Archive of Our Own

The winter had been relatively mild, powdering the ground with only a light dusting of snow, barely enough to conceal the withered grass. However, as was often the case with such winters, the snow melted by day and refroze by night, and the sleet was not particularly forgiving, either to booted feet or rubber tires. There was little left of that now, but Shuuichi still had to be careful picking his way across the cobblestone path in the park as he headed to where he was meeting his prospective client. Out on the sidewalk, he could hear students (many of them his classmates) shrieking and laughing when they slipped on the slick concrete. Occasionally, laughter followed a thud, almost apologetic in its humility.

When Shuuichi found the designated bench, he let his book bag fall on the seat beside him with a dull thump, pencils rattling in their case. He glanced at his watch and glanced at the sky, still coal gray, though that was due as much to the looming clouds as to the pre-dawn gloom—ruddy light edged the eastern horizon, but it did nothing more than cut the gray sky, not break it. As of yet, the sun didn’t possess the power to make a difference against the late winter gloom. A gust of wind rattled the leaves on the sidewalk.

This is the right place, Shuuichi thought, frowning lightly, drawing his scarf closer to his neck. When is Harada-san going to get here? I don’t want to be late to school because of this. Of course, this wouldn’t have been an issue if—never mind. It was too late to worry about that, now.

Still, he had only a few minutes before he’d have to head on to school, if Harada-san didn’t show up. As much as Shuuichi would have liked to land this job, he wanted to get through the day without trouble at school even more.

Eventually, a short, plump man with a gray coat and bristly white hair poking out from under a gray hat came walking hastily up the path, clutching a briefcase in one hand and glancing furtively about him. He caught sight of Shuuichi sitting on the park bench and stopped dead in his tracks. A vein started to twitch in his jaw.

“Young man,” he said in a low, slightly rasping voice, his hand clenched on the handle of his briefcase, “I am meeting someone soon, right here. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Besides, you’ll be late for school if you don’t leave soon, won’t you?” he asked, barely masking the tense thrum in his voice. Then again, Shuuichi had the feeling that this man would have had a hard time putting up a front of concern even when calm; it didn’t sit well on his skin. He turned his back pointedly to Shuuichi.

Shuuichi straightened in the bench, raising his eyebrows. “Harada-san?”

The man whirled around, his eyes suddenly huge in his head. “I’m sorry?” he spluttered, tugging at the collar of his coat. “Have we met?”

He reminded Shuuichi a little of the way an ayakashi had reacted when Shuuichi beat him at shogi, and the latter had to give up the house he was haunting back to its human owners—almost comical in how flabbergasted he was, and trying his hardest to break one of the windows on the way out.  Shuuichi’s eyebrows rose higher. “I came, just like I said I would.”

Harada-san gaped at him, his mouth opening and shutting again, fishlike. Finally, he managed, “I was told you were quite young, but I didn’t think I was going to be dealing with a student. If this is some kind of trick—“

“No trick,” Shuuichi said flatly, a scowl tugging insistently at the corners of his mouth. “If you don’t think I’m up to the task, you can always find someone else.”

But Harada-san sat down hastily on the bench. He reeked of cigarette smoke, the acrid stench clinging to his coat. “No, no,” he assured him, holding up a hand. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I… suppose we won’t have much time to talk?”

“I asked for an afternoon meeting so that we’d have more—whatever.” Shuuichi drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, a puff of mist forming around his mouth before fading away. “I was told you had a job for me?”

Mercifully, Harada-san wasn’t interested in arguing any further. He nodded choppily and opened the snaps on his briefcase, pulling out a dark red manila folder. “I’ve been having some… trouble with an ayakashi for the past several years now.” He handed the folder to Shuuichi, who tucked it away between the binders in his book bag. There would be time to review the finer details later. “It lives somewhere in the mountains, and every time it comes down, someone in my family has an…” His jaw worked. “…Accident. I want you to find it and get rid of it.”

“What does it look like?”

“Like a man, but with scales and the head of a fish—it’s all in that folder; you can look at it yourself.”

Guess you’ve got somewhere to go, too, huh? Shuuichi nodded briskly. “The pay?” When he had looked at the posting, the pay offer wasn’t mentioned at all. In his (admittedly not exhaustive) experience, if the pay offer wasn’t referenced, it usually meant either that the pay was going to be too high to be safely discussed in public, or that the client didn’t have any money and was hoping to get the exorcist to take the job out of pity. Some people were not aware that pity was great for soothing the heart, but virtually useless for practical purposes. He hoped he wasn’t risking being late to school for that kind of client.

Harada-san glared, bristling slightly. “Generous, I assure you, and to be paid after you’ve exorcised the ayakashi, not before.”

Shuuichi frowned. “And how are you gonna know it’s dead?” he probed.

But Harada-san only said, “Trust me, I will know when you’ve killed it.”

Well, that certainly raised more questions than it answered (providing Harada-san wasn’t just lying), but Shuuichi shut his mouth on them. It wasn’t relevant; more to the point, prying too closely could cost him the job. “How long do I have to get the job done?” he asked instead, resisting the urge to stuff his hands in his pockets. Harada-san already thought he was too young for the job; no need to hammer that in any further.

“There’s no time limit,” Harada-san replied, his dark eyes narrowing slightly.

“No… time limit,” Shuuichi echoed him, staring. He’d never gotten a job without a time limit before. The longest amount of time Shuuichi had ever been given to get an ayakashi sealed or exorcised was five weeks; the typical timeframe was one to two weeks, three at the most. He peered closely at Harada-san, wishing for a moment he possessed the ayakashi’s ability to look into the minds of others. “Why?”

Harada-san shifted his weight, folding his arms across his chest. Shuuichi thought he would refuse to answer, but he said, “Because no one I’ve given a time limit to has ever been able to finish the job.”

-0-0-0-

Shuuichi had looked over the folder’s contents at lunch. The ayakashi was as Harada-san had described it: humanoid in shape, but with scales instead of skin, and a fish’s head, large and gray with glassy eyes and a gaping mouth, in place of a human one. It was bipedal, reckoned to be about six feet tall, and inhabited the forests southeast of town. It carried no weapons.

Apparently the ayakashi had been cursing Harada-san and his family for nearly a decade now, the family being either too proud or too poor to move away—though Shuuichi did allow that they could have tried that, only to find that trouble had followed them to their new home. The curses took the form of one member of the family falling sick or suffering an injury. Typically, the illnesses and injuries were nothing terribly serious, but lately they had been starting to escalate. In the most recent incident, Harada-san’s teenaged daughter had ‘inexplicably’ fallen ill with pneumonia, and had been hospitalized for nearly a month when the sickness wouldn’t go away despite treatment.

And the pay offer was… Well, Harada-san hadn’t been joking when he called it ‘quite generous.’

There was unfortunately no information about where exactly in the southeast forests the ayakashi was living, or if it had any permanent dwelling place at all. Shuuichi supposed he’d start off asking the other ayakashi in the area what they knew, if he could get them to cooperate at all. But that would have to wait for the weekend.

“Is that everything?” the club president called from the far side of the auditorium stage.

“Yeah, that’s everything,” one of the students on Shuuichi’s side of the stage called back. “We’re good to go.”

The school drama club, small as it was, had the run of the auditorium for after-school meetings, provided that everything used during said meetings was cleared off the stage and put back where it belonged came the end of the meeting. They had already done the school play for the year, so now it was back to doing skits and sketches for an audience of approximately five: whichever members of the club weren’t involved in the day’s activities, Ikeda-sensei, who supervised them (though at times, Shuuichi suspected she did so more out of concern for school property than interest in the club), and the occasional unconnected student who was curious enough to sneak into the auditorium and watch. Shuuichi wondered how impressed any of them ever were.

Everything having been put up, the club began to disperse, going for the bags and jackets they had left in the chairs in the first row of seats in the auditorium. As Shuuichi pulled on his jacket, Ikeda-sensei pulled him aside, leading him away from the others to the shadowy edge of the auditorium, below the dully glimmering exit sign. “Have you been enjoying yourself in the club this year, Natori-kun?” she asked.

Shuuichi nodded. “…Yes, Ikeda-sensei.” What’s this about? I can’t remember the last time she singled me out for anything.

“I’m glad! We can always use more club members, and you really seem to have come out of your shell this past year!” She smiled widely, exposing her large, white teeth.

Shuuichi froze and stared. “……Thank you, Sensei.” He searched her face for any sign of razor, barb, or at least a thorn. Her face just showed skin, but all that meant was that she was better at hiding it than Shuuichi was at spotting it. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

She seemed thoroughly unaware of his suspicions of her; her smile didn’t dim in the slightest. “Natori-kun, have you given any thought to continuing acting after school?”

“Not really.” To be honest, Shuuichi hadn’t given much thought to what he was going to do after high school, period, much to the aggravation of the career counselor he’d spoken to. Shuuichi knew he was going to keep being an exorcist, though for obvious reasons this wasn’t exactly something he could discuss with his teachers. He also knew that he didn’t have enough money for college, and that he was going to have to get a job of some sort. Not only would it be nice to have enough money to move out of his family’s house, Shuuichi had heard enough of the older exorcists griping about their ‘other’ work to know that for most of them, exorcism didn’t provide enough to serve as a sole source of income. But he had no idea of what his ‘other’ job was going to be, as of yet.

Ikeda-sensei sighed gustily, rolling her eyes. “It seems as if none of you know what to do with yourselves these days. Well, Natori-kun, I’ve already had this conversation with some of your classmates, and I think you need to hear it as well.” She fished a business card out of her purse and handed it out to Shuuichi. When Shuuichi looked it over, curious, he saw that it read out the number for a talent agency.

