March 26, 2007. The Benikaen. 2:14 AM.
—And we we're back.
The Garden of the Crimson Maple, its stone lanterns burning in colors that still had no names, the maple's leaves drifting in their slow impossible fall. The night air here had the quality I was already starting to recognize — very clean, very full.
I exhaled.
The cloak around my shoulders flickered and then dissolved, like it had somewhere to be and had finished being here. The knife in my hand did the same. Both of them retreating back into whatever space they occupied when they weren't being worn.
"They'll come back when you call them," Arata said, reading my expression.
"How do I call them?"
"Something something intent," he said. "You'll figure it out."
I looked at my empty hand.
"I have a ghost in me," I said. Not distressed. Just — noting it.
"You have a ghost bound to you," Arata corrected. "There's a distinction. She's not in you. She's connected to you. Just like a kite is connected to the person holding the string."
"What if the wind gets too strong and I lose hold of the string?"
"That's what training is for." He turned toward the main building. "Come on."
---
It was past two in the morning and The Head was seated in the same room, in the same position, with the same quality of stillness, as if time passing was a detail that only applied to other people.
He looked at us. His gaze moved across Saiko's ash-dimmed arms, Genkei's composed stillness, and settled on me — on the space where the cloak had been.
"Tell me," he said.
Arata told him. I supplemented details. Miu provided her analysis from her notebook.
The Head listened to all of it without interrupting.
When we finished, he was quiet for a long moment.
"Unprecedented," he said.
"Yes," Arata agreed.
"And the ghost itself?"
"Well," Arata said. "Functionally, the binding has the characteristics of a standard contract — power exchange, access to the ghost's abilities, mutual awareness. The absence of a grave as anchor is the anomaly."
"What does it mean for stability?" The Head asked.
Miu answered before Arata could. "That's unknown sir. Conventional bindings use the grave as a fixed point — it absorbs excess energy, provides structure for the contract, limits drift. Without it—" She paused. "The binding may be more volatile. Or it may have found a different anchor."
"What anchor?" I said.
She looked at me.
"You," she said. "Your spiriton structure. The binding may have rooted itself in you rather than in an external object." A pause. "Which would be — unprecedented, but not impossible given what we know about your spiriton density."
I let that sit for a moment.
"I'm the grave," I said.
"In a manner of speaking," she said.
"That's horrifying," I said.
"It's interesting," she said.
"You keep saying that."
"It keeps being true."
From the corner of the room, Saiko said: "Does he need to worry about her — like, trying to take over? Personality stuff?"
The Head's gaze moved to her. "That depends on the strength of his will relative to hers, and on the nature of the binding they formed. If it was genuine rather than coercive—"
"It was genuine," I said.
He looked at me. A moment.
"Then the risk is lower," he said. "But not absent."
He rose and looked at all four of us.
"My name," he said, "is Hōjō Tenmyō."
Saiko twirled her coin, unimpressed.
"Sounds like a calligraphy brand."
Genkei went still in a way that was different from his usual stillness.
"...Hōjō?"
Tenmyō's gaze flicked to him.
"Ooooo Tenmyo usually doesn't give out his name." Arata said.
"You know his clan name," I asked Genkei.
"The Hōjō were more than a clan. They were a dynasty. Regents who ruled Japan through the Kamakura shogunate, eclipsing both the shoguns and the Imperial Court. Their authority was real—while the emperor's became symbolic. They crushed the Mongol invasions."
Silence.
Even Saiko stopped twirling her coin. Tenmyō was shocked, almost amused.
"You know your history," he said.
"A swordsman should understand the lines his blade inherits," Genkei said.
Something crossed Tenmyō's expression. Not quite surprise.
"Few speak of that period with such clarity," he said.
Saiko whispered to me: "He's a nerd."
"I'm standing right here," Genkei said.
"I know," she said.
---
Arata clapped his hands together. "Alright, alright. Enough with the gravitas. You all look like orphans at a will reading. Let's lighten things up."
"Lighten things up?" I said. "We were just fighting spirits."
