85

Hm. This is certainly… not ideal, to say the least.

Shiki takes a brief moment to wonder what Satoru-niichan would say to her if he knew that she'd immediately lost the new student so swiftly. Probably something along the lines of, "Wow, how unexpectedly clumsy of my cute little cousin!" Followed by a teasing laugh and a none-too-gentle hair-ruffle.

… She knows that Satoru-niichan wouldn't blame her. Nonetheless, Shiki cannot say that she's looking forward to the good-natured ribbing that she would doubtlessly receive from her cousin for this… oversight.

Perhaps if she'd used White prior to stepping through the barrier, then whatever method had been used to separate them would've been ineffective. But there was no point in musing on what-if's by this point, not when Shiki had already inadvertently lost track of Okkotsu-san. It's not something that she can be fully blamed for –with how energy-consumptive White was, it just didn't make any sense for Shiki to activate her technique beforehand for no particular reason at all.

Yet, there's no denying that it's still her responsibility. Shiki was the one who'd weighed her choices and decided to bring Okkotsu-san along with her, knowing that it was a potentially dangerous situation they were walking into. This means that no matter what happens, Shiki is the one who should be held accountable.

And she's never been one to run from her responsibilities. Not now, and not ever.

With a soft sigh, Shiki shakes her head and returns her attention to her surroundings.

Even though everything around her appears to be empty and abandoned, she knows this to be far from the truth of the matter. For one, the information that Shiki had received on the situation beforehand indicated that there were still students inside the school. And that was setting aside the fact that she'd literally brought Okkotsu-san along with her… even if the two of them were separated at the moment.

So. What kind of technique was responsible for this?

Some manner of spatial manipulation would be Shiki's first guess. Satoru-niichan's Limitless is the most powerful form of spatial manipulation that she knows, but Shiki also knows that Limitless is most certainly not the only technique capable of manipulating the surrounding space out there, even as rare as such techniques are. Perhaps the cursed spirit in question here had manifested a technique that allowed them to 'displace' enemies within their range? So their chosen tactic would be… divide and conquer, or something along those lines?

But unfortunately for the cursed spirit, their strategy was unlikely to be very effective. Because going by the level of cursed energy that Shiki can sense permeating her surroundings, she would estimate it to be a strong Grade One cursed spirit, instead of something that's Special Grade. While Okkotsu-san himself might be inexperienced and untrained, the high concentration of cursed energy that he possesses means that any hostile cursed spirit with a shred of self-preservation would think twice before choosing him as a target –and that was to say nothing of the powerful Special Grade cursed spirit trailing his every footstep.

While the precise nature of the curse binding the boy and the cursed spirit still remains uncertain, what is certain… is that Rika is quite 'obsessive' over Okkotsu-san, to put it mildly.

And not-so-mildly too, Shiki supposes.

The exact conditions of what triggers the cursed spirit's angry manifestation are unknown, but from the investigations performed on Okkotsu-san's history thus far –as well as hearing personal accounts from the boy himself– it appears that the Special Grade cursed spirit intervenes when Okkotsu-san is in danger.

What Rika perceives as dangerous is something that's hard to define; according to Okkotsu-san, the first time that Rika had properly manifested in front of him as a cursed spirit was when a fellow classmate broke one of his pencils in school and brandished it in his face. But there have also been times when others have intentionally shoved him unkindly in the hallways, and Rika had not reacted to it at all.

Shiki might not know what triggers the manifestation of the Special Grade cursed spirit, but she's fairly confident that Rika would show itself if Okkotsu-san were facing mortal danger. With the convoluted way that their cursed energies are entwined, Rika's death would impact Okkotsu-san, and the same would be true of the reverse. A cursed spirit is no guardian spirit, but it's a safe bet to say that Rika is invested in Okkotsu-san's survival… if not his mental health and well-being, but it's a little ridiculous to expect a curse to be considerate of things like that.

All of which is to say: Although Shiki had been separated from Okkotsu-san through unknown means, she does not expect Okkotsu-san to be in any immediate danger. And even if the boy were to find himself in mortal danger, then Shiki is confident that he wouldn't die immediately.

Which means that her priority right now isn't locating and retrieving Okkotsu-san, but instead dealing with the cursed spirit terrorizing the school. And once the cursed spirit has been dealt with, then it should be a simple matter to find Okkotsu-san, too, and she wouldn't have to worry about a repeat of the same scenario happening again.

