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Summer had set in, making Natsume’s daily walks home from school stickily uncomfortable. The late afternoon humidity was high enough that Natsume thought he might drown in the air, and the sweat that tricked down his back did little to cool him off. From the flushed faces of Nishimura and Kitamoto, they too were feeling the heat, but it did little to stifle their exuberance. They spoke animatedly on the walk home, and Natsume listened to the conversation with half an ear. It seemed to be about whether there would be any cute girls on their class’ next field trip, and in Natsume’s experience he would spend most of his time running away from youkai, leaving little room for anything else.
Past experience also suggested that he was more likely to run into youkai on his way home from school than at any other time, and so he kept his eyes downcast, glancing side to side to try and anticipate where one might appear. That was why he was first to see the cicada lying motionless on the side of the footpath. Nishimura and Kitamoto gave it a wide berth as they passed, turning around and walking backward to look at it. It didn’t react to that or to Natsume stopping beside it. It also didn’t react when Natsume knelt down next to it.
Oh, Natsume thought. It’s dead.
The idea of it being trodden on by careless travelers seemed terribly sad, and so Natsume reached out a hand to move it from the path. As his hand drew closer to the cicada, it started shrieking, skittering across the footpath and into the undergrowth. Natsume jumped and cried out in surprise. He fell backwards, catching himself on his hands, and stared in shock at where the insect had gone. He couldn’t see it anymore, but he could hear it. The screeching was deafeningly loud even over the rapid-fire pulse of his heart in his ears.
“It got you!” Nishimura laughed and offered Natsume a hand to pull himself up. “Seriously, Natsume, don’t you know better than to go near cicadas?”
“You got caught earlier,” Kitamoto pointed out slyly, grinning as Nishimura scowled at him.
“That’s because you put it in my bag! That’s something we used to do as kids!”
“Yeah, that’s why I did it. I saw it and remembered the summer we put them into Sasada’s bag every day.” Kitamoto looked thoughtful. “Maybe we should start doing it again? For old time’s sake.”
“Definitely not.” Nishimura was unexpectedly emphatic and Natsume looked up in interest. “Don’t you remember what happened last time we did that? I thought she was going to kill us by the end of summer!”
“Ah, those were good times.” Kitamoto turned to Natsume, who was wiping the dirt from his hands onto his trousers. “What about you, Natsume? Did you go looking for cicadas when you were a kid?”
Natsume blinked, caught off-guard. He had watched other children look for cicadas when he was younger, but he’d rarely had the courage to go up and join in with their games. The few times he had, before he had truly understood how strange he was, he had been ostracized by the others very quickly when he was distracted by a youkai, or would flinch away from a blow no one else could see. There had been one summer where he had been pranked in the same way that Sasada had been, and he’d never been quite sure whether it had been a human or youkai’s hands that put the insects into his bento box. Not that it really mattered; he was held responsible for it anyway and moved on very quickly from one foster home to the next that particular summer.
“No,” he said, and faked a smile. “I didn’t do anything like that when I was a kid.”
“No?” Nishimura echoed. He exchanged a look with Kitamoto that Natsume could not read. “We should do it on the weekend!”
“You can’t get out of it either!” Kitamoto was quick to add. “It’s not a real summer without cicada hunting!”
“Aren’t we a little too old for that…?” Natsume pointed out weakly. It wasn’t much of a protest. In fact, going cicada hunting with his friends sounded like it might be fun.
“Well, maybe” Kitamoto replied.
“But we’ll do it for you,” Nishimura said, as if this settled the matter. “There’s an abandoned house that everyone used to go looking for cicadas when they were kids. We’ll show you!”
You don’t have to… Natsume thought, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He froze in place as Nishimura slung his arm around Natsume’s shoulders, and it took him a moment to regain his composure. “It’s too hot for that,” he protested, shrugging out of his friend’s grip.
“You’re right that it’s too hot,” Nishimura agreed. “Why is it so hot? What did we do to deserve this?”
The heat truly was terrible. Natsume closed his eyes and let his head fall backward, hoping for a breeze. It wasn’t forthcoming, and by the time he reached the intersection where he would separate from the others he felt pallid and limp in the summer heat. “This is where I turn off so …”
“Oi, Natsume! Drink water!” Nishimura insisted. “You’ll make the Fujiwaras worry if you faint on your way home.”