"Not spirits, but ghosts there's a difference. But sure." Arata grinned. "Which means it's makeover time."
Saiko's eyes lit up. "Makeover?"
"Uniforms." Arata clarified, dragging the word out. "Your ugly civilian clothes are crying for retirement."
"I like my school clothes," I muttered.
"They don't like you back," Arata shot.
He led us down a side passage, humming off-key, until we emerged in a storage hall stacked with lacquered chests and folded garments. Red-and-white onmyōji uniforms hung neatly on stands—formal, ceremonial, the kind you'd expect in a shrine.
Arata snapped his fingers. "But I know you kids. You want flavor. So, I pulled some strings. Got you customs."
Arata yanked open a chest with all the pomp of a magician unveiling a trick he'd been waiting to pull for hours. "Ta-dah. Uniforms."
He shoved mine into my arms before I could even react—black and purple, with the clan symbol stitched in sharp white on the back and on the sleeve. Then I saw it. The hood.
Pink. Bright enough to be offensive.
"...Pink?" I stared at it like he'd handed me a dead animal.
Arata grinned, teeth showing. "Yeah. Matches the tips of your hair."
My hand instinctively went up, brushing the pink tips. My mouth twisted. "I don't even like that my hair's pink. It's from my dad. Mom's is black. My older younger sister? All pink. My younger one? All black. Me? I get this half-and-half embarrassment."
Saiko leaned in, grinning. "I think embarrassment looks good on you."
"Shut up," I snapped, holding the hood like it was diseased.
When did you even request these?" I asked Arata.
He tapped his chin.
"Mmm, about… a week ago?"
I blinked. "A week? You just met me recently.
How the hell did you know to get pink for me?"
His grin didn't falter. "I can see the future. Or I'm psychic. Or maybe I just have good fashion sense."
"That's not an answer," I said, heat rising in my chest.
"Life rarely gives answers, kid. Only color palettes."
I clenched my jaw, glaring. He just laughed it off, strolling away like he'd done nothing suspicious at all. My head burned hotter than the pink on the hood.
"I'm not wearing the hood," I said flatly.
"I hate hoodies!" I said louder, in case the gods were listening.
Genkei, meanwhile, was already pulling his uniform from Arata's hand—a cyan and black set with yellow highlights and a black and cyan split hood stitched perfectly to fit. He lifted the hood, tugged it over his head, and adjusted it until his face was half-shadowed.
"Practical," he said, voice flat.
"Dramatic." Saiko was next. Arata tossed her a jacket in orange and red with the white symbols, cut shorter and sharper than ours, no hood along with a skirt. She slipped it on, stretched her arms wide, then spun in a circle.
"You already blind people when you talk," I muttered.
"Then now I can blind them visually too. Double kill." She winked.
Meanwhile, Miu stood untouched in her red-and-white robes, a calm island in our storm of colors. The way she adjusted her sleeves, composed, precise, made our splash of colors feel like graffiti.
"You're not gonna change?" I asked her.
"This uniform is not meant to decorate you. It is precisely fitted to your spiriton signature to minimize interference during combat applications," Miu said softly. "It is history. Unlike you, I cannot wear a hood and call it personality."
I scowled. "I said I hate hoodies—"
"Exactly," she cut me off. "That's still a personality trait."
Arata cackled.
Saiko high-fived Miu. "See? This is why I like her."
Genkei didn't comment. He just folded his arms, hood casting his eyes into shadow, like he'd been born posing for shrine murals.
"Best dressed Shamans on the block." Arata commented.
Tenmyō nodded.
—
Outside, the Garden of the Crimson Maple was very still.
I walked beside Miu for a moment before we reached the training areas.
"You wrote notes," I said. "During the debrief."
"I take notes on significant events," she said.
"Am I a significant event?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"You're a question," she said finally. "That doesn't have an answer yet."
"That's not a yes or a no," I said.
"No," she agreed.
"Is that significant?"
She looked at me. The lantern light caught her glasses.
"Go to sleep, Ririku," she said. "You've had enough significant things for one night."
I almost smiled.
Almost.