If the cursed spirit was able to separate someone that Shiki had been holding onto without ever revealing its presence, then it meant that the technique was one that could be operated remotely. Which had the potential to be quite inconvenient.

Another reason to deal with the cursed spirit first, then.

Shiki lifts her foot, and begins walking towards the school building.

It only takes a few steps for her to realize that there's something off about it all. Even though her legs are moving and each step that she takes should be a step forward, the distance between her and the school building does not decrease at all. She doesn't even reach the rubber track circling the grassy field that she's currently standing upon.

If anything, it's almost like… it's almost like the field is expanding endlessly, in perfect tandem with her every footstep.

Shiki stills her steps, and turns around. There is no indication of the distance that she should've covered by this point. Instead, it appears that she's standing in the exact same spot that she'd arrived upon after entering through the barrier.

What an interesting trick.

But Shiki does not have the patience to be dealing with such tricks right now.

"I wonder if I'm being underestimated." It's already been several long moments now since Shiki has entered the cursed barrier, and still the cursed spirit has yet to reveal itself before her. Presumably, this means that the cursed spirit is currently otherwise occupied… by Okkotsu-san, maybe? Or perhaps by Kusakabe-sensei, who'd been the first to arrive on the scene. Is the cursed spirit under the impression that it had successfully separated and trapped the two sorcerers who'd arrived to reinforce Kusakabe-sensei?

If so, then it was time to disabuse it of this erroneous notion.

Beneath her gaze, the flickering red lines in her surroundings finally form into something more solid. In Shiki's experience, the lines of conventional things that possess a physical vessel are the easiest to identify. Active techniques are a little more difficult, and oftentimes it's not something that she can decipher at a glance. But given enough time to study it…

Well. There is no technique that lasts forever, and as long as it's something that has an end, then that means it can be killed.

Shiki draws her sword, and slashes it through the air.

There is no resistance beneath the edge of her blade. Yet, there is the sound of something tearing all the same, and for a brief moment her surroundings turn into a gray blur.

Then, the blur clears and Shiki still finds herself standing on a grassy field surrounded by a rubber track.

Except, this is no longer a clean field that she is standing upon. There are clumps of overturned dirt that form a wide, yawning pit beside her, and there are… children, here. Dead children, to be precise. With glassy, unseeing eyes and expressions contorted in varying degrees of terror. Some of them are also not even in one piece, so much so that Shiki suspects it will be difficult for the assistant managers to properly identify them later.

But that is not Shiki's job. As regrettable as these deaths are, it is not Shiki's responsibility to care for the deceased.

A sorcerer's job is to kill curses.

The cursed blade in her hand vibrates lightly, likely in excitement at the blood that's been spilled on the ground. Shiki lifts her gaze towards the school building in front of her –rather than red streaks on the window panes, there are long red rivulets dribbling down the sides of the walls from the windows. Which is unlikely to signify anything good for the students inside.

Best to hurry.

This time, when Shiki briskly darts forward, there is no strange distortion of the world around her that results in her treading in place. She leaves the overturned grass and the bloody track behind, making straight for the school building.

A bright red handprint appears on the glass of every window that she passes, and the ground beneath her feet grows slippery. By the time that she reaches the front door to the building, she's walking through a growing pool of blood.

Shiki stands atop the threshold, and looks up at the school building. Even though the door is tightly closed, somehow she's still able to hear screams ringing in her ears, echoing endlessly. There is no doubt that these are the high-pitched screams of the surviving children trapped inside.

Furthermore, Shiki is under no illusions as to why she can hear these screams.

Listen to the suffering cries of these poor, unfortunate children. You're a sorcerer, aren't you? So come and save them!

"You're a clever one, aren't you?" Shiki tells the cursed building, and stabs her sword through the front door.

The building trembles, causing the ground beneath her feet to shake. But Shiki maintains a firm grip on her weapon, and slashes out to the side along its lines.

… That the cursed spirit is also a cursed building makes sense. It's a rare type of curse, not at all common, at the same time, but not anything unheard of. More to the point, it definitely explains Shiki's sudden separation from her charge without her having been able to do anything to prevent it. Typically, a curse like this that's rooted in an enclosed structure of some sort possesses a form of unilateral control over its territory. So the fact that this particular curse appears to be capable of controlling the 'space' within its range in such a manner makes sense.

Shiki recalls hearing about one of these kinds of curses that seemingly altered the flow of time from her cousin. For the people trapped inside, only a few hours had passed, when in reality it had actually been a few days. Hallways stretched on and on and all looped around endlessly back to the beginning –the latter of which was a little similar to what Shiki had experienced just earlier.