I’m not going to faint. I think. Natsume took a drink from the water bottle in his messenger bag anyway. He felt better afterward, more steady on his feet, and his stomach twisted in guilt at how he had made Nishimura worry about him. “Thank you for reminding me,” he said to Nishimura and smiled.
“Don’t worry about it!” Nishimura said cheerfully. “We’ve accepted that you’re our problem child. Remember, hydrate when you get home too!”
Natsume wasn’t sure what to say. He considered possible answers, each one tumbling through his mind like a swift current over stones, and he found all of them wanting. None of them seemed to achieve his goal of assuring Nishimura and Kitamoto that he was not someone that they had to worry about. Instead, he settled for waving goodbye before starting to head down the road towards his house.
“And keep your weekend free!” Kitamoto called to his back.
“Okay, okay,” Natsume said. “I’ll do my best.”
“We’ll come around in the afternoon, so be there!” Nishimura insisted. “Don’t make us go looking for you!”
A cicada hunt…Natsume thought as he walked down the dusty road. That might be fun. I just hope that nothing goes wrong between now and then.
The summer heat had intensified by the weekend much to Natsume’s disappointment, and he had spent most of the day inside, a window cracked open to try and catch any errant breezes. It was almost too hot to go outside, and if not for his having promised his friends he would, Natsume would have considered staying in for the entire weekend. Nyanko-sensei had gone out almost a day ago to find some sake to cool off, though how that would help was beyond Natsume, and by all appearances had yet to return. His room smelled of alcohol, which ordinarily would suggest that Nyanko-sensei was around somewhere, but there had been a fairly lively youkai party in his room the previous night and so that was of little help at all.
He looked across at the open window for the fourth time that hour and there was no sign of Nyanko-sensei attempting to waddle indolently through as if he hadn’t disappeared for almost a day. Not that Natsume was especially worried, as Nyanko-sensei could take care of himself, but he told himself that he would at the very least like to know where his errant bodyguard had gone.
I’ll go and look for him after we finish, he told himself while reading his book. He’d tried to read the same paragraph several times, but the heat meant that the meaning never quite stuck in his mind. He’s probably hungover somewhere in the forest, and too ill to come back. That had happened before, often enough that Natsume told himself sternly that it was nothing to worry about.
“Takashi-kun!” he heard Touko-san call from downstairs. “Your friends are here!”
“Coming!” he called back, closing his book. His duffle bag lay underneath the window sill, having been packed the previous night, but the fabric cover looked slightly askew. Natsume frowned, picked it up, and winced at the additional weight. He placed it back down on the mat. It seemed fairly clear what had happened, and he suspected that he knew what he would find inside his bag, but he opened it anyway. He was rewarded with the sight of a hungover Nyanko-sensei, looking rather worse for wear as he opened one eye to stare at Natsume blearily. The smell of sake was overpowering, and Natsume almost dropped his bag in shock.
I can’t believe I was worried about him. Natsume shook his head ruefully at his own foolishness.
“Sensei…” he said on a sigh. “Why are you in my bag?”
“To keep an eye on you!” Nyanko-sensei said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Someone has to scare off all the small-fry!”
Natsume was dubious about the amount of help Nyanko-sensei could provide while hungover, but didn’t say so. Nyanko-sensei was very good at performative sulking.
“It’s not going to be much fun for you. You can stay here if you like,” he suggested.
For all that Nyanko-sensei was not a cat, he was perfectly capable of radiating the sheer silent disdain of one.
“Buy me manjuu on the way back,” Nyanko-sensei said and closed his eyes. Natsume considered whether it was worth the scratches he would get if he tried to force Nyanko-sensei out of his bag, versus the fact that he was really very heavy. He decided that removing Nyanko-sensei was more trouble than it was worth. He made a face as he lifted his bag and settled it onto his shoulder, opened the flap again to make absolutely sure that the Book of Friends was still inside, and then made his way downstairs to see his friends.
Touko-san was standing at the door with them, and turned as he rounded the landing. “There you are, Takashi-kun! I was wondering if something was wrong.”