“I think that you could potentially do quite well as an actor,” Ikeda-sensei told him earnestly, her smile taking on a distinctly encouraging bent. “It won’t be easy, mind you, but I do think you could do well. If you’re not interested, well, you’d be missing a great opportunity, but that’s your right. If you are or you’re not sure, think about it for a while. Just… come talk to me again before you do anything else, alright?”

“…Alright. Thank you, Ikeda-sensei.”

Alone, Shuuichi turned the card over in his hands with something like bewilderment. He had enjoyed the club this year, if he was honest with himself. He hadn’t thought much about acting as a possible job, any more than he had anything else.

He pocketed the card, and started to head for home.

-0-0-0-

Exorcists’ meetings came sun or rain, sleet or snow, even when the drafty halls necessitated that everyone wear their coats and scarves inside (Warm bodies could warm up a building somewhat, but only so much). Shuuichi had figured that out early on, though he’d be lying if he said he’d been expecting it the first time a thunderstorm struck on the night of a meeting and it wasn’t cancelled, despite the designated meeting hall being several miles from the road. He was beginning to suspect that showing up to meetings even during the worst weather was supposed to be some badge of pride.

Rain splattered fitfully on the warped glass of the windows, though it had been petering off for the last ten minutes or so. Occasionally, the windowpanes rattled when the wind struck them, but more prevalent was the constant creaking of the floorboards under the weight of so many bodies. A musty, faintly sweet odor permeated the wet, chilly air.

“Have you given up for the night already?” Seiji asked with a laugh, as he slid into the alcove on the staircase beside Shuuichi. He pressed his palms down flat on the ledge and smiled, his mouth splitting in a thin, sharp sliver of teeth. “That might be a new record.”

“You’re one to talk,” Shuuichi retorted, forgetting to protest about Seiji just sitting down beside him without asking. He slid closer to the wall to give him room. “What are you doing up here?”

“No reason.”

“I don’t have any reason, either,” Shuuichi said firmly. He forgot to tell Seiji to go away; he’d been forgetting to do that a lot, lately.

The rain continued to fall sporadically outside, casting quivering shadows on the wall that raced down out of sight. The stairs creaked, but even with his glasses on, Shuuichi saw nothing, felt only a faint gust of wind hit his face as whatever it was passed, hearing only the rustle of cloth and a low murmur of laughter on the top of the staircase, growing fainter the further it drew away.

Shuuichi snuck a sideways glance at Seiji. Seiji seemed content to stare, smiling absently, at the wavy glass of the window opposite the alcove. The rain had made his hair curl slightly at the ends, clinging in clumps to his jaw and neck. Still silence fell about his shoulders like a cloak, so enveloping that Shuuichi could easily believe that Seiji had forgotten he was there at all. The shadows filed sharp edges off of his jaw, his cheekbones, painted what remained in soft, fuzzy lines.

“Have you looked at the reward postings yet tonight?” Seiji asked suddenly. He reached up and raked his damp hair off of his cheek with his fingernails.

“No. Why, did someone put up a lost and found poster for their dog again?”

Seiji’s lip twitched. “Not this time. Someone’s taken Harada’s job posting.” His eyes glittered scornfully. “I wonder who would be enough an idiot to do that.”

Shuuichi hunched his shoulders. Something else unseen came racing up the staircase, a thunder on the stairs, but he paid it little mind. “It’s a simple job and it pays a lot of money. Why not?”

There came no quick jibe, the short stab of the knife. Seiji stared at him, his eyes wide. “You took that job?” he asked after a long moment of silence, gazing sharply at him.

“I did,” Shuuichi said almost challengingly, straightening against the wall behind him.

Seiji nodded, his thin, supple mouth curling downwards. “I had wondered,” he murmured, drawing out the words pensively. “The last time Harada got someone to take that job was a couple of months before you started coming to meetings. I can’t imagine who it was who actually agreed to put his posting up here this time.”

“Well, what’s wrong with the job?” Shuuichi pressed. Somewhere below, there came a loud, sharp crash of wood on wood—a chair falling to the ground, or a table, maybe. He winced at the sound, though Seiji didn’t even seem to notice.

“The general consensus is that the job is a crank of some sort.” Seiji leaned back on his elbows. He rolled his shoulders languidly. “No one will take it anymore. Well,” he amended, his eyes gleaming oddly, “no one but you.”

If Seiji was expecting Shuuichi to renounce the job then and there, well, disappointment was a fact of life. Instead, Shuuichi slapped his hand down on the alcove and craned his head over Seiji’s, staring down into his eyes. “Do you think it’s a crank?”

Seiji just smirked and shrugged. His eyes lingered on a point just below Shuuichi’s chin; Shuuichi pretended not to notice.

Shuuichi rolled his eyes. “Helpful, Seiji, really helpful. Well, can you at least tell me why everyone thinks it’s a setup?”

Seiji’s smirk sharpened to keenness. “Are you sure you want to know? You might—“

“Seiji!”

At that, both Shuuichi and Seiji jumped, Shuuichi jerking his head back just in time to avoid colliding with Seiji as the latter sat up. The smirk faded from Seiji’s lips, and Shuuichi clutched at the collar of his shirt, his face burning, as the two of them peered out from the alcove. They found Seiji’s father standing at the foot of the staircase, staring up at them. In that moment, Shuuichi may as well have been as invisible as the ayakashi who had passed them on the stairs earlier; his one uncovered eye glinted as he called out, in his low, rumbling voice, “Seiji, come down. I need to talk to you.”

“I’m coming,” Seiji replied, voice running to mildness such as Shuuichi was unaccustomed to hearing. He slipped out of the alcove and headed down the staircase without so much as a backwards glance. Seiji nodded to his father, eyes slightly downcast, the very picture of filial respect. He said something to his father—Shuuichi strained his ears to hear, but couldn’t make anything out.

Matoba-san, however, his voice carried without any difficulty. “We’ll talk about that outside. How has school been? I haven’t had time to ask lately.”

Seiji’s face broke in a smile. Shuuichi couldn’t hear what he said next, but any curiosity fled him when he noticed how much softer Seiji’s expression was than usual, when he smiled. Like… Shuuichi watched them from his perch in the alcove, no longer listening to what Matoba-san said, nor trying to hear how Seiji replied, his eyes glued to them both.

Eventually, Matoba-san brought his arm up to hover just above the center of Seiji’s shoulders. Father and son walked away from the foot of the staircase, and were quickly swallowed up by the jostling crowd. Shuuichi let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

In his time as an exorcist, Shuuichi did not think Matoba Kazuya had said a single word to him, not even in passing. While some of the Matoba clan exorcists gave him a hard time (though even they didn’t pay Shuuichi a whole lot of attention most of the time), their head seemed to consider Natori Shuuichi thoroughly beneath his notice. The young upstart from a formerly defunct clan was not worth the time of the head of the Matoba clan, or so it seemed. Personally, Shuuichi didn’t mind it all that much, considering the things that occasionally happened to the people that Matoba-san did take notice of. He could live without that kind of attention, thanks.

It was funny, but Shuuichi saw no trace of that when Matoba-san spoke to his son. He still showed a stern, forbidding face, but Seiji behaved as though he was the least frightening man in the world, approaching him with significantly more ease than Shuuichi approached his own family members. He seemed… softer, then. They both did.

No ogre to his own son, I guess.

He felt… Shuuichi sank back into the alcove, and shut his eyes, drowning light in darkness. He couldn’t begin to guess what he felt, to watch it.

-0-0-0-

Seiji followed his father as the latter cut a swath through the crowd in the hall, nearly having to jog to keep up. He could feel eyes on him, and tilted his chin up slightly, staring over or through anyone who happened to be in his field of vision. Let them wonder.

There were a few ayakashi loitering beneath the awning outside. They shrank back into the deep shadows when the head of the Matoba clan walked by; their over-bright eyes lingered on him, wide and wary, but soon they looked away, pointedly turning their backs. It was still raining outside, if only in a fine drizzle. Kazuya seemed not to notice—Seiji couldn’t remember the last time he had ever seen the weather bother his father—but Seiji stopped and zipped up his jacket before stepping out from under the awning. His father led them to a spot beneath the sprawling branches of a paulownia tree, which shielded them somewhat from the misty drizzle, but not the fat droplets of water that fell from the tips of the tree’s naked limbs.

“What was it you wanted to talk about?” Seiji asked, as soon as they were out of earshot of the ayakashi on the awning.

His father stood with his back to the trunk of the paulownia tree, his arms folded across his broad chest. In the shadows cast by the electrical lights inside the hall, he lost half of his body to the wood of the tree, his skin almost corpselike in its washed-out grayness. The scars on his face appeared as livid as they had the day he’d gotten the wounds they came from, nearly ten years ago. “I have an assignment for you, Seiji,” he said slowly. “You’ll have to wait until we get home to hear the full details, but I can give a rundown here.”

That was odd; it wasn’t like Kazuya to discuss assignments where anyone could hear them talking. Nevertheless, Seiji nodded and asked, “What’s the job?”

“A client of ours is having trouble with a curse laid on her by an ayakashi. The ayakashi in question was exorcised a few months ago, but the curse is still active.” Kazuya looked past Seiji, his jaw set, but he soon turned his attention back to his son. “There is supposed to be an ayakashi in the area who specializes in breaking curses. I want you to track it down and convince it to lift the curse on our client.”