However, time was not something that was easily manipulated. Or at all, as far as Shiki knows. What had happened according to Satoru-niichan was that the perception of time had been manipulated for people who found themselves inside. Which meant that those within the trap easily ran the risk of starving themselves or worse, if they were unaware of the true passage of time and the stress that it placed on their bodies.

Shiki does not know what unique tricks this cursed spirit in front of her might have, but chances are it's something similar to that. Were she to enter the school building and experience its tricks for herself, then she would know for certain. If it were Satoru-niichan standing here, there's a distinct chance that he might've entered the building out of whimsical curiosity of some fashion–

–but Shiki is not her cousin.

Which means that she lifts her sword and cuts another one of the long red lines glistening across the building's surface, instead of opening the door and heading inside to take a look herself. The building trembles, and the way that the ground shakes beneath her is almost reminiscent of an earthquake in this moment.

But Shiki doesn't pause, and continues to cut without batting an eye.

The thing about these kinds of curses that bind themselves to enclosed buildings: They're notoriously difficult to break and exorcise from inside. Because their nature is to trap. Those struggling from within the trap generally find it harder to break the trap from such a disadvantageous position.

As such, if one wished to destroy such a curse from the inside, then they needed to find some weak spot in the curse's defenses from within to exploit and use to their advantage. On the other hand, if one were standing on the outside, then there was a very simple solution they could opt for –just destroy the building entirely and be done with it all.

Destroy the building, destroy the curse.

… There were a few problems with directly adopting this solution in Shiki's case here, however. Destroying the building also meant destroying its structural integrity as it was reduced to a pile of rubble in the process, and while it was an effective method of dealing with this particular kind of cursed spirit, it didn't exactly bode well for the people who were trapped inside the building. Unlike Satoru-niichan, who could simply use Blue to create a powerful attractive force to gather the debris away and keep it from injuring or potentially killing any hapless victims, Shiki did not have any such method of manipulating the debris in her surrounding environment in the same method.

Fortunately, she does not need to.

Although what stands in front of her is a cursed building, fundamentally a curse is separate from a building. It's not the building itself that's causing harm to its occupants; that would definitely be the malicious curse instead.

So this means that all Shiki needs to do is to kill the curse, and ignore the building. Solely sever the lines of the curse, while leaving the rest of the school building alone.

With a final shudder, the building falls still as Shiki cuts through the very last of the cursed spirit's lines. She takes another moment to observe the building, ensuring that the lines belonging to the cursed spirit have all been eradicated and that the building has effectively returned to a normal state once more, sans rampaging cursed spirit.

There is a soft clack as Shiki re-sheathes her blade, the sound of hilt meeting scabbard.

Then, she opens the doors and steps inside the school building.

Contrary to what the visible blood on the exterior of the building suggested, the hallways are… well, not spotless, but a lot less gruesome than what Shiki had been expecting to see. There are no dismembered limbs scattered haphazardly in the hallways, for one, which Shiki takes as a good sign.

With the cursed spirit exorcised from the building itself, there is no longer any interference obfuscating her senses. Shiki wanders up the stairway and opens the door of the third classroom on the right, following the familiar cursed energy that she is able to track down.

She steps inside the classroom. "Hello, Okkotsu-san."

"Shiki-san!" Okkotsu-san startles upon catching sight of her in the doorway, a reflexive tension that's immediately followed by relief. "You're here! W-what happened earlier? We suddenly got separated and… and…"

"Deep breaths, Okkotsu-san," Shiki advises, to which the boy immediately obeys and sucks in a deep breath instead of continuing to ramble nervously. Aside from appearing to be a little nervous, though, it does not seem like there's anything wrong with him. Glancing over the boy, it does not seem that he's accrued any injuries in the brief time that they'd been forcibly separated by the cursed spirit inhabiting the school.

That's good, then.

"… I'm not really sure what happened after we entered the barrier, but somehow I just ended up in the hallway of the school by myself," Okkotsu-san tells her, once his breaths even out again. "And it was really weird, it kind of felt like no matter how far I walked the hallway just kept going on endlessly or something."

Ah. It appears that they'd experienced the same thing, then, except for Shiki it had been outside the school building itself –but technically still on school grounds, and thus presumably within range of the territory that the cursed spirit was capable of manipulating to its will.

"After that…" Okkotsu-san shrugs helplessly, and gestures behind him, "At some point I heard their voices behind one of the doors that I was passing, so, um, I just decided to take a look inside."