“Sorry for keeping you waiting,” Natsume said. He craned his head over Touko-san’s shoulder. He recognized Nishimura and Kitamoto readily enough, both dressed in anticipation of getting very dirty, but surprisingly there was a third person as well. He blinked, and then asked “Tanuma…?”
“Hey, Natsume!” Nishimura greeted him with a jaunty wave that defied the sweltering temperature. “We brought you a friend.”
Tanuma ducked his head, looking both awkward and pleased. “Kitamoto heard that I hadn’t gone cicada hunting either,” he explained. “He said he might as well teach both of us at the same time.”
“It’s funny that you two have both never been cicada hunting,” Kitamoto said, slinging an arm around Tanuma’s shoulder casually. Tanuma, unlike Natsume, did not try to shrug out of it, instead looking bemused about it all. “But today, we’re going to fix that!”
“Is something happening?” Touko-san asked, and Natsume realized with a flush of embarrassment that it had slipped his mind to ask permission from her or Shigeru-san at some point during the week. It was still a strange experience to live with people who were not only interested in speaking to him, but who were concerned about his whereabouts and wanted to know how he was.
He winced and looked down at the ground. “Ah, Touko-san … would it be all right if I were to go cicada hunting with them?” Natsume knew that she wouldn’t yell or get angry, but still felt like that would happen. He looked up through the shield of his hair at her, warily waiting for her reaction.
She didn’t yell or get angry. Instead, she blinked before smiling, pressing her hand to the side of her cheek. “Of course you can, Takashi-kun,” she said. “I only wish I’d known ahead of time; I could have made onigiri for you all. Just don’t stay out too late.”
“I won’t.” He smiled at her, the nervous tension that caused him to hold his breath in anticipation eased. “I’ll be back before dark.” He slipped his shoes on and waved goodbye to Touko-san as he joined his friends in the yard.
“You worry way too much,” Nishimura said as they headed down the street. “As if she was going to say no.”
“Mm,” Natsume said. “I did forget to ask.” He adjusted his bag’s strap, trying to get it to sit comfortably on his shoulder, and hoped that their destination wasn’t too far away. Nyanko-sensei seemed to have put on weight since the last time he had hidden in Natsume’s bag, and all attempts to put him on a diet had failed dismally. Maybe I can carry him in my arms when we get further down the road…? It was a wistful hope.
“How far away is this house?” Tanuma wanted to know.
“Not far. About an hour’s walk,” Kitamoto said, stretching his arms up over his head. “Don’t worry, we’ll take it easy. We know you two are delicate.”
Natsume smiled while thinking I’m not delicate! From Tanuma’s carefully blank expression, he was thinking much the same thing.
Natsume looked up the hill at what he thought was their destination. It was a wooden house, larger than expected, weathered by the elements, and without any sign of occupation. In fact, it looked like it had belonged to someone quite wealthy, in a time long since past. The windows were boarded shut, the planes of wood warped and swollen by the passage of time, and he thought he could see a hole in the roofing. Plants grew wild up the sides of the house, nature slowly reclaiming the structure one leafy tendril at a time.
“This is it?” he asked as they approached the front door. From the door Natsume could see very little of the house inside: warped floorboards, holes in the floor, and what he thought might be a nest for a wild animal. He cocked his head to listen for cicadas. He thought they sounded louder here than anywhere else they’d been so far.
“Yeah!” Kitamoto said. “Told you it wasn’t far.”
“It looks like it’s been abandoned for a long time,” Tanuma observed.
“Yeah, it was abandoned when we were kids. I guess the owners moved into the city and never came back.” Nishimura shrugged. It was a common story, and even amongst their year there was talk about how people would leave for the cities to attend university or for work. It was rare for someone to move from the cities to the countryside, and Natsume supposed that was why he had attracted so much attention when he first arrived at school.
“You have your flashlights?” Kitamoto asked.
Natsume opened his bag and extracted his flashlight to show the others. As he did so, the bag gaped open enough to show Nyanko-sensei, drowsily regarding them. Natsume’s three friends stared at him silently with expressions of bemusement.
“Is that your cat?” Kitamoto asked after the silence dragged on almost too long for Natsume to bear.
“Ah, yeah …” Natsume said with a pained smile. “I couldn’t get him to leave.”