Immediately, Seiji could spot a problem with this plan. “Curse-breakers usually refuse to have anything to do with our clan,” he pointed out uncertainly. “When I find it, it’s probably not going to want to help me.” There was also the fact—it went without saying, really; no need to remind his father of it—that any curse-breaker was potentially capable of laying down powerful curses themselves. If Seiji tried to force the ayakashi to cooperate, he could end up dealing with a nasty curse of his own.

“I know that, Seiji.” Kazuya’s face hardened. “If the ayakashi says no, that will be the end of it. You are still to find it, and ask it, regardless of the chances of success.”

The aforementioned chances of success were approaching zero. Seiji knew it, and his father must have known it too. What was most likely was that Seiji would spend days wandering around in circles, wheedling or strong-arming information out of the local ayakashi, to spend five seconds to be told no and packed off in defeat.

Seiji looked past his father, past the tree line, to the sky above. The formerly impenetrable cloud cover had started to break apart, to reveal the stars set in the inky sky. With them hung the moon, a slight, silver wisp edging a field of black. Give it a few days, and it would be but a black spot, a patch in the sky where no stars shone.

Frowning, Seiji tore his gaze away from the moon and back to his father. Kazuya met his gaze evenly, his face expressionless. The scars snaking out from under his eyepatch seemed, if possible, even more livid than they already did. The hairs on the back of Seiji’s neck stood on end.

He nodded, his eyes downcast. “Yes, Father.”

“Good.” Kazuya swept past him, heading back for the shelter of the hall. He squeezed Seiji’s shoulder briefly as he walked past him. Seiji didn’t respond.

-0-0-0-

Why did the exorcists and ayakashi who came to meetings always get so rowdy as the night wore on? Was it the sake? Fatigue taking its toll on politeness? Whatever the reason, Shuuichi winced as yet another person backed right into him, jabbing him with their shoulder. Shuuichi didn’t stick around for the person the shoulder belonged to to turn around and either apologize or snap out an accusation, and instead kept weaving his way through the crowd, scanning the sea of masks and faces for one in particular. Come on, I know I saw Takuma-san come in. He can’t have gone home already…

Finally, Shuuichi spotted him. Takuma-san was standing by one of the windows, talking to a brown-haired woman Shuuichi didn’t recognize. Cautiously, Shuuichi made his way over to the two of them, wondering just how offended the woman would be if he interrupted them, and whether or not he’d be dealing with some small ‘accident’ in the near future.

That part was mooted, however, when Takuma-san caught sight of Shuuichi lingering nearby, and the woman muttered something to him and slipped away, drawing her haori closer over herself. Takuma-san nodded distractedly, before turning his attention back to Shuuichi. “Shuuichi-kun?” he asked, hovering between kindly interest and the beginnings of concern. “What is it?”

Shuuichi hesitated, fighting back a grimace. Takuma-san had finally, grudgingly, accepted that Shuuichi wasn’t going to stop coming to meetings or taking assignments, though he still dropped hints from time to time. If Harada-san’s assignment really was some kind of setup, Takuma-san would probably take Shuuichi’s having fallen for it as an invitation to reopen the once-constant salvos of "You’re too young for these meetings!” But Shuuichi couldn’t tell if Seiji had been winding him up or not, and Takuma-san could at least be counted on to always be honest. “At the last meeting, someone named Harada Ichiro put up a job posting on the bulletin board.”

Immediately, Takuma-san looked as though he had swallowed a lemon. “You didn’t take that job, did you?” he asked urgently.

“Yes, I did.”

Takuma-san groaned and rubbed his forehead. “I meant to warn you when I saw he’d had the posting put back up,” he muttered. “I can see no one else did. Listen, Shuuichi-kun,” he said seriously, his gaze boring into Shuuichi, “You need to contact Harada and tell him the deal’s off. If he’s already paid you, give him the money back. Just… break off contact with him. I mean it.”

Well, there went any hopes of this just being Seiji trying to wind him up. Shuuichi frowned. “Why is that? Harada-san told me no one had ever been able to find the ayakashi he wants exorcised, but all that means is it’s good at hiding. What’s to say I can’t find it?”

This show of confidence did not exactly reassure Takuma-san. He stared at Shuuichi, his mouth slightly open. Then, he shut his eyes and sighed. “Shuuichi-kun, do you know how many exorcists have taken that job?”

“No. How many?”

“You will be number eight. Now, what does it tell you that seven exorcists have tried to find this ayakashi before you, and none of them succeeded?”

“That the ayakashi was better at hiding than seven exorcists were at finding it,” Shuuichi said flatly. He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Did you ever take Harada-san’s job?”

Takuma-san gave a scoff of mild derision. “No. I already had work lined up the first few times he tried, and after that, well—“ he glanced out the window, folding his arms across his chest “—after a while, you either learn to recognize these things, or you wash out. There’s no other way. Now, Shuuichi-kun, I am telling you, call it off. You shouldn’t waste your time on snipe hunts. There will be other jobs.”

“What’s the harm in wandering around the woods for a few days?” Shuuichi asked, biting back on a scowl, with some difficulty. “If I don’t find anything, I don’t find anything. And you never know; I might!”

“Shuuichi-kun…” Takuma-san let out an exasperated sigh, his eyes flashing. He shook his head and smiled ruefully, pressing two of his fingertips to his forehead, the others curled in a fist. “I suppose you are too old for me to try to force you not to, even if you are still too young to know what’s good for you. Alright. If you want to go on a snipe hunt, go on a snipe hunt. Just…” His smile faded, skin spreading tight over a network of muscle that suddenly showed itself careworn. “…Just be careful, will you?”

Shuuichi looked away. “I… will. Thanks, Takuma-san.”

(He wished, sometimes, that it was easier to accept than it was.)

The night wore on, darkness seeping in through the seams of the walls and floorboards until the shadows outnumbered their masters two to one. When that came about, Shuuichi started to head for the door. It would be bad if he wasn’t able to get any sleep that night; it wasn’t like his teachers took kindly to a student falling asleep at his desk. I just hope I can get home without waking anyone up. The door of the coat room, where Shuuichi had left his umbrella, opened with a painful screech against the floor. If Grandfather wakes up, it’s not gonna be good.

But when he slipped inside the dark coat room to retrieve his umbrella, it was nowhere to be found. “Are you serious?” Shuuichi muttered aloud, running a hand through his hair and pushing out a frustrated breath. He’d never put any kind of identifying mark on his umbrella, not even a strip of masking tape with his name written on it—he could still remember secreting himself away in the family storehouse and reading about how easy it was to curse inanimate objects—but he didn’t think it was so unreasonable to expect to be able to put his umbrella down somewhere and still be able to find it when he came back for it later.

Shuuichi pushed aside the few coats that had actually been put up on coat hangers instead of staying firmly on their owner’s bodies, not noticing when one of the coats slipped off its hanger and landed in a heap on the floor. He didn’t see his umbrella, not on one of the hooks on the wall, not in the jumbled pile by the door, and not in the shadowy corners of the room when he dropped to his knees to look where the light didn’t reach.

It was still raining. Not hard, but that didn’t matter for the distance Shuuichi had to walk to get home. If he went home without his umbrella, there would be a telltale trail of water on the floor wherever he walked, one that he wouldn’t be able to clean up until he’d dried off himself, not without just making another mess. Though it had never taken much to drive his grandfather to anger, familiarity did not blunt the old man’s anger, nor quiet it. If someone else found it, Grandfather wouldn’t know unless he woke up and demanded to be taken to the kitchen or the bathroom, but still, the best thing would be to avoid the situation altogether. Shuuichi’s eyes darted around the dark room, his heart pounding against his ribs as he crouched low to look under a small table at the back of the room.

“Shuuichi-san?”

Something moved into the open doorway, blocking out the light pouring in from the hall, only partially, but still effectively robbing Shuuichi of any ability to keep searching for his umbrella. He looked behind him, blinking against the stinging light that still edged in around the obstruction.

Seiji was soaked, dripping water on the floor, his hair clinging stubbornly to his face. Silent and unsmiling, he stared down at Shuuichi with curiously bright eyes. His skin was washed-out white, too much for the dark of the coat room to account for it.

Shuuichi stood slowly. He felt as though there was something else he should have heard by now, something Seiji should have said, but still, he was silent.  “What did your dad want to talk with you about?”

For a long moment, Seiji gave him no answer still, so silent and empty of his usual quick remarks that Shuuichi could almost believe he had been cursed to silence, or had his tongue cut out of his head. “Careful you don’t lose your tongue for your idle chatter” was something Shuuichi had heard more than once in these watchful places. But then, that familiar smirk was firmly reattached to Seiji’s lips, and he said airily, “Clan business, none of your concern.”

“Right.” If Shuuichi had ten yen for every time Seiji had gotten a knowing glint of ‘I’ve got a secret’ in his eyes, smirking and snickering when Shuuichi pressed, Shuuichi was pretty sure he wouldn’t have had to worry about what he was going to do for money after high school. He probably wouldn’t have to worry about money again, period; Seiji could have given lessons to the cat that ate the canary. However, Shuuichi couldn’t help but feel the absence of the normal teasing note in Seiji’s voice.

Seiji bent down and reached for something just outside the door, off to his right. “I believe this is yours.” He held out a small, black umbrella with a cylindrical, brown plastic handle.

Shuuichi crossed the room swiftly, making a grab for the umbrella and caring significantly less than he normally would about whether or not Seiji had swiped it at some point during the evening. But Seiji jerked the umbrella back out of Shuuichi’s reach. “We’ll talk later.” He smiled, but there was an insistent edge to his voice. “This Saturday, around eight? I can meet you outside your house.”

