the room. “What happened?”

Hougetsu’s expression didn’t really change—still the same carefree mom she always was. “Do you want the quick answer or the long answer?”

Chi answered before Kou did. “Quick, please.”

“I don’t know.”

Both Chi and Kou furrowed their eyebrows. “What?”

“I said, I don’t know.”

Chi was clearly growing impatient. “I heard you the first time. What do you mean you don’t know?”

Hougetsu raised her eyebrows. “Oh, so you want the long answer now?”

Chi looked like she wanted to choke somebody. Hougetsu just giggled apologetically.

“Joking. Seriously, though, I don’t know. I suspected chi overload for a bit because Chi-chan told me that you both have been drinking a bit more blood every day just to be ready for when emergency strikes, but that doesn’t really happen to us—we’ve got a lot of capacity for a lot of things. We can’t overload unless we intake a massive amount. Just a leyline being restored wouldn’t have done a thing.”

Little by little, Kou was piecing the puzzle. Hougetsu was right—just intaking a leyline’s chi shouldn’t have caused that much of a damage. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to move at all, since different places have different leyline qualities. If just intaking from the leyline was enough to make him collapse, he wouldn’t have been able to move anywhere with thick chi density at all.

But that had never been a problem. It was to a few nightwalkers, maybe, but not Kou.

Kou touched his chin. “So if it wasn’t an overload, what was it?”

“I suspected that your identity turned a little to something closer to human, so maybe you caught human symptoms like collapsing from stress. But nope, your identity felt as solid as ever, so not that either.”

Kou’s gears started moving. “It could’ve been a curse I caught somewhere along the way—we kind of breezed past Shinjuku all the way to Minato, after all.”

“If it was a curse based on passing by a trigger, your sister should’ve caught it too—since you both traveled the same route—but she didn’t. I did check if it was a curse specifically targeting you, but it’s not that, either. So no, it’s not a curse.”

“Could I simply be stressed out?”

“If you were, you’d just fall asleep like Chi-chan did.”

Kou’s eyes widened. “Chi what?”

“Oh, yeah, she didn’t tell you? She fell asleep while caring for you.”

“But we don’t….”

“Don’t need sleep, yup. We do go to sleep when we want to rest up, though. During long travels, for example, so that we’re all refreshed when we arrive. Or, well, when we’re under a lot of stress or pressure. It’s a good way to relieve all of that.”

Now that Kou thought of it again, Count Dracula did sleep while he was onboard the ship that brought him from Transylvania to London. Vampires didn’t need to sleep, but it didn’t mean they didn’t sleep.

Chi suddenly snapped in. “Could it be because of Yamato-senpai? She mentioned that her being around Nii-chan probably weakened him.”

Hougetsu laughed. “Nah, our bloodline isn’t that weak. The most impressive part here wasn’t that neither of you weakened each other, because that wouldn’t have happened either way—it’s that neither of you felt bloodlust for each other. Vampires and holy people kind of naturally repel each other, but Himiko-chan didn’t trigger this reaction on Koumori at all. Do you love her that much?”

Kou felt his face grow hot, and it seemed that was all the answer Hougetsu needed.

Chi, on the other hand, fell into thought. “Was that why I got unreasonably mad at her?”

“Maybe, but it’s also probably your jealousy because she took your brother.”

Chi pouted, and Hougetsu smirked.

“I like that girl. Keep her close, Koumori.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Hougetsu gave him a warm smile. “Okay, serious talk. I fear that the cause of your collapse was something much more fundamental than stress or curses—it’s something much, much deeper. Something that resonated with you both physically and spiritually. Something that laid where your soul would be, even.”

The crevices of his soul.

Kou didn’t know why that strong of words came to his mind, but his heart sank. “You mean … my Mark?”

Hougetsu nodded. “Something might’ve triggered the Mark of Authority to react for some reason. I’m not sure what, and I don’t want to start speculating, but that’s the only possibility left that I could think of.”

Kou’s breathing grew heavier. Only one thing could make the Mark of Authority react to outside influence: if someone were to challenge the King for the Mark.

Kou had never experienced a challenge to the Authority before, so he wasn’t sure if this was how it would’ve felt like. He really just blanked out and passed out. That didn’t seem like a very fair challenge, though, so maybe it was something else? Maybe something that wasn’t a challenge? Maybe something more like a warning, maybe for something else happening?