Nishimura shook his head. “Only you, Natsume.”
“Maybe we should invite his cat next time,” Kitamoto teased, stepping into the house and out of sight. There was a creak and quick footsteps backwards. “Watch your footing!” he called back. “The floor is worse than I remember.”
Natsume paused and looked around while the others entered the house. He had the prickling feeling that something was nearby. He wasn’t sure if it was a youkai or something else, but something seemed off to him. He frowned, looked down at Nyanko-sensei, and was not consoled by the cat’s sudden alertness. “There’s something inside, isn’t there?” he whispered.
“Just some small fry,” Nyanko-sensei said dismissively. “Hardly worth the trouble. Don’t worry about it.”
“All right,” Natsume said. He wasn’t convinced, but he knew from experience that it was better to go in, split off from the others and find out what was going on. He didn’t want to lead the youkai to his friends or back to the Fujiwaras’ house. He took a breath to steel himself and stepped inside. As Natsume’s foot crossed the threshold into the house, the sound of cicadas hit him like a blow. He covered his ears with his hands and winced as his ears rung from the silence left in the cicada shriek’s wake.
“Is it a youkai?” Tanuma asked in a low voice. He had been rubbing at his temple, a pained frown knitting his brows, and his face was pale in the poor light.
“You couldn’t hear it?” Natsume tried to keep his voice low and quiet. There was no comment from Kitamoto and Nishimura, who had moved on into the next room, their voices echoing through the empty house.
Tanuma shook his head. “I can sense something, but that’s it.”
“Ah.” Natsume forced his hands down by his sides and smiled. “It’s fine now.”
The worry that bled into Tanuma’s pale face suggested that Natsume wasn’t fooling him.
“Come on, you two! You’re not going to find any at the front door!” That was Nishimura.
“It’s really okay,” Natsume said, trying again. “It’s loud but I don’t think it’s dangerous.”
“As long as you’re sure,” Tanuma said slowly. It wasn’t so much an agreement as it was a resignation, and Natsume’s stomach twisted with guilt to hear that note in Tanuma’s voice. I need to be less dependent on people, he reminded himself. It wasn’t fair to them for him to make them worry about him so much. If Tanuma was worried about him, he might follow him and Natsume didn’t know what danger he might be exposed to.
“Come on,” he said, switching his flashlight on. “We can’t keep Kitamoto and Nishimura waiting.”
“Right.” Tanuma switched on his own flashlight and the two of them moved further into the house. The floorboards felt oddly soft underfoot, compressing with Natsume’s weight as he put a foot down, and he shone the flashlight at his feet. The light confirmed what he had suspected about the floorboards: they had started to rot away.
“We’ll have to be careful,” he said to Tanuma, nodding at the floor.
“Yeah,” Tanuma agreed, shining his own flashlight at his feet. “You take care, Natsume.”
Natsume nodded. When they reached a corridor, Tanuma went left on Natsume’s direction. Natsume went right, away from the others and in the direction of the youkai that he could sense. If there was a youkai here, he didn’t want to involve the others in his affairs. It would just make Tanuma ill, and Nishimura and Kitamoto would be utterly defenseless if confronted with a hostile youkai. He kept his footsteps quiet as he walked carefully down the corridor and around the corner, passing two doors as he walked. The house was even larger than it looked from the outside, and Natsume was struck with a horrible thought: had he checked for a nameplate? If he had, would he have seen the Matoba name?
The cicada screeching was growing steadily louder, giving him a headache, building to a crescendo as he put his hand on a sliding door. The door looked cleaner than the others, better maintained, and Natsume swallowed. If there was a youkai here, it would have to be behind this door. He slid it open and shone his flashlight inside. The room looked empty, from the half-rotted floorboards to the dirty walls. Even the ceiling was intact, from what Natsume could see. He could, however, see cicadas on the floor. Their motionlessness seemed suspicious, and Natsume slid the door closed behind him as he stepped into the room.
As he pushed the door back into position everything went silent. Natsume froze, hand still resting on the groove carved into the door frame. His breath caught in his throat as he looked around him slowly, his other hand gripping his flashlight with a white-knuckled grip. He couldn’t see anything but the cicadas, and everything was so silent.
“Hello?” he called. His voice was unbearably loud in the anticipatory silence and he flinched.