“Yeah, fine, Seiji. Now, do you mind giving me that back?”

An obliging, thoroughly innocent smile playing on his lips, Seiji did so, his eyes never leaving Shuuichi’s face. As Shuuichi took his umbrella back, his hand brushed over Seiji’s, and he paused, his heart beating out a sharp, staccato rhythm.  Seiji’s skin was cold, but he could still feel the rush of blood beneath flesh.

-0-0-0-

Shuuichi wound up not waiting for the weekend to start asking around about his target. It didn’t hurt to start early, and it wasn’t too difficult to tell his family that his club meetings had run long; that explanation was accepted readily, even eagerly, though Shuuichi could still spot his father peering past his shoulder as though he expected Shuuichi to have brought… something home with him. Whatever. So long as no one talked about it, Shuuichi wouldn’t talk about it, either.

Once club meetings were done for the day, Shuuichi took to the forests choked with mist, watching for the shadows that darted between the trees, the eyes that stared out at him from every hollow spot, every leafless bush, every pile of wet, decaying leaves. An ayakashi’s natural aversion to exorcists, especially an exorcist they didn’t have the measure of combined with Shuuichi’s natural aversion to ayakashi meant that there were few conversations to be had, but even so, there were times when that particular wall could be surmounted.

No luck so far. Shuuichi heard nothing that even hinted at the fish-head ayakashi being here. “It’s strange,” one murmured, pressing their hand against their mouth as they sniggered. “I distinctly recall another exorcist asking me these same questions, a while back. Are you so sure that person didn’t find the one you’re seeking?”

Yes, he was pretty sure. If nothing else, whoever had caught such an elusive target probably would have boasted about it for a long time afterwards.

The overhead light in the kitchen was weak against the pre-dawn blackness of the sky outside; the room was encased in darkness on all sides, the shadows encroaching on the floorboards and the rough walls splattered with gleaming dots of grease. A warm, slightly earthy aroma permeated the kitchen as coffee boiled in the coffee pot on the counter. Shuuichi’s uncles had already left for work, and today was Sumi-san’s day off, so there was only Shuuichi’s father to hiss admonishingly at him to be quiet as he ate his breakfast. The warning went unanswered; Shuuichi didn’t need to be reminded.

Shuuichi ate slowly, his toast losing most of its flavor in his mouth, though that wasn’t exactly unusual. He’d be lying if he said he ever had much of an appetite in the mornings, and frustration sapped the taste from anything. He could feel his father’s eyes on the top of his head; he said nothing, and didn’t look up.

“So…” The word clung to the air like a leech, sucking dry what little warmth could be found there. Shuuichi dragged his gaze away from his plate, to see his father look him over with a decidedly ambivalent look on his face, his gaze lingering on the bags under Shuuichi’s eyes. “You’re graduating this March.”

Shuuichi nodded. “That’s right,” he said shortly.

“And have you given any thought at all to what you’re going to do after you’re done with high school?”

The card Ikeda-sensei had given him had taken up residence in Shuuichi’s book bag. He had taken it out between classes every day this week and turned it over slowly in his hands, brow knit. He had spent very little of the money he had earned as an exorcist, hiding it away for whenever the time came that he needed it. “…I can’t say that I have.”

The old man snorted. “Maybe if you got home a bit earlier, you’d have more time to think.”

Shuuichi stiffened. “I told you.” A defensive note edged his voice. “I can’t help it. My club meetings—“

“Don’t,” his father said curtly, raising his hand to silence Shuuichi, before running it wearily through his thin, dishwater-gray hair. “Just don’t. If I wasted my time worrying about what you do outside, I’d have worried myself straight into the grave by now.” He gripped his coffee mug tight in his hands. “You’ve never come home with more than a few scratches on you, so I can’t imagine you find very much out there.”

“I find plenty,” Shuuichi snapped, his lip curling. “You’ve just never wanted to know before.” For once, he almost wished Grandfather would wake up and hear them, so at least his father would be distracted dealing with him long enough for Shuuichi to finish getting ready for school and leave.

“I’m not concerned about what you do or don’t find outside,” his father retorted. “I’m more concerned about what might decide to follow you home!” He glared sharply at Shuuichi, eyes flashing. “You’re not going to be a child for much longer, so why don’t you tell me with an adult’s understanding: Do you think it’s alright to bring down danger on all of us, when you’re the only who can even see it?” he asked in a cold voice.

What follows me home? The ceramic plate sitting in front of him on the table showed his reflection well enough for Shuuichi to catch sight of a black shadow crawling up the right side of his face. Dad, something’s been ‘following’ me home for nearly twelve years now.

For a moment, he considered telling him, just to see how he’d react. An unseen threat was always counted as worse than a visible one, in this house. Shuuichi was fairly certain that if he was to tell them that an unseen threat had been among them for over a decade, and he was actually believed, the reaction would be explosive. At the very least, it would have provided some satisfaction to see the looks on their faces when they found out Shuuichi had an ayakashi living under his skin.

But the words stopped just shy of his mouth, as they always did.

It wasn’t that Shuuichi was afraid of not knowing how they would react. Not at all. In fact he knew just how his family would react to finding out about the lizard ayakashi, and it was that certainty that stopped his tongue.

Shuuichi couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been ‘bad luck’ and ‘misfortune’ to his family. Even before his mother died, he had been that, if more quietly than he was afterwards. How would it be, if he gave them anything that they could use to say that they had been right? He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. He didn’t want to see triumph mingled with fear in his father’s eyes, didn’t want to hear, spoken or unspoken, ‘I was right about you.’ And he didn’t want to think about what would happen if there came the day that something else did follow him home.

“I have to get ready for school,” Shuuichi said quietly, staring down at his plate. His breakfast was half-finished, but he didn’t think he could eat any more.

“I suppose you do,” his father replied, just as quietly.

-0-0-0-

The family house was firmly avoided all of Friday afternoon, evening, and a good portion of the night. Shuuichi didn’t have much luck then, either, but then, loitering about bus stops and shops on the edge of town didn’t really count as searching for an ayakashi. He’d had a late supper of soba around ten, and slipped back into the house a little before midnight. He crept past doors left ajar, clutching his bag in his hands so it didn’t make any noise bumping against his thigh, like a stranger in his own home.

No one ever got up terribly early on Saturdays. Even Sumi-san, once she got in, usually just sat at the kitchen table filling in crossword puzzles until someone else got up. Shuuichi managed to slip back out of the house without anyone else noticing (or so he hoped) and went out to wait on the sidewalk for Seiji. If he kept him waiting, Seiji might well take that as an invitation to go right up to the front door and knock. That would cause a great many things to happen, none of them good.

Come to think of it, did he even say if he meant eight in the morning or eight at night? Shuuichi leaned against the low wall and yawned, rubbing his bleary eyes. If it turns out I could’ve gotten another hour of sleep before going out again…

A hand lit on Shuuichi’s shoulder, and he whirled around with a jolt, his heart racing and his eyes huge in his face.

Seiji’s eyes narrowed to slits as he grinned at him. Unlike Shuuichi, Seiji didn’t look like someone who’d had a long night; his eyes were bright and wakeful. “Are you always so jumpy in the morning?”

Shuuichi let out a long, rattling breath and collapsed against the wall, glaring at him. “Damn it, Seiji, don’t do that. Of all the places you can sneak up on me, here shouldn’t be one of them.”

“It’s not my fault you’re not paying attention to your surroundings,” Seiji returned blithely. “And I think we’re agreed that knocking on somebody’s door at this time of day isn’t appreciated, especially not for something that isn’t urgent.”

For the life of him, Shuuichi couldn’t tell if Seiji was being serious or not. While he had never known him to try and make any calls here, Shuuichi wasn’t prepared to put anything past Seiji when he was feeling sufficiently pest-like. He shook his head. “Sure. Thanks, I guess.”

He noticed something dangling from Seiji’s shoulder, and frowned. He hadn’t seen it before—it wasn’t full light out, not yet, and Shuuichi hadn’t exactly been focusing on Seiji’s shoulder—but there was a familiar long, cylindrical tube hanging from a strap on Seiji’s shoulder. Why…

Seiji must have noticed what he was looking at, because he readjusted the case and remarked with a small, flickering smile, “You’re not the only one who has to work today.”

“What kind of work is it, then?” Shuuichi tried and failed to keep his voice from going sharp.

Seiji shrugged. “Work.” His tone was decidedly (deliberately, Shuuichi thought) unaffected. “It doesn’t hurt to come in prepared for something bad to happen.”

Shuuichi nodded, and eyed him closely, his lips mashed together. It wasn’t the first time he had come across Seiji in the middle of an assignment of his own, and it was always an unsettling sight, to watch him prowl the shaded woods with his bow or a talisman in his hand. He became something harder and keener than the boy who teased him in the shadows of the meeting halls, his eyes shining like a cat’s in the dark as it closed in on a mouse.

They looked at one another for a long moment, the silence punctuated only by the wind whistling overhead. Eventually, Seiji stuffed his hands in his pockets and asked, “Is there somewhere nearby we can go to talk? Anyone could hear us out here.”

And Shuuichi’s father, or one of his uncles, could wake up, look out a window or the front door, and spot them standing out on the sidewalk. Shuuichi didn’t feel like fielding the sort of questions they’d ask, not so early in the day. “Yeah, there’s an abandoned house down the street. The gate got knocked off its hinges a while back; I don’t think anyone will notice if we go into the yard.”