Shiki lifts her gaze to look behind the boy, towards the general direction that he is gesturing in. The same direction from where there are soft whimpering and subdued crying going on, from a small group of six young children huddled together in a pile with each other.

More importantly, the children all sport discolored patches of skin that are a deep black-purple, almost reminiscent of heavy bruising, except the discolored skin is also bubbling with dozens of small beady eyes at the same time. One of the children looking back towards Shiki and Okkotsu-san has these eyes rolling around wildly on his face, crawling down the side of his neck and extending underneath his shirt.

"Do you know what's wrong with them?" Okkotsu-san asks her, and there's something that's… pained, sympathetic, that Shiki thinks she can make out in the boy's tone. "Only two of them were like this when I got here, but it's affecting all of them now. I think it's been getting worse all this time, too."

Shiki nods, "They're cursed."

"Cursed?"

"Being in close proximity to a powerful cursed spirit for an extended period of time can result in an individual being 'infected' by the cursed energy," Shiki explains to the boy. "And therefore be cursed as a result. Usually it takes a few hours before symptoms like this begin to appear, but I presume that the cursed spirit here is powerful enough that its cursed energy is… more 'infectious' than usual, or something like that."

After all, it hasn't been that long since Kusakabe-sensei had sent his request for reinforcements. So the children shouldn't have been trapped inside the cursed spirit for too long, and yet…

"'Infectious?'" Almost reflexively, Okkotsu-san glances down at himself.

"It's not something you'll need to worry about." Shiki would end up falling prey to being cursed like this before Okkotsu-san was, and it was already an impossibility for her. The boy really does not have anything to be concerned about on this front. "You have a lot of cursed energy yourself, which naturally also means that you have a higher resistance to this sort of thing."

For the most part, it's civilian non-sorcerers who tend to suffer this sort of side-effect if they've been trapped in close quarters with a cursed spirit for too long. Which happens less often than what one might think. Usually, a cursed spirit kills humans instead of keeping them alive for extended periods of time as hostages that may or may not be useful.

"O-oh, I see," Okkotsu-san nods in understanding. His gaze flickers towards the crying children once more. "… How do we help them? If it's a curse, then… will all of this disappear if the cursed spirit is dead?"

Unfortunately, no.

Exorcising a cursed spirit does not erase all negative effects resulting from its influence, much the same way that a person who'd scraped their hand on a rusty nail will not be able to un-scrape their hand by throwing the nail away. A sorcerer who'd been injured on a mission will not miraculously make a full recovery once the cursed spirit has been exorcised. The logic here is much the same.

Besides, "I already killed it."

Okkotsu-san's eyes widen in surprise. "Wait, already?"

… Good to know that Okkotsu-san didn't feel that he'd been left alone in a dangerous situation for very long.

"The curse was in the building itself," she elaborates.

"Like a haunted house?"

"I suppose." A 'cursed house' would be more accurate than a 'haunted house,' but Shiki doesn't feel the need to be pedantic here.

"So if getting rid of the cursed spirit doesn't get rid of the curse, then… is there still a way to cure the kids?" Okkotsu-san asks worriedly.

"Yes." There are a few different methods of treatment, from what Shiki knows. The simplest of which is just removing the individual from an environment with a high concentration of cursed energy altogether, and allowing them to heal naturally on their own. But this only works in cases where the curse hasn't entrenched itself too deeply in the victim yet. For severe cases, there are other steps that need to be taken in order to remove the curse from their body, lest the victim's condition continue to deteriorate. Left untreated, serious cases would result in the victim's death.

The children huddled together inside this classroom definitely seem to lean more towards the 'severe' end of the spectrum. Which means that, preferably, something should be done to remedy the current state of things before Shiki heads up another flight of stairs to where she can faintly sense the distressed outline of Kusakabe-sensei's cursed energy.

Shiki sidesteps Okkotsu-san and begins walking towards the young children.

"You know how to heal them?" Okkotsu-san follows her curiously, taking the learning opportunity for what it is. Unfortunately for him, though, Shiki's methods here aren't something that he's going to be able to replicate. "I never knew that you could… wait, why are you pulling out your sword?"

Those last words are accompanied by a sudden burst of alarm.

"Why do you think?" Was it not obvious enough from the context of their conversation that Shiki was going to get rid of the mild curse afflicting the children?

… Evidently not, as it turns out.