The cicada sound returned like a shriek, shockingly loud and threaded with what sounded like a human’s voice. He stepped backward, quickly, unable to see where he was placing his feet. One foot went through the floorboards sickeningly easily and he fell backwards. The flashlight slipped out of his hands and he tried to catch himself with his forearms. All he found was empty space.
He barely managed to cry out in shock before he crashed through the rotten floor.
Natsume opened his eyes and winced. He had landed painfully, knocking the wind out of him, and his head ached from the fall. For a moment he lay on the ground and focused on breathing. The cicada noises were louder here, almost deafening, and Natsume covered his ears with his hands. He squinted into the darkness, trying to force his eyes to adjust so that he could make out more than vague shadowy shapes.
It looked like he was in a shallow pit carved out underneath the house’s foundations. He thought that maybe if he stood up, the floor above would be at shoulder-height, or a little shorter. The excavation was rather crude, like someone had dug out a hole with a shovel and then done little to secure the foundations to stop the hole caving in. As his eyes adjusted, Natsume was able to see a rope strung around the room at what would be chest height. The rope was adorned at regular intervals with paper shapes, and Natsume’s heart sunk as he recognized what he was looking at. He had fallen into a trap for youkai. The crudeness of it meant that it was probably not done by the head of the Matoba clan, at least, but that was of little comfort. Whoever was setting up traps for youkai probably wouldn’t have Natsume’s best interests at heart either.
He pushed himself into a sitting position but couldn’t see any youkai nearby. Nyanko-sensei, having popped his head out of Natsume’s bag at some point, was looking around the room with particularly scathing disdain.
“Come on, let’s get out of here. I want my manjuu before dark.”
Natsume wanted to get out of there, preferably before the exorcist who created this trap realized that their ward had broken and then went out to investigate. If he was caught here, it wouldn’t end well for him. On the other hand, he didn’t think that he could leave a youkai here to be captured. Not without questioning it first, to find out whether it truly needed to be exorcised, or whether it had been captured for some other, nastier, motive. He shook his head. “Wait, sensei. I think there’s something here.”
“Who cares? Don’t go sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
Natsume sighed.
“Sensei…” Natsume got up onto his knees, making a face as rising that far jostled his forming bruises. “The wards aren’t here for me. Shouldn’t we try and find the youkai first?”
“No.” Nyanko-sensei glared in a way that seemed ludicrous coming from a maneki neko, and yet was all the more effective for it. “Leave it alone, Natsume.”
Nyanko-sensei’s answer indicated that there was a youkai here, and that meant Natsume couldn’t leave.
“Once I find the youkai.” He didn’t see anyone other than the two of them in the shallow dirt hole, but there could be a small youkai that he had overlooked, and he looked around the floor carefully.
“Can you see anything, sensei?” His gaze fell on what he had first dismissed as a discarded cicada shell. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could see that what had caught his eye was a youkai’s kimono, seemingly designed to look like the glossy sheen of a cicada. The youkai looked like a young girl, as tall as Natsume’s hand, and was lying face down on the ground. Her dark hair was caught up in a hair clip that looked like cicada wings.
“Hello,” he said, reaching out a hand to her. “There you are.”
She rose to her knees and stared at him. “You can see me?” Her voice sounded like a much softer version of a cicada screech, and Natsume thought he could guess who had made the cicada screeches earlier.
“Yes.” He held still, hand still half extended. “Do you know why there was a trap here?”
She shook her head violently. “No! There’s no powerful youkai here! Not anymore. There were rumors once of a youkai who forced others to bow their heads to her and write their names in her book but she wasn’t from here. I’d never stand for it.” She straightened up to her full height and looked at Natsume imperiously.
Natsume’s mouth quirked into something not quite a smile. It was certainly one of the more unusual ways that he had heard his grandmother described. He wondered what Reiko would have thought at being described as a youkai. He could imagine her smiling, as she always smiled in every youkai’s memories, but what would lie underneath that smile? He’d never know. He then smiled at the youkai, quickly and uncertainly. “You can come out with us, if you like.”
She looked at him with beetle-black eyes, expression wary despite the airs she had put on earlier. “You promise safe passage for me and my friend?”