On the other hand, though, there was no denying that something just felt right when his mom mentioned the Mark. It just clicked in his mind for some reason he couldn’t explain. She was probably spot-on—the problem now was figuring out what happened with the Mark.

“I’ve still got questions, too,” Chi said. “I don’t believe Mamori-senpai learned to block leylines just from her dreams. Even if she did, she wouldn’t have been crazy enough to act on it.”

Kou frowned. “You mean someone taught her?”

“No. I mean someone influenced her.”

“But she said she had the idea in her….”

Kou didn’t continue. There were numerous nightwalkers who could influence dreams. There was even a youkai that specifically ate dreams, so having a spiritual nature that allowed them to access the dreams of normal humans was no mystery.

It was then that Kou felt his heart sink into his stomach. There was a nightwalker who was smart enough to know the technique to block leylines, who knew that Sakura had the talent to do it, and could influence her into learning and actually doing it for real.

Kou had no idea what their motives would be, but a clever enemy who could hide behind the shroud of secrecy was probably the most dangerous kind.

“Not only that,” Hougetsu said. “Chi-chan told me that Fushimi Inari Shrine also sent someone here—why only one? I don’t think she’d be meant to do anything at all but gather information. So why was she so invested in killing that kudagitsune? If she were really just hunting a nogitsune who traipsed into Tokyo like she said, she could’ve left it to the Tokyo kitsune. What was she really doing here?”

Kou’s frown went even deeper. His gears were finally running full speed, and he realized that there were too many things that were odd that had been going on recently. “Huh. There’s also the issue of the rogue oni.”

Hougetsu nodded. “You still suspect that they’re bloodlinked?”

“I feel like it explains it best. Not only their deranged look and behavior, but also the fact that they went rogue—I’ve never known the oni to go rogue this late into the modern day, let alone ones brave enough to try going wild in Tokyo.”

“Good catch. That, too.”

“And then there’s Kurotarou, the mujina who got into our school. Who sent him? Nobody from that far outside Tokyo would’ve been bold enough to try and mess with the kitsune, so it has to be someone who knew that the Ouji Inari Shrine would be weakened, so it has to be someone who knew that—”

He gasped. Hougetsu grimly nodded again. “Someone who knew that the leylines were going down.”

Chi stood up. “So you’re saying that whoever was behind this all, they were behind everything?”

“Whoa, let’s not go that far,” Hougetsu raised both arms. “I’m saying, these weird things could very well be connected. There were too many coincidences that just kind of relied on each other in order to even just happen. Something’s weird here, so I’m suspicious. I can’t give you a yes or a no.”

“All this said, though,” Kou said, “if all of this was really somebody’s plot, what could they be trying to accomplish?”

Hougetsu shrugged. “I can think of a good number of things. Each one is as convincing as the rest.”

Chi groaned as she sat back down. “So the only thing we can worry about right now is … Nii-chan’s collapse.”

“And the one who has the answer to that … is Kazuki.”

It’s been a while since Kou’s dad’s name was spoken in the household. The air felt like it just turned cold again. “Did you find anything yet, Mom?”

Hougetsu shook her head. “No, unfortunately. I’m sorry.”

Kou sighed. “Ah … you did have to go back early. Sorry for that.”

“Don’t be. Having you kids all safe is more important than anything else. I’m just happy you’re alright, all things considered.”

Kou smiled. Hougetsu smiled back.

“For now though … let’s rest up for a bit. I’ll have to continue my search again tomorrow, after all. I hope it’s alright that I can’t stay here for too long.”

Kou could notice that Chi had a crestfallen look on her face. That said, Hougetsu was right—her search for a way to revive her husband could lead to the vital piece of the puzzle that Kou needed to help his family survive right now, so any second spent not doing that would be a second wasted. With a heavy heart, Kou nodded. “Thanks for coming around nonetheless.”

“I’ll keep a line open—maybe with a shikigami or something, just in case you can’t reach me on my phone again. Bad things are getting a bit too close for comfort. I’ll have to recheck my priorities.”

“I’d be really grateful.”

“Oh, also,” Hougetsu finally dished out her signature cheeky grin, “say hi to Himiko-chan’s parents for me. We’ve been in their care. I’d love to meet them one of these days.”

With that, Kou blushed from head to toe. “Mom, come on!”

*