They started off down the sidewalk, both wincing when the wind lanced through them. Shuuichi hunched his shoulders, buried his nose in his scarf and kept walking, careful to avoid any glimmering patches on the sidewalk. Slipping on ice and cracking his head open didn’t sound like a good way to start his day, especially considering who he’d have for a witness. A backwards glance told him that Seiji was doing the same, watching the sidewalk and occasionally blowing quietly on his hands.

On the end of the street, there stood a dilapidated old house, the gate indeed knocked off its hinges, lying useless on the ground in the yard inside. The roof was covered in leaves and branches, except where wind or rain or time had punched holes that were plugged with shadows. White paint was peeling off the exterior walls in clumps, exposing dull, rough wood underneath like the patchwork of veins and muscles under torn skin. The window frames were empty of glass, the ledges warped and splintered.

The walls around the house were tall enough that Shuuichi and Seiji could stand leaning against them and, so long as they kept their voices down, no one would realize that they were there. It was why Shuuichi had chosen this particular spot; the forest was too far off from his house to really suffice for what presumably was going to be a quick chat. But as Shuuichi stepped past the open gate, he saw that he wasn’t the only one who’d had such an idea.

The sky was starting to lighten overhead, turning a dusky purplish-red, flecked with pink and iridescent gold, and it illuminated a significantly less attractive scene in the yard. There was trash everywhere, empty bottles poking their necks up through wiry dead grass and thorny bushes, a few plastic bags dangling from the naked, spindly branches of the short, slim trees that dotted the yard. Plastic food wrappers crinkled under Shuuichi’s feet, glittering with half-frozen water beads. A gust of wind brought with it the rank, sickly odor of decay.

Seiji wrinkled his nose as he looked around. “Lovely place.”

“You wanted privacy? You’ve got privacy,” Shuuichi muttered, but he couldn’t muster any heat. I didn’t think people used this place to dump their trash—though I guess I kinda should have. He snuck a sideways glance at Seiji, who was still surveying his surroundings with an air of distaste, and started to feel just a little foolish. Maybe we should’ve gone to the woods, after all.

“Shuuichi-san…” Seiji tugged on his sleeve at the wrist, fingernails raking lightly against Shuuichi’s skin as he pointed to the house with his other hand. “Why don’t we go inside the talk?”

Shuuichi stared at him. “Seiji, have you ever heard of this thing called ‘breaking and entering?’ I think it’s kind of important.” He rubbed at his wrist when Seiji let go of his sleeve, the phantom imprint of touch still vivid on his skin.

“Aren’t you curious to see what the inside of the house looks like, if this is what the yard looks like?”

Shuuichi tried to make himself say ‘no.’ Really, he did. But after a long moment staring at Seiji, he groaned. “…Okay, yeah. Kind of. But we’re not going too far inside. It’s been abandoned for years, now; the whole house could come crashing down on our heads.”

“Fine.” Seiji strode forward, as though totally unconcerned by the fact that they could easily stumble on a drug lab or a dead body or something like that inside the house. “This isn’t going to take all day, anyways.”

When Shuuichi crossed the gloomy threshold into the house, he was immediately struck with a sickly-sweet, nearly overwhelming stench—rotting wood, or mold, or both, or neither. He coughed, and Seiji cupped his hand over his nose and mouth, but the latter walked a ways down a narrow side hall, drinking in his surroundings with narrowed, watchful eyes. After sucking in a deep breath through his mouth (and coughing again), Shuuichi followed.

Dead leaves and the cold corpses of hornets crunched under their feet—Shuuichi, fearful that there might be a nest nearby, craned his neck as he looked around for one, but the only hornet’s nest he saw was one that lied broken and empty on the floor. Pale light slanted in shafts through the empty window frames, touching on rough gray wood bristling with splinters. The shadows of the swaying trees outside cast their spindly shadows on the wall, flickering with every breath of wind.

Seiji picked a spot between two of the empty windows, only partially sheltered from the wind, but still better than being outside. “So, I don’t suppose you asked anyone else about the ayakashi that night?”

“I did, actually,” Shuuichi said firmly. “I’m not a complete hopeless case, you know.”

Seiji smiled slightly, but went on, “And what did you learn?”

“That I’m the eighth exorcist to take the job, and that the other seven never even saw it, let alone got close to exorcising it.”

Seiji nodded crisply. “Accurate, if incomplete.”

At that, Shuuichi looked at him closely, his gaze sharpening. “’Incomplete?’”

“Yes, ‘incomplete.’ You’ve only got about half of the story.”

Oh, great. Shuuichi groaned and scrubbed at his forehead. “Well, what’s the other half?”

But Seiji laughed suddenly, the sound cutting the cold, stagnant silence of the house like a hot knife through butter. “Are you really sure you want to know?” he asked, almost singsong. “Whoever told you what you found out either withheld the rest to keep from frightening you—or they did it to trip you up.”

“Yes, Seiji, I do.”

A violent gust of wind blustered by outside, making it far enough inside to send the dead leaves and hornets scattering across the floor. Seiji kept his silence long enough that Shuuichi thought he might try dancing around the point a little longer, but the other boy eventually shrugged and murmured, “If you insist. It’s pretty straightforward, actually.

“You’re right that no one else has ever seen the ayakashi who is supposed to be cursing Harada and his family. Exorcists have searched and searched, and never found it. From what I’ve heard, exorcists who go looking for Harada’s target occasionally suffer…” Seiji paused, his eyes gleaming strangely “…accidents, while out on the job.”

Shuuichi perked up. “They were cursed?”

Seiji shook his head. “No, not cursed. Apparently, something would come up behind the exorcist and shove them or hit them. The only time anyone was ever hurt was when one of them was hit on the back of the head—that person had a concussion. Well…” Seiji pursed his lips in recollection “…there was that one person who got thrown down a hill; I think they wound up with a broken wrist. But other than that, no serious injuries.

“The thing is, these incidents only ever happened when the exorcist was alone, and actively searching for the ayakashi. If they weren’t, or they were but they had their shiki or another exorcist with them, nothing happened. Now…” Seiji raised an eyebrow. “…What does that tell you?”

After checking that part of the wall for splinters, Shuuichi leaned against it, pressing his knuckles to his mouth, frowning.

Well, it was obvious that the incidents were connected; there was something to the job Harada-san had posted, even if this something remained unidentified (And might not be exactly as advertised). But whether that something was what Harada’s description claimed it was, well, that was another matter entirely. It attacks exorcists looking for Harada-san’s target, but only from behind, and except on two occasions, has never seriously hurt anyone it attacked. Okay, so it doesn’t want anyone to see its face, and it’s never killed anyone or done worse than give somebody broken bones. That… I guess it means it doesn’t think it could take on an exorcist. But it’s only going after the ones looking for Harada-san’s target, and only when they’re alone…

“You think Harada-san has some sort of grudge against exorcists.” Shuuichi pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Is that it?”

“Or he’s entered into a pact with an ayakashi with a grudge, for some reason,” Seiji supplied, nodding. He gave a lopsided smile. “Or maybe he is an exorcist who operates on the fringes or got kicked out of one of the other communities and moved here, and decided to set his shiki on the locals instead of trying to gain admission. Or maybe everything is just as Harada has said it is—but you won’t find too many people who believe that. Probably the only reason he hasn’t been banned from putting up that job posting is because there isn’t enough evidence to do so.” He looked at Shuuichi, considering. “Does that change anything?”

“No,” Shuuichi replied immediately, “it doesn’t.”

If what stalked those exorcists really was Harada-san’s target, all the more reason for Shuuichi to get rid of it, before it decided to start targeting exorcists in general. He’d already taken the job, but here was some extra incentive to get it done. And even if it wasn’t, Shuuichi wasn’t going to let the kind of threat he’d had represented to him deter him from this job. He wasn’t going to back down under threat of bruises or broken bones. That wasn’t enough to scare him away.

(Neither did Shuuichi particularly want to do anything that might give the impression that he was admitting to falling for a wild goose chase. He’d had egg on his face before, and would like to avoid repeating the experience, if at all possible. His ‘colleagues’ had long memories for pratfalls.)

Seiji’s smile twisted, breaking and rearranging itself into something Shuuichi couldn’t quite put a name to. “Well, if anyone’s stubborn enough to find it, I suppose you are. I’ll see you around.”

He started to walk back towards the front door, passing in and out of shafts of light and shadow, dead wasps crunching and floorboards groaning dangerously under his feet. But before Seiji could make it there, Shuuichi called out, “Hey, Seiji…” He paused, the words clawing at the insides of his mouth, cumbersome and uncomfortable, but still insisting on being heard. “Whatever it is you’re doing today, good luck.”

Seiji tilted his head. “You’re telling me that?” But there was no rancor in his voice. Instead, Shuuichi heard something else, a strange hitch—or maybe he was imagining it. Shuuichi saw no trace of it in his straight back, as he walked away.

-0-0-0-

Tracking down the curse-breaker had gone nearly exactly as Seiji had expected it would. The only difference was that it had taken him hours instead of days to track the ayakashi down, and he had been packed off in defeat with somewhat more civility than he had expected. Then again, considering just how little civility Seiji had been expecting, it hadn’t taken too much for his expectations to be reached, and exceeded.

By the time he made it back home, Seiji could tell that his father’s ‘shadow’ had come and gone. When he had left that morning, a palpable cloud of tension hung over the Matoba clan’s main estate, punctuated by the dots of crimson from umbrellas held aloft of tucked in the crooks of their owners’ arms. Now, those umbrellas had been put away, and tension had been replaced by exhaustion that so permeated the air that Seiji could taste it, acrid and overpowering.

