Witching Hour Ride

As the motorbike roared steadily forward, the figure flickered like a dying lightbulb, disappearing only to reappear at the mouth of a sharp turn further down the road.

Eiji nodded, a spark of grim excitement lighting up his obsidian eyes. He clicked the gear pedal down. With a sharp flick of his wrist, the bike cut through the asphalt like a razor, the wind howling through the frame as if the machine itself were alive.

Turn after turn, gear after gear, they chased each other through the neon-soaked veins of Shina. Under the hum of the streetlamps, the city felt animated, almost breathing. Whenever Eiji rode Asahi’s bike into the deep night, passing lamp post after lamp post with no end in sight, the crushing loneliness of his life seemed to lift. He felt connected to the family he’d lost. In the biting wind and the empty streets, he finally felt at home.

But the game came to an end sooner than he would have liked.

“Eiji-dono! She led us here!” Meh cried out, fluttering in frantic circles.

Eiji slowed the bike to a purr and removed his helmet. The blue spirit was gone, but the destination was clear. Before him lay a sprawling, abandoned parking lot. With a cracked ramp leading down into a graveyard of wrecked cars and rusted metal, it looked like a set from a horror movie.

But it wasn't just the aesthetics. The very air felt eerily wrong.

“There’s a massive surge of malevolence here, Eiji-dono…”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Eiji kicked the stand down and secured his helmet to the bike.

As they walked toward the lot, the pressure in the air intensified. It was a thick, oily sensation that made his skin crawl.

“It’s matching the signature of the curse at the school!” Meh noted, his red iris darting around.

“…That’s interesting.” Eiji narrowed his eyes, his senses sharpened to a lethal point.

He stepped forward…

Thump.

and walked straight into a wall.

His forehead hit a solid, repelling surface.

“What the…?”

Eiji reached out, but his eyes saw nothing but empty air leading into the darkness of the lot. When his fingers made contact, a ripple of translucent energy shimmered. It was a barrier, cold and vibrating with a frequency that pushed back against his touch.

“Meh. Explanation.”

“Hmm…. Eiji-dono, this is definitely a Specter’s lair!”

“No shit. I’m asking why we can’t enter.”

“I’d say this barrier is specifically tuned to repel Exorcist energy. Yours, specifically.”

Eiji’s brow furrowed in genuine puzzlement. “You mean the Specter made this? A sentient barrier?”

Exorcists were taught that Specters were just mindless projections of human rot—shards of a broken soul. To encounter one that could think, that could prioritize its own survival with a tactical defense, was unheard of.

“What in the world…?” Eiji sighed, tapping his chin. It wasn't that the malevolence was overwhelmingly strong—he’d fought bigger nasties—it was the intelligence behind it that was baffling.

“Maybe we should check on that student again?” Meh proposed. “The one surrounded by the school’s curse?”

“What? How am I even supposed to bring that up?”

Before he could argue, the blue braided girl flickered back into existence in the distance, standing near a street corner.

“Follow her, Eiji-dono!”

The chase led him away from the abandoned lot and toward a fairly normal, well-maintained apartment complex. The spirit stood by the entrance for a heartbeat before vanishing for good this time.

“Meh, anything?” Eiji asked, looking at the building. It looked completely inconspicuous—certainly not a place where ancient evil would take root.

“Hmmm….” The eyeball squinted, hovering near a row of mailboxes. “Wait! I sense it! That school malevolence! It’s right here!”

“Wait, are we at her—”

“And it’s close!”

“Uhm…?”

A short, timid girl with red-and-black hair stepped into the light. She was clutching a heavy plastic bag of trash in both hands. She stopped, looking at the tall, mean-faced teenager on the black motorcycle in total confusion.

“I-I’m sorry but… can you…?” She gestured weakly toward the trash bin Eiji was currently blocking with his bike.

Eiji looked at her in silence.

“Sure.” He finally nodded, moving his bike back an inch.

It was her. The "freak" from the hallway.

Silence stretched between them, heavy and awkward, as she shuffled past to drop the bag in the bin.

“Eiji-dono! Say something friendly!” Meh hissed into his ear, invisible to the girl but loud enough to make Eiji’s eye twitch, “Go on! Break the ice!”

Eiji looked at the girl. He thought about the curse. He thought about the abandoned parking lot. He thought about how he looked like a delinquent who had followed her home in the middle of the night.

The girl turned back to him, her honey-colored eyes wide with a mix of fear and curiosity.

Eiji cleared his throat. He opted for total honesty.

“…I’m not a stalker.”

“Eh?” Naomi blinked, her brain seemingly short-circuiting at the sheer bluntness of the statement.

Without another word, Eiji pulled his helmet on, clicked the visor shut, and kicked the engine to life. He didn't wait for a reply. He popped the clutch and roared away into the night, leaving the girl standing by the trash bins in stunned silence.