“Sure.” She climbed onto his hand and up his arm. Natsume looked around for another youkai. Instead, a cicada crawled out from the shadows. Natsume frowned, waiting for it to talk or in some other way communicate that it was more than it seemed. It didn’t.
As Natsume was about to pick up the cicada, a bright light shone down on him from above. Natsume shielded his eyes with his arm.
“Here you are!” Kitamoto declared, lowering his flashlight so that it shone at Natsume’s feet rather than at his face. “Is that a cicada?”
Natsume smiled awkwardly. “I thought I saw one down here,” he offered. His eyes, once dazzled, adjusted to the change in light to make out both Nishimura and Kitamoto as they exchanged looks that Natsume couldn’t interpret, and Tanuma as a pale, worried shadow behind them. Then Nishimura shook his head in rueful disbelief.
“You really need to pay more attention to your surroundings. Let’s get you out of there.”
Natsume stood up and through the gap in the floorboards, before trying to pull himself up out of the hole. He wasn’t quite able to do it and Nishimura and Kitamoto pulled him out the rest of the way. He rose to his feet, brushing away dirt and wood fragments from his shirt and making a face at how the smell of wood-rot clung to his shirt and skin. Is Touko-san going to be able to get this out? he wondered dismally.
“What happened?” Tanuma asked once Natsume was steady on his feet.
“Oh,” Natsume said. “I tripped and fell. Are you all right?”
“It’s just a headache,” Tanuma rubbed at his temple with his hand. “It just hit me when I got here.”
“Ah.” Natsume looked down at the youkai clinging to his shirt sleeve. She looked unimpressed but not worse for wear, and was fortunately remaining very still while Natsume was surrounded by people. “Sorry.”
“Do you ever think these two are having conversations without us?” Nishimura asked Kitamoto, who shrugged.
“Maybe. Don’t act like everything’s your fault, Natsume.”
Natsume flushed, freezing in mortification. “I don’t …” he started, trying to think of what to say so as to not worry them.
“Sorry,” Tanuma said, ducking his head and his hair falling across his face.
Kitamoto waved a hand dismissively. “We’re used to it! Don’t make those faces, you’ll make me feel bad.”
“All right,” Tanuma said.
“Now, let’s go find some more cicadas! Natsume, don’t go falling into any more holes,” Nishimura declared.
Nishimura and Kitamoto, after establishing for themselves that Natsume was uninjured, peeled off to search for more cicadas. I guess they did want to go hunting after all, Natsume thought with gentle amusement. Tanuma didn’t go with them, instead studying Natsume thoughtfully. Natsume shifted under his gaze, feeling self-conscious and awkward.
“Is everything all right?” he asked. Tanuma looked away.
“Sorry, it’s just … is the youkai still here?”
Natsume started. “You can see it?”
Tanuma shook his head. “You make a particular face when there’s a youkai nearby and you have unfinished business that you want to get to.”
“I do?” Natsume reached up and probed his face gently, trying to work out what expression he had. “What does it look like?”
The youkai clinging to his sleeve hummed impatiently. “Can I go now?”
“Yes, of course,” Natsume said. As he spoke, he looked across at Tanuma, who looked like he had confirmed his suspicions.“We’ll just go outside to be sure you won’t fall into a trap again.”
The three of them went outside, Natsume putting his hand up to his other arm’s sleeve to serve as a platform for the cicada youkai. He turned around to face the house and held his hand steady. The youkai immediately leaped from his hand. She didn’t fall.
“I’ll tell all of my friends about you!” she promised as if offering a great boon.
Natsume was reminded of the cicada still on his hand, ready to fly off, and winced. “Please don’t.” He frowned, chewing on his bottom lip as he tried to work out how to phrase the next question. “Did you see who made the trap you fell into.”
“Some exorcist.” She sniffed disdainfully. “A weak one came here several days ago. I imagine it was them.”
“Ah, I see. Please, be careful next time.”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she hovered for a moment above his outstretched hand, before speeding away. I never found out her name, he mused. It was strange to meet a youkai who knew of his grandmother — even if a distorted version of her — and not learn their name or even a part of their history. Strangely, it didn’t feel incomplete; there were many humans that he spoke to briefly whose names he would likely never know, and it felt fitting that there would be a meeting with a youkai where neither of them knew each other’s names.