He made a beeline for his father’s office, barely remembering to nod and say hello to the people he passed by in the hall. Seiji found Kazuya sitting at his desk, leaning back in his chair and scrubbing wearily at the right side of his face with his hand, eyes shut. Seiji saw no visible sign of injury, smelled no copper tang of blood. Still, his eyes were riveted to his father, his brow knit and his face taut.

Kazuya must have sensed the scrutiny he was under, because he looked up and gazed tiredly at his son. “Well?”

Seiji straightened. “I found the ayakashi, asked it to lift the curse on our client, and was refused.” As you knew I would be, he thought, but forbore from saying aloud.

Kazuya nodded resignedly. “I was afraid of that,” he admitted. “I had thought that if we sent a new face in, someone the local ayakashi hadn’t dealt with before, we might have more luck, but I suppose that was just wishful thinking.”

“Mother went into that area many times on assignment,” Seiji pointed out, frowning. “They remembered her.” The very reason the curse-breaker had refused to cooperate was because it recognized Seiji as Matoba Sayaka’s son, in fact. It hadn’t been long enough since she died for them to forget her.

“And ayakashi know similar blood from scent, and anyone with eyes could pick out a resemblance between you and your mother,” Kazuya remarked. He reached for a glass of water sitting out on his desk, barely managing to grab it without tipping it over. “Once we got the assignment, we had to try, even if there wasn’t much chance of success.”

But he didn’t have to accept the assignment in the first place, especially considering just how unlikely it was that any Matoba clan exorcist would be able to carry out the assignment successfully. Seiji knew his father well enough to know what he thought of such jobs: unless it was safe to coerce the ayakashi involved, it just wasn’t worth the waste of time and resources it would inevitably prove to be.

All of this was a bit… obvious. Matoba Kazuya wasn’t the most subtle man in the world, but neither was he typically so transparent as he was to his son, right now. But Seiji said nothing about it. It wasn’t for him to raise questions when the head of his clan sent him off on an assignment doomed to failure. Even if it was to divert him from things that he was going to have to deal with one day.

“Are you alright?” Seiji asked quietly, something pathetically, unbearably small tugging at his voice.

Kazuya glanced sharply up at him. “My right eye is still in my head,” he told his son firmly. “That is all that matters.”

“Of course.”

Kazuya turned his attention to the paperwork strewn out on his desk. Seiji watched him in silence, something cold and leaden settling in his chest. I can't help you if I'm not here with you.

His father looked tired. Oh, he looked tired every month, once the one-eyed ayakashi had made its appearance and been driven off, but when Seiji looked at him now, he couldn’t help but think that his father’s tiredness this month went past simple physical exhaustion. He looked… small.

This was necessary for their clan’s survival, their success. It was. Kill the ayakashi that stalked the head of the Matoba clan, and the power of the Matoba clan would dwindle away to nothing. And that their clan’s ascendancy was dependent on the enmity of a (fickle, they were always fickle) ayakashi, and that his father seemed to have a harder time driving it off without killing it or being injured with each passing year, that…

Seiji kept his gaze on his father, though he did so with mounting discomfort. Would that be him one day? Would that be him, so dogged by the specter of the thing that stalked him, month by month, that exhaustion stayed with him even after sending it on its way? Would that be him, struggling more and more to keep it at bay as the years wore on?

Memory rose, unbidden, of last month. Seiji had been present last month, and had searched the estate for the ayakashi, the same as everyone else, only to find…

Eyes narrowed, ears prickled, knife clenched in his hand, Seiji rounded the corner of the hall, and immediately froze, his eyes widening.

There, standing in front of him, was a near-perfect reflection of himself. It was like looking into a mirror, seeing his hair, his jaw, his nose and mouth, but the doppelganger’s right eye socket gaped like an open wound, and the look in its left was one of ravenous hunger.

Would that be him, shooting or stabbing something that looked like his loved ones?

If it was, Seiji knew better than to close his eyes to it. If that was to be his future, he would look at it, with both eyes. That would be him, one day. Even if the ‘him’ of ‘one day’ felt like a stranger, felt like a gaunt, empty thing.

-0-0-0-

The wind blew softly over the countryside, ruffling the sluggish waters of the river and setting the dead reeds to whisper to one another like schoolchildren with a secret. Shuuichi started down the hill, zipping his coat up to the base of his neck as he picked his way through the quivering trees. He shook his head and let out an exasperated breath.

Today had been a complete bust. Not only had Shuuichi had no encounters of the sort Seiji had told him about, he hadn’t seen any ayakashi at all. He was beginning to wonder if someone had warned the local ayakashi he was coming; Shuuichi couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the forests so empty of bright eyes in the shadows and whispering voices, just too quiet for Shuuichi to make out.

Now, the light was going, and Shuuichi was cold, hungry and thoroughly frustrated. He had homework he needed to do; he ought to go home, get something to eat, and get that work done. Though he didn’t see what sort of difference finishing his homework would make this late in the game, he didn’t want to show his face at school on Monday and admit that he hadn’t gotten any of it done.

It was just that Shuuichi had hoped he’d be able to pick up some kind of lead this weekend. He had Saturday school next weekend, so there wasn’t going to be nearly as much time to search then. The longer Shuuichi spent searching for Harada-san’s target, the more he was going to feel like he was running in circles, chasing a ghost. He knew that.

I’m not beaten yet. Just give me something I can use.

Shuuichi caught sight of the dead reeds by the riverbank rustling more than could be accounted for by the wind. He walked slowly over towards the reeds, watching carefully for something small to come out.

Two large cats emerged, identical in their deep orange fur, the black, triangular marks on their foreheads, and their unnaturally large yellow eyes. “Hey!” Shuuichi called out, approaching them. “Can I—“

“Eek!” one of them cried. “An exorcist!” They tore back into the reeds, cutting a swath through the dead plants.

“No, wait! I just want to ask you some—“ But the two cats skated across the surface of the water as though it was solid ice, and quickly vanished from sight on the other side. Shuuichi scowled. “Tch.”

“Hey,” a small voice said then, “Natori boy! Down here!”

Shuuichi looked at the ground, to see a small ayakashi standing at the edge of the reeds. It looked like a gray field mouse, except it was about the size of Shuuichi’s fist, and was wearing a short blue kimono. Shuuichi didn’t bother asking how the ayakashi knew he was a Natori, and instead wished that the smell of his blood wasn’t as big of a give-away as it had proven to be. “What do you want?” he asked peevishly, forgetting for the moment to ask if this one knew anything about the fish-head ayakashi.

“No need for that tone of voice,” the mouse ayakashi assured him, its nose shivering slightly. “There’s nothing I can do to you. Say, what were you trying to ask those two just now?”

In Shuuichi’s experience, size was no indication of power, and just because there was nothing the mouse could do to him, didn’t mean it didn’t have friends who could do something to him. Ayakashi certainly seemed to love their tricky wordplay. But seeing as the mouse had already recognized him as an exorcist, Shuuichi didn’t suppose there could be any more harm in telling it that he was doing his job. “Someone hired me to exorcise an ayakashi that’s been cursing him and his family. I’ve been trying to track it down.”

“Really?” the mouse asked, in so mild a voice that Shuuichi had to take a step back. “Me, I’m trying to get across the river.”

Shuuichi frowned. “Why are you trying to get across the river?”

“I’m so glad you asked! You see, I went to a party on this side of the river just the night before. One of my friends offered to ferry me back and forth so I could get home, but when the party was over, he wouldn’t take me back!” The mouse’s limpid black eyes gleamed with indignation. “He said I’d insulted him, and he didn’t want anything to do with me anymore! Can you believe it?!”

“That’s… rough.” Somehow, Shuuichi couldn’t quite muster the sort of commiseration the mouse ayakashi was looking for.

However, the ayakashi didn’t seem to notice that the one listening to its story didn’t feel entirely sympathetic. “I know! And now I can’t get home!” The mouse stamped its tiny feet on the ground, its eyes narrowed to slits, but then, it looked up at Shuuichi, its ears perked up. “Say, you could get me across the river!”

That was not exactly what Shuuichi had wanted to hear the ayakashi say. “What?! I’m not a ferry service! I haven’t got the time to be carrying you around with me!” he protested. “I’ve gotta get home!”

“I’ll make it worth your while!” the mouse pleaded, pressing its paws to Shuuichi’s leg (Shuuichi took another quick step backwards). “You’re trying to find somebody? I’ve got a friend who knows where everyone lives. She can tell you where the guy you’re looking for is. Just please, get me across the river!”

This could easily turn out to be a trap. How likely was it that the mouse’s friend would feel particularly willing to help an exorcist? It seemed a lot more likely the mouse’s friend was also someone who’d love having Shuuichi’s bones for toothpicks. That was the way these things usually worked; his skull would probably make a lovely soup bowl as well. But Shuuichi needed a lead, and he knew a couple of ways to quickly subdue a hostile ayakashi.

He sighed heavily. “Alright, alright. I’ll get you across the river.”

“Wonderful!” the mouse squeaked exuberantly.

Shuuichi picked the mouse up in his hands. It was heavier than he would have expected a creature of its size to be, sitting like a leaden weight in Shuuichi’s arms. It wouldn’t be too bad to have to carry it for a short while, though.

He started to walk down the length of the riverbank, only to have the ayakashi exclaim, “Wait, why are you walking this way?! My house is over there!” It pointed across the river from where they were currently standing.