Shiki has barely slashed through the glowing lines on one of the children before an unexpected force barrels into her from behind. She swiftly withdraws her sword before she is jostled such that the blade slices something that is not the line that she intends to cut. Her goal is to intentionally kill the curse affecting the children, not accidentally kill the children themselves.

Cutting a glowing red line that runs down a person's torso is one thing. Avoiding the line to cut open a person's torso, on the other hand, is something that's entirely different.

Shiki turns towards Okkotsu-san, mildly annoyed. "What are you doing?"

The boy gapes at her, like he can't understand why she's reacting like this. "What are you doing?!"

… That doesn't make any sense, and Shiki proceeds to inform him of that fact.

Okkotsu-san splutters. "You stabbed a kid!"

"Of course I did." That's the way her ability works, after all. It's the entire reason why Shiki even uses a sword in the first place –so that she can use it to cut the gleaming lines revealed by her cursed eyes. "How else would I destroy their curse?"

The dark-haired boy's jaw drops open, eyes widening. "By killing them?!"

"… No, by killing the curse affecting them." At this point, Shiki is starting to see that there's clearly a misunderstanding going on here. Without any context of her abilities, she can see how it might be a little startling from the perspective of the unaware onlooker that Okkotsu-san was…

Shiki sighs. "I'm not about to kill another human for no particular reason, Okkotsu-san. It's against jujutsu regulations to do so."

The boy relaxes slightly, then tenses again, for some indiscernible reason.

"My eyes allow me to see 'lines' in everything around me. By cutting these lines, I am able to kill what I choose to." There's a lot of simplification going on in her cursory explanation here, but for all intents and purposes it's a decent summary of how her abilities operate. "This includes specifically choosing to kill the curse affecting these children."

Shiki gestures towards the aforementioned children with her sword thoughtlessly, and immediately makes a mental note not to do so again in the future when it incites a renewed burst of tearful wailing from the children in question.

"O-oh." Okkotsu-san finally releases his grip on her. The boy is starting to look a little chagrined now, and mildly embarrassed for good measure, too. "Sorry, I didn't realize…"

Shiki acknowledges that she is also at fault here. She'd assumed that Okkotsu-san was already aware of her skill set, given that she hadn't been hiding anything from him over the past few days –but apparently, neither Shiki nor her classmates had actually explained their own abilities to Okkotsu-san. Without context, seeing someone pull out a sword and stab a child would be an alarming sight to witness. Coupled with Okkotsu-san's largely-civilian sensibilities, it's not so surprising that the boy reacted the way he did just now.

"Don't do that again." Considering Okkotsu-san's civilian outlook, Shiki thinks that it would be wiser not to inform him that he'd almost inadvertently killed one of the children when he'd attempted to stop Shiki from 'killing' them, ironically enough. It was good that Shiki had reacted swiftly enough to prevent anything regrettable from occurring.

To date, the only humans that Shiki has killed have been curse users. Preferably, she'd like to refrain from adding 'innocent non-sorcerer civilians' to the list. And personal preferences aside –it was one thing if innocents died at the hands of a cursed spirit of a mission that she took, but it was another matter entirely if Shiki were the one to actively commit the deed. Even if it was accidental and unintentional, she can already see the way that the bothersome higher ups would eagerly capitalize upon such an opportunity.

Such a thing held the potential to be troublesome for Satoru-niichan's plans, too, and Shiki didn't want to inconvenience her cousin.

"Sorry," Okkotsu-san apologizes to her again.

With the misunderstanding between them finally straightened out, Shiki turns her attention back to her self-appointed task. A few sleeping spells later and the proper lines severed, the children in the room are all fast asleep on the cold hard ground of the classroom and free of any cursed marks on their bodies. Children recover quickly, so Shiki expects that they'll be back up on their feet and merrily running around again with a few days' worth of rest.

Task finished, Shiki turns to leave.

… She's already halfway out the door when she notices that Okkotsu-san isn't following her. Shiki looks back over her shoulder and finds the boy scrambling around to gather up a few jackets to create a makeshift cushion of sorts for the unconscious children.

"Are you done?" Kusakabe-sensei is still waiting for them somewhere above on the next floor.

"Y-yes, I am." Tossing one last blanket over the kids as a blanket replacement, Okkotsu-san swiftly hurries after her. "Is there something else that needs to be done? I thought you mentioned that you already killed the cursed spirit, earlier?"

"Have you forgotten the reason why we're here in the first place?" Shiki tilts her head and arches an eyebrow at the boy. "We still haven't convened with Kusakabe-sensei."

"… Oh. Right."