What was more concerning was the exorcist that she referred to. A weak one, maybe, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be trouble later. The Matoba were one clan, but he knew that there were others as well as amateurs.
Tanuma kept looking at the direction that youkai had flown. Natsume wondered what he saw; did he just see the sun setting the sky on fire as it slid down to the horizon, casting everything with a warm glow? Or was he able to see the shadows cast by the youkai party halfway down the hill as they celebrated the close of another day, sake and snacks spread out across the lawn? He wanted to ask, but he also didn’t. Being able to see youkai would put him in more danger, Natsume reminded himself, even if he did want to share this moment with him.
“What did the youkai look like?” Tanuma asked, turning away from the setting sun.
“She was about this big —“ and Natsume sketched the length of his hand — “and wearing a cicada shell in her hair. I think she was the reason why there were cicadas here in the first place.”
“Oh, so like a cicada princess?”
Natsume cocked his head in thought. “I suppose so. Maybe that was her name.”
“Maybe.” Tanuma shrugged. “You could always ask around to find out her name if you want to know it.”
Nyanko-sensei popped out of Natsume’s bag, startling both of them and causing them both to step backward in surprise. “Enough of that! What about my manjuu! I want twice as many this time for saving you.”
Natsume shook his head in disbelief. “Saving me from what? It might have been a trap, but you didn’t do anything to save me.”
Tanuma laughed. “Ponta is going to get even fatter with all the sweets you give him.”
Nyanko-sensei scowled furiously, half-climbing out of the bag in his indignation. “I will not! My real form is majestic, I’ll have you know!”
Natsume started to snicker. “I should put you on a diet, sensei.”
“Don’t you start, stupid Natsume!”
Tanuma joined in laughing. “If he eats too much he won’t fit in your bag.”
“I’ll fit! I’ll make me fit!”
It was as Natsume started laughing in earnest at Nyanko-sensei’s indignant gestures that Kitamoto and Nishimura came out from the house.
“What? What did we miss?” Kitamoto wanted to know. “Come on, don’t keep it a secret! What is it?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Natsume said quickly, swallowing his laughter. “We saw something funny just before.”
“You’re finished already?” Tanuma asked.
“It got boring.” Nishimura sighed. “Maybe we are too old for this.”
“I think we still had fun though,” Natsume pointed out.
“Even if you managed to fall into a hole.” Kitamoto shook his head ruefully. “You must be the clumsiest guy I know, Natsume.”
“Let’s go,” Tanuma suggested. “It’s getting late.”
The four of them started the walk home. Natsume had expected to walk home wrapped in his thoughts, but it seemed that Nishimura and Kitamoto had different plans. He found himself drawn into a conversation about Kitamoto’s latest dating exploits, which as usual had ended in abject failure with the girl in question not even noticing that he had been trying to flirt with her, which then shifted into Kitamoto and Nishimura’s plans for next weekend at one of the bigger towns.
It’s been a good day, Natsume thought, as they wound their way down the path leading to the village at the base of the hill. Those kinds of days had come more often since he had come to live here, days when things went well, and he felt like he belonged somewhere. It was a strange feeling, but a good one.
He stopped then, as the others were looking at him with expressions he couldn’t interpret. “What? Is something wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing!” Kitamoto said quickly.
“It’s just rare to get a smile out of you like that,” Nishimura said.
Natsume blushed. “Ah … sorry?”
“Now you’ve made it awkward!” Kitamoto complained.
“It’s just been a really good day,” Natsume said in explanation. “Thank you for showing me this place.”
“He’s made it worse,” Nishimura said. He shrugged then. “But it wouldn’t be Natsume if he wasn’t awkward.”
“He’s right though,” Tanuma said. “Thank you.”
“No more of that!” Kitamoto said quickly. “Tanuma, Natsume — it’s your turn! What kind of girls do you like?”
“Uh…” Natsume managed.
“Well…” Tanuma said.
“You don’t know? We’ll just have to find out. Come with us next week.” Kitamoto suggested. “It’ll be fun.”
Natsume looked around at the forest, the bushes rustling with the passage of youkai headed to various places to live out their lives, and nodded in agreement. “All right.”