Shuuichi bit back a sigh. “I can’t cross the river here,” he explained, trying desperately to keep his voice even. “There’s no bridge, and if I try to swim across, I’ll get sick.” Or drown. “There’s a bridge about a mile down we can cross; I’m heading there.”

“Oh.” The mouse’s ears twitched. “That’s right; you humans are pretty frail. Well, I guess a bit of a walk won’t hurt me,” it said, sighing gustily.

Shuuichi rolled his eyes surreptitiously. “Glad you agree.”

The reflection on the water was one of a pale pink sky, dotted with clouds painted lavender and gold, while further from the horizon the sky had turned a cool, muted bluish-purple, streaked with wispy gray clouds. It would probably be past dark by the time Shuuichi got home. Fielding questions about where he had been all day would be troublesome, but so long as his grandfather hadn’t noticed he was gone, it probably wouldn’t be so bad. It’d probably take a week for him to notice I was dead, so long as no one else talked too loudly about it, Shuuichi mused, pressing his lips together. He probably didn’t realize I’ve left the house, let alone I’ve been gone since dawn. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Half-hidden by reeds on the riverbank was a small, rough-hewn wooden bridge that made passable the river. It had once, Shuuichi suspected, been part of a nature trail—the ‘rustic’ look of the bridge, a little wooden walkway with no rails, lent itself to that—but while there were traces of a dirt trail on either side of the river from the bridge, it was shot through with weeds and reeds and wiry dead grass. The slats of the bridge groaned as Shuuichi walked across, but he got to the other side with no problem.

When they got to the opposite bank, the mouse tried to wrangle out of Shuuichi’s arms, but he caught it and stared sternly at it. “No tricks, right?”

“No tricks!” the mouse ayakashi squealed. “Now, please, put me down!”

But Shuuichi wasn’t about to leave it there. “Remember,” he said sharply. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of where you live now. If it turns out this was a trap…”

“Hey!” the ayakashi squeaked indignantly. “I always keep my word, and I hate leaving debts unpaid! If I was that ungrateful, I’d suffer in the afterlife for sure!”

Shuuichi sighed and put the mouse down on the ground, crouching down in front of it. “Okay, fine. Where does your friend live, and when can I see her?”

“She lives in a house you humans abandoned, about two miles down this path.” The mouse pointed to the woods, thicker and darker on this side of the river than the opposite. “Come any time tomorrow. I’ll tell her you’re coming, so there won’t be any trouble.” The mouse scampered off into the dusk. As Shuuichi stood and started to head for home, he heard the ayakashi’s high-pitched voice ring out, “I almost forgot! When you go see her, come alone. She doesn’t like getting too many visitors at once.”

Shuuichi stared into the shadowy forest, mouth slightly open. Perturbed, he muttered, “Well, that’s not suspicious at all.”

-0-0-0-

Shuuichi had been making an art form out of sneaking in and out of his house like a thief ever since the first time he snuck off to an exorcists’ meeting. It was rare enough for anyone to actually catch him entering or leaving that, when Shuuichi left that morning, the sky still black as pitch, he did so reasonably confident that no one would realize he was gone until later. The idea of anyone trying to track him down was ridiculous. His grandfather couldn’t—his wheelchair didn’t do too well on grass and dirt—and even if he could, he’d be just like Shuuichi’s father and his uncles: too afraid of what waited hiding in the shadows, of what might follow them home, to ever go anywhere shadows touched. They were pretty predictable, in that.

The beam of yellow light cast by Shuuichi’s flashlight bobbed up and down as he headed slowly through the dark woods for the house the mouse had described to him. In the dark, the plant life seemed much… bigger, somehow. Slim birch trees widened to massive proportions while thorn bushes weaved their shadows to the tips of their branches, and made branches out of them, long, trailing things that crept up towards the night sky. The path, meanwhile, had dwindled down to almost nothing, and Shuuichi had had to stalk up and down the riverbank to find the bridge. The air in the front of his head was filled with mist every time he exhaled.

After what felt like an eternity of scanning the ground, in front of him and off to the sides with his flashlight, making sure there weren’t any obstructions in his path and that there wasn’t anything following him (nothing that might follow him home), Shuuichi came on a clearing ringed by more dark trees. Off to his left he saw nothing, but to the right, when he shone his flashlight, there came looming out of the night a rugged, weather-beaten old house, its roof full of holes. There was no wall to be found, except for a sparse ring of broken rocks scattered on the ground, covered in dead, brown moss.

This must be the place. I sure haven’t found any other abandoned houses out here. Shuuichi started to walk towards the front door, his heart pounding just a bit out of rhythm, when he heard a branch snap somewhere nearby. His heart pounding even harder, he swung around, waving the flashlight to and fro frantically. It is a trap; I knew it, I—

“Seiji?!”

Standing on the opposite way of where Shuuichi had come, there stood Seiji, shielding his eyes against the glare of the former’s flashlight. Slowly, he lowered his hand, his face stark white and carved sharp by the harsh light. “I thought that was you,” Seiji murmured, frowning slightly.

Shuuichi stared at him. “What are you doing here?” He couldn’t think of too many reasons why Seiji would be out here, in the same part of the forest as Shuuichi, a little before five in the morning. The ones he could think of, well, he didn’t know whether to feel infuriated or oddly giddy.

For a long moment, Seiji didn’t answer, his face still caught in that frown. Then, his lips curled in a smile, and a thin, false thing it looked in the light of the flashlight. “I started to get curious about your assignment, so I thought I’d take a look around the forest where Harada’s target is supposed to live.”

“What, are you going to try and take the credit again?” Shuuichi fired off.

“Are you going to let me?” Seiji fired back, his smile starting to show teeth.

It occurred to Shuuichi that he could potentially spend so long trading barbs with Seiji that he’d forget what it was he was doing here in the first place. Therefore, he said tersely, “Listen, I’m following a lead. Well, I’m here to talk to somebody who might have a lead. I am going in there—“ Shuuichi pointed his flashlight at the abandoned house “—and you can’t come with me.”

“You don’t even have a solid lead and you’re already getting defensive?” Seiji’s eyes narrowed. “It must be interesting,” he said delicately, his voice hitting a low note that Shuuichi pretended not to notice.

“The deal was that I had to go in by myself. You can’t follow me. If you do, I’m probably not going to get anything at all.” Or the ayakashi might try to attack us.

“If you insist.” Seiji turned on his heel and quickly vanished back into the dark forest. “I’ll see you some other time.”

Shuuichi was almost sad to watch him go. Though he hated to admit it, having some backup on standby in case anything went wrong would have been nice. But he couldn’t have Seiji jeopardizing what might well be his only chance to get a lead on Harada-san’s target by sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. There was also, he reflected, the fact that he found himself reluctant to get Seiji dragged into the crossfire, if this did turn into a fight. It didn’t feel right.

He sucked in a deep breath, and went up to the house.

The front door was unlocked, which was nice; Shuuichi didn’t fancy trying to find another way in. He pushed it open gently, wincing at the way the hinges shrieked when the door moved. If that ayakashi didn’t already realize I’m here, she does now. Eyes darting around, he turned off his flashlight (who knew how the ayakashi would respond to having a bright light shone in its eyes?) and crept inside.

This house was without the overpowering sickly-sweet smell the abandoned house Shuuichi had gone inside yesterday morning had possessed. Instead, there was a thick odor of damp earth clinging to the floorboards and the walls. The front room was without windows and was utterly lightless, except for when the clouds drifted away from the silver wisp of the moon, and a few weak rays of light shot through a hole in the roof, illuminating rough, warped floorboards washed out to ashen-gray under the moonlight. The walls creaked with every soft breath of wind outside; a dead leaf fell through the hole in the roof and drifted lazily to the floor.

“Hello?” Shuuichi called out, struggling to identify shapes and features in the darkness. “Is anyone here?” He heard something a rough shuffling sound, like something dragging itself against the floor, and said, more firmly, “I was told you might have some information for me.”

A pair of eyes appeared in the darkness, showing themselves from what was likely the other side of the room. They were a pale, icy blue, shining like beacons in the dark, and high up enough from the ground that Shuuichi could guess that the ayakashi was about the same height as him, or maybe a little taller. So she’s big enough to throttle me, he thought, torn between a grimace and a rueful smile. That’s great. Sure hope she doesn’t decide my bones would go great in soup.

“I know why you are here,” the ayakashi said in a low, rasping voice, one neither particularly feminine nor masculine. “My friend told me that you did her a favor, and she promised you my aid in return. Sit down—“ slowly, that pair of lamp-like eyes descended closer to the floor “—and do not come any closer. I do not like to be seen by any who are not my friends.”

Carefully maintaining eye contact with the ayakashi, Shuuichi sat down. The floor was ice-cold and damp to the touch; still, he evinced no outward sign of discomfort. In as respectful a tone as Shuuichi could manage for an ayakashi, he asked, “May I ask you some questions?”

“You may. But first—“ the ayakashi’s voice sharpened “—would you remove your passenger? I was told that I would be speaking with one, only.”

“My passeng—oh.” Shuuichi set his jaw. “It’s never responded to anything I say; if I could make it leave, I would have gotten rid of it a long time ago. I’ve never heard it talk, either.”

The ayakashi regarded him in silence for a long moment, and Shuuichi was afraid that she would refuse to cooperate. That would be in line with how much luck Shuuichi usually had. But after a while, he heard a hoarse, rattling sound, almost like a sigh. “I suppose I will have to trust in its continued silence. Now, what was it you wished to ask me?”