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.

Extra.

.

To be perfectly honest, Yuta had forgotten about Kusakabe-sensei, embarrassing as it was.

… In his defense, there had been a lot of other stuff going on! And he'd been nervous the entire time about being brought along as 'backup' for another sorcerer in distress, when Yuta wasn't even a sorcerer himself, not really. Well. Technically, he was a sorcerer. Except Yuta was also a complete beginner who didn't really know what he was doing and was definitely way in over his head regarding… everything, really.

Looking back on things, the last few days were all just a complete blur. A chaotic whirlwind of activity that upended the life he'd known and the hometown he'd grown up in.

It's a little overwhelming, but…

But, this is something that Yuta knows that he needs to do. That he has to do. He wants to help Rika, who's trapped as a 'vengeful cursed spirit,' and in order to do that, he needs to become a sorcerer. A sorcerer, whose purpose is to exorcise curses and protect people from the invisible threats that most are oblivious to.

Definitely not something Yuta had ever expected to find himself involved in, to say the least.

He… doesn't really think about himself as a noble person. A person who's brave and upstanding and does what's right simply because it's the right thing to do. Yuta is a timid coward who's more prone to running away and hiding from his problems than properly facing them head-on, preferring to avoid conflict whenever possible–

(What if Rika-chan comes out, what if she hurts someone because of me–)

–and so he has trouble thinking of himself as a sorcerer who works tirelessly to protect people from threats that they are unable to defend against themselves.

… But if it's to help Rika-chan, then Yuta will try his best. To help Rika-chan, and to prevent others from getting hurt, Yuta knows that something needs to change.

And maybe, just maybe, he'll also finally find–

(A place where he belongs, a place where there is no need to hide, a place where he can exist without it being a terrible mistake or a danger to those around him–)

–out how to get rid of his own weakness, his helplessness. All the little things that continue to build and feed into his existing insecurities.

(No one likes Okkotsu Yuta, not his classmates and not even his own parents. Hakari-san and Hoshi-san had very considerately avoided the topic as they chatted with him, but… Yuta thinks he knows what it means, that his parents haven't so much as even attempted to contact him after he'd left Sendai with the sorcerers.)

…

Yuta knows that he has potential, according to the sorcerers. Something about having a lot of cursed energy, and about Rika being a Special Grade cursed spirit… but to be honest, he still doesn't really have a proper grasp on what it means.

In this respect, it's a little easier for him to relate to Hakari-san and Hoshi-san, who are both also from –what was the term for it again? 'Non-sorcerer backgrounds,' or something like that? Granted, the two of them are far more well-versed with everything in the jujutsu world than Yuta is, but sometimes it's comforting to talk to them and know that they, too, had also been a little overwhelmed by everything when they'd first discovered sorcery and all that it entailed.

Yuta doesn't really understand Shiki-san.

… It's a little difficult to talk to her; there's something about the white-haired girl that's intimidating, even despite her small frame. She's standoffish and quiet, particularly compared to her classmates –Yuta would actually say that the friendliest person(?) he's met so far is Panda the panda– but that's not really it, either.

There's something about Shiki-san that Yuta can't quite name, and it's…

Like looking into the abyss, staring forward and knowing what you see isn't something that you understand, and yet stepping forward to meet it anyways.

Yuta was well aware that he didn't know much about Shiki-san, but there was still some small measure of rapport that existed between them, built up through all the movie-watching that they'd done recently. A rapport that had nearly been shattered the instant that Shiki-san pulled out her sword and stabbed it into one of the crying children with no warning whatsoever–

Hakari-san had once told Yuta, privately, that 'Shiki could be a little weird sometimes, but don't worry too much about it.'

Hakari-san, 'a little weird' is definitely not enough warning for this!

… It was a great relief to find out that Shiki-san hadn't been about to murder children in front of him in cold blood. And in the aftermath, Yuta was also ashamed that he could've ever thought that of the older girl. Shiki-san had done nothing but help Yuta this entire time, and yet he thought that she'd… that she'd…

…

"Okkotsu-san?"

"Y-yes?" Yuta startles slightly, breaking out of his thoughts. Ahead of him, Shiki-san has stopped in front of a doorway that does not appear any different from the others along the hallway. Her expression is neutral, nothing indicating displeasure or irritation towards Yuta for what happened earlier. Regardless, Yuta cannot help but feel a faint trickle of shame creep into him beneath her unjudging gaze.

"We're here," the girl says simply, and opens the door.

.

.

…

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