“Eeeeh…?” Naomi whispered to the empty street.

⌁◉⌁

“I can’t believe you actually said that, Eiji-dono!!!”

As Eiji climbed the concrete steps to his run-down apartment, Meh’s high-pitched laughter echoed off the peeling walls. The Shikigami was practically doing backflips in the air.

“Shut it, or I’m sending you back to Yomi in a plastic bag,” Eiji hissed, his eyes burning with a weary fury.

“But come on! You could have said anything! A ‘hello,’ a ‘good evening,’ even a grunt would have been better than—!”

BAM.

With a practiced flick of his fingers, Eiji sent the winged eyeball spinning into the night sky like a shooting star.

As he reached his door, a soft, furry sensation brushed against his ankle. “Meow...”

Eiji looked down at the small black cat winding around his legs and let out a long, heavy sigh. Pets weren't allowed in the complex, and this stray was becoming dangerously persistent. He unlocked the door and slipped inside as fast as possible, making sure the cat didn't follow him into the gloom.

He flicked the switch. The harsh light of a single bulb illuminated his world: a cramped, hallway-like kitchen that bled into a living space barely large enough for a coffee table, a TV, and a single, rusty bed. It was a depressing box, but Eiji had developed a grim talent for existing anywhere with a roof.

He kicked off his shoes, tossed his jacket onto the bed, and rummaged through his bag. He pulled out the mud-stained sketchbook, still sealed in a plastic bag, and set it on the table.

“What are you going to do with that, Eiji-dono?” Meh asked, having already materialized back in the room, seemingly unfazed by the strike.

“Watch and learn,” Eiji muttered. He carefully wiped the cover down with a towel.

Opening the book, he found himself staring at a world far brighter than Shina. There were picturesque landscapes, jagged-edged characters with glowing auras, and creatures that looked suspiciously like the Specters he fought—only much cooler. The lines were confident and the shading precise. That girl wasn't just a "freak otaku"; she was an artist.

“Hm.” Eiji traced the edge of a drawing.

He walked into the tiny kitchen and opened the freezer.

“Eiji-dono?”

“Just trust me,” Eiji said, sliding the sketchbook onto a shelf between a bag of prehistoric frozen peas and an ice tray.

It was a trick Hifumi had used years ago when one of his school notebooks had been ruined by the rain.

“The ice pulls the moisture out without wrinkling the pages…”

He hadn't thought about that in a long time.

The bed groaned under his weight as he flopped down. It was past midnight. Between the bike chase, the barrier at the parking lot, and the encounter with the girl, his body felt like it was made of lead.

He slid open his bedside drawer. Inside lay three things that defined him: a pack of cigarettes, a photograph, and a stained playing card.

He lit a cigarette, the flare of the lighter casting long, dancing shadows against the wall. He wasn't a heavy smoker, but the sharp tang of the smoke helped quiet the static in his brain. Sometimes, when he exhaled, he could almost see Asahi’s ghost in the rising grey plumes.

“You really do look like him.”

The voice was soft, familiar, and it made Eiji’s heart skip a beat. He looked up. There she was, leaning against the closet door—Hifumi.

She wasn't a spirit; Meh didn't even react to her. She was probably just a hallucination, a fragment of his own guilt and memory that appeared when the night got too quiet.

“You look more like a gangster now, though,” the image of his sister teased. “Seriously, did you have to dye your hair?”

Eiji almost chuckled. It was exactly what she would have said. He opened his mouth to reply, to tell her he was just trying to look as tough as the world felt, but she vanished into the smoke.

He was alone again.

He picked up the family photo. It was the one from the studio—the day his life ended. Asahi was grinning, Hifumi looked modest and beautiful, and Eiji... Eiji was in the middle, his face a pathetic attempt at looking amused.

His fingers drifted to the card. The Jack of Hearts.

Who were they? A man? A spirit? A God? All he knew were those burning red eyes. That was the only thing keeping him moving. Revenge was the fuel in his tank, the only reason he stepped out of bed every morning.

I'm an Exorcist, he told himself, staring at the ceiling.

It’s the only thing I am.

He thought about his father—the man who had sold his newborn son's soul to the Gods and vanished. Why? For money? For fame? Was Eiji just a currency to him?

Was it my fault? What if I was never born?

Maybe Hifumi would still be alive… maybe his mother would be healthy…

The thoughts went in circles, a carousel of "what-ifs" that led nowhere. He was living a life that wasn't his, a life his sister had begged him not to waste. But how could he do anything else? He was a hunter in a city of ghosts.

As the cigarette burned down to the filter, Eiji finally let his eyes close. For once, the weight of his thoughts was enough to drag him into a heavy, dreamless sleep.