Shuuichi straightened. “I was hired by a man who says that he and his family have been cursed by an ayakashi for several years now,” he said in a clear, even voice. “The ayakashi is shaped like a human, and is the size of a tall human man, but it has scales on its body and a head shaped like a fish’s. What can you tell me about it?” He didn’t say that he had been hired to exorcise it. It must have been obvious that he had been hired to either seal or exorcise his target, but the house was dark and he had no idea just how fast his conversation partner could move.

“Hmm.” The ayakashi shut her glowing eyes, and Shuuichi was left staring into an impenetrable darkness. “I have heard tell of someone like that roaming these woods. Why don’t you listen to a story of mine, exorcist?

“Once, many years ago, there was an ayakashi that lived in a pond on land that was also occupied by humans. The humans had no idea that the ayakashi lived so close to them, only a few steps from their house. The ayakashi was content with this—it rested under the surface of the water, and ventured forth but rarely.

“However, one day, new humans came to live in that house so close to the pond, and one of them, the father of the family, was able to see us. He saw the ayakashi leave the pond and grew alarmed. While the ayakashi was gone, the father of the family called upon a priest to purify the waters of the pond, and when he told that priest exactly what it was he had seen, the priest called upon an exorcist who was a friend of his, to aid him.

“Between the two of them, the priest and the exorcist made a barrier so powerful that the ayakashi was unable to go back into the pond once it came home. Realizing what had happened, the ayakashi appeared before the father of the family. ‘As long as I live,’ it said, ‘I will make you miserable in your home, for you have robbed me of mine.’ It struck the wall with its hand, leaving a wet handprint. The handprint would say on the wall, the ayakashi explained, for as long as it was alive. Only after it was dead would it disappear.” The ayakashi opened her eyes again, and stared piercingly at Shuuichi. “Does that change anything?” she asked softly.

“No,” Shuuichi said quietly, “it doesn’t.” He had never asked ‘why.’ He never wanted to know ‘why.’ If someone wanted an ayakashi sealed or exorcised, it was enough to know that they wanted it done. ‘Why’ had never mattered.

She let out a harsh, choking sound that it took Shuuichi several moments to identify as a laugh. “How heartless you are!” Shuuichi bristled, but before he could retort, she went on, “If it truly does not make a difference, exorcist, then I will tell you something else.

“Recently, an ayakashi took up residence in a pond in a grove of walnut trees west of here, not too far away. Whenever anyone, be it an ayakashi or a dumb beast, tries to take a drink from the pond’s waters, the ayakashi rises up and scares them away. The only time anyone can ever take a drink from the pond is when the ayakashi is away, descending from the mountains on business it confides in no one. The local ayakashi are beginning to complain about the nuisance it represents.”

Shuuichi nodded. That sounded like his target, and even if it wasn’t, it was likely that not too many of the local ayakashi would complain about him getting rid of this one. “Thank you,” he told her, albeit a little stiffly.

“I am happy to help someone who helped my friend,” the ayakashi replied, perhaps a bit more graciously. “Now,” she went on, wry humor softening the roughness of her voice, “why don’t you go reassure your friend that I have not eaten you since you came in to this house?”

What?

Shuuichi walked hastily out the front door, his heart throbbing in his throat. He turned on his flashlight and shone it around the clearing, trying to catch a glimpse of anything moving there. But he saw nothing, and no one. Outside, there was no one but him, standing alone in the cold darkness, listening to the wind sing in the leafless branches.

She must have been wrong, he thought, as he stepped over the ring of broken stones surrounding the house. He left a while ago; probably trying to hunt down that ayakashi himself so he can pull the rug out from under me again. But still, something like disappointment flared inside of him. I wish…

That wish was pointless.

It took Shuuichi a while to remember which way was west in the dark; he hadn’t brought a compass with him, and all he could really do was try to guess which way (again, kind of difficult in the dark) the sun had set the day before. That determined, he started walking, shining his flashlight this way and that, trying to catch sight of anything resembling the shine of light reflected on still water.

Walking on the path in the dark had been bad enough. Shuuichi had stubbed his toe on rocks on several occasions, tripped and fallen once, and stepped headlong into potholes concealed by a bed of dead leaves twice. At least there, though, the ground was level. In the forest, he was having all the same problems, now combined with the fact that the ground was liable to take sudden dips and inclines, that the hills were pocked with holes that were likely the entrances to rabbit warrens or fox dens (Though thankfully no foxes ever came out to protest the intrusion. Am I even gonna be able to pick out a walnut tree in the dark, and without being able to see its leaves? And that might not help me; everything in a half-mile radius must be able to hear me coming; that ayakashi probably can too, if it’s at ‘home.’

After what felt like an eternity wandering around the woods, occasionally disturbing a cat or an owl out on their own wandering, Shuuichi shone his flashlight over something that gleamed like polished glass in the dark.

There was a pond, nearly perfectly round and probably about four feet in diameter. The water level was a couple of inches low from the ground, the ground around it forming a sheer, hard-packed lip. A walnut tree grew on its bank, its roots stretching their fingers down into the water.

Shuuichi shone his flashlight down into the pond—if the ayakashi was there, shining the flashlight would at least blind it long enough for Shuuichi to do something with it, hopefully. But the pond was apparently empty; Shuuichi didn’t even see any minnows. Great, I guess it’s gone out for supper—or breakfast.

He held his flashlight in one hand and scratched a circle in the dirt with another. Then, Shuuichi scratched symbols into the dirt at four points around the pond—in theory, they would keep the ayakashi from slipping back under the surface of the water, though at the very least going under would sting it badly enough that Shuuichi could lure it into the circle. He crouched down in some spiny evergreen bushes just behind the circle he had drawn, and waited.

-0-0-0-

Once the ayakashi appeared, it was over quickly. All Shuuichi had to do was stand up—it stumbled into the circle, and that was it.

It was easy, he thought numbly as he walked on stiff, sore legs back towards the path. Pale light threaded through the branches; a blanket of mist enveloped the land in its hazy, muffling embrace. It was so weak. I barely even had to try.

That was what was making so much trouble?

It had been Harada-san’s target, alright. Even in the pre-dawn gloom, there was no mistaking that fish head of its. Shuuichi had found and exorcised an ayakashi that had successfully evaded other exorcists for ten years, but he felt no triumph. His limbs felt as though his bones had been infused with lead. All he wanted to do was go home and sleep.

It had been pathetically weak for something that had made so much trouble, almost pitiable in how clinging to hatred had given it borrowed strength, but that strength had evaporated the moment Shuuichi got to it. There would be other jobs like this. Other jobs where a menace turned out to be a weakling acting out of a sense of wounded injustice. Ayakashi who hurt humans had to be dealt with, but still… Still, he could derive no satisfaction from dispatching an ayakashi like this one.

He was pretty sure he could do it again. And he would watch, carefully, for anything trying to follow him home.

Eventually, the trees and bushes thinned out a little, and Shuuichi found that little strip of hard-packed earth that made up the path. There was no sign of the house anywhere; Shuuichi must have wandered further up the path, or down it. It didn’t make much difference to him; it was still a long way home.

But as he walked back towards the river, he saw someone leaning against a tree, looking at him.

In the pale dawn light, Seiji looked much as Shuuichi himself probably looked. His face was a touch stretched, touched with the pallor that came from spending a large portion of the night awake. Though Shuuichi hadn’t noticed it when it was still dark, Seiji had his bow case slung around his shoulder. He fixed Shuuichi in a long stare as the latter walked over to him, the expression in his eyes utterly unreadable.

The two of them stared at each other in silence, Shuuichi’s tired mind struggling to work through its confused haze. Finally, Seiji queried, in a painfully neutral voice, “I take it you found something?”

Shuuichi nodded distractedly. “Yeah, I did. You… You’re still here,” he said blankly.

Seiji’s expression didn’t shift. “What of it?” he asked, very quietly.

He’d made like he was heading for home—at the very least, like he wasn’t going to stick around anywhere Shuuichi was. Seiji had done this before, and Shuuichi didn’t think he’d ever asked why. Not seriously. He had always shied away from the subject, weaving a thousand different explanations in his head that never quite fit, but came close enough that he could tell himself that that was it and stop thinking about it.

Not this time. He couldn’t ignore it this time.

“Why are you still here?” Shuuichi demanded.

Seiji gave a brief, brittle smile. “Does it matter?”

Shuuichi found himself lost for words, and Seiji seemed to take this as invitation, because he began to walk away. But before he could take more than two steps, Shuuichi reached out and grabbed his hand tightly, curling his fingers around Seiji’s knuckles. At that, Seiji turned back around and looked at him, his eyes searching Shuuichi’s face, though for what, he couldn’t imagine.

“Yes.” Something in Shuuichi’s voice cracked and splintered. His mouth went oddly dry. “It does.”

Seiji said nothing, regarding him with something like anticipation on his face. His heart in his throat, beating so hard he thought it would burst, Shuuichi took a step forward. Another. Seiji didn’t move.

But before he could close the gap between them, Seiji wrenched his hand from his grasp and stepped away. He paused and turned around briefly, fixed a tight, taut smile to his face. “No, it doesn’t.”

He walked away. Shuuichi let him go, and watched his increasingly hazy outline in the mist, until it finally disappeared.

Shuuichi shut his eyes, and sighed. Something bitter scratched at the roof of his mouth, but it was useless to give it any voice.

He needed to get home and contact Harada-san, to tell him the assignment was done and pick up his paycheck. Then, he needed to get ready for school tomorrow. Maybe talk to Ikeda-sensei about that card she had given him. But he knew already, he’d still feel this way.