A school day, inside the classroom.
"Mr. Arai is on maternity leave. I wonder what the new teacher will be like."
"I hope the new teacher is kind and not too strict."
The group of female students, waiting for the new teacher to report for duty, were chattering incessantly. Their original homeroom teacher was on maternity leave, and the school had assigned a new one.
"Miko, what kind of person do you think the new teacher will be?" As Miko's desk neighbor, Yurikawa Hana also curiously asked her friend.
"...Whatever the new teacher is like is fine."
Yotsuya Miko lay listlessly on her desk, responding feebly. These past few days had been far too exhausting; she couldn't muster any spirit.
Ever since she obtained the Buddhist Bead Bracelet filled with spiritual energy, Xia Yu had subjected her to new training.
Just two days ago, they had gone to an abandoned tunnel. She heard it was a famous mass grave, and people nearby avoided it at all costs for fear of encountering ghosts.
Then they encountered a massive swarm of ghosts. Needless to say, those ghosts were all meant for her.
After she eliminated more than half of the ordinary evil spirits, just like in a video game where a boss encounter is inevitable, a very powerful evil spirit appeared.
It was an evil spirit that looked like it had been dismembered and then encased in concrete and dumped into Tokyo Bay. It had four or five twisted hands, and a long string of iron chains dangled sparsely from beneath the barrel.
As soon as this evil spirit appeared, it directly devoured all the remaining ordinary evil spirits. It entered its second phase on the spot before the fight even began, showing no sportsmanship whatsoever.
In the second phase of the oil barrel evil spirit, the entire upper part of the barrel split open like a corolla, with dead human heads inside serving as the pistils.
This scene nearly scared Miko into collapsing on the ground. Fortunately, having performed many exorcisms lately, her tear duct durability had increased significantly, and she would no longer be scared to tears by an evil spirit of this level.
Although that evil spirit was eventually dealt with, she felt as if her mental and physical energy were nearly depleted.
Even now, whenever she recalled everything from that time, her body would feel a wave of soreness and weakness.
Furthermore, Mr. Xia had said that this was only the beginning. To become a true psychic, one could not do without proper study.
Thinking about the even more extensive studies ahead, she wanted to cry. Her life was too hard... "What's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?"
Seeing her friend's listlessness, Yurikawa Hana worriedly touched Miko's forehead and asked with concern.
"No, I'm fine, it's just..."
Miko lifted her eyelids, not knowing what to say. She couldn't very well say she was this feeble because she was exhausted from exorcising spirits.
Just as she was planning to make up a random lie so her friend wouldn't worry, the girls' discussion suddenly went silent.
"Is it the new teacher?"
"Wow, he looks quite refreshing."
Hearing the gradually noisy discussion, Miko subconsciously turned her head to look, but after seeing clearly, her eyes were filled with shock and a hint of panic.
"Because Mr. Arai has taken maternity leave, I will be serving as the homeroom teacher for this class starting today. My name is Zen Toono. Pleased to meet you all."
The new teacher walked in. After first writing his name on the blackboard, he introduced himself gently and kindly.
Looking at the new teacher's decent face, the girls below also got excited, whispering about the new teacher with excitement like 'I totally would'... But in Yotsuya Miko's eyes, this new teacher was surrounded by numerous pitch-black shadows of cats. Those cats looked like demons, with phantom knives stuck in their bodies.
These black shadows seemed to be haunting the new teacher, constantly emitting silent roars in his ears.
This is bad... "This is really bad."
Xia Yu's voice suddenly rang out beside Miko. The sudden sound made Miko tremble, but after realizing it was Xia Yu, she quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
"Mr. Xia, why don't you make any sound when you walk?"
"..."
Seemingly realizing she had asked a stupid question, Miko's small face turned red.
Looking at this new teacher, Xia Yu, who had just returned from eliminating evil spirits, said with some emotion: "Truly incredible. To be possessed by so many vengeful animal spirits."
"So is he really someone who abuses cats?" Hearing this, Miko quietly covered her mouth with her hand and whispered to the side.
"Not necessarily."
After Xia Yu replied casually, he stepped forward and used a tentacle to stroke the composite head of the black cat shadows. By his aesthetic standards, these cats could still be classified as cute.
Being stroked by the tentacle, those black cat shadows emitted roars that were either of joy or fear.
"Tsk, they really don't feel as good to pet as real cats."
After stroking them for a moment, Xia Yu dejectedly withdrew his tentacle. After becoming an evil spirit, he couldn't even pet a cat properly; it was truly annoying.
"Some ghosts will follow a person out of sympathy. This teacher probably frequently encounters dead animals and feels sympathy for them, which is why he's possessed by these vengeful animal spirits."
"He's just a person who is possessed, not someone who abuses animals."
Hearing Xia Yu's explanation, Miko looked at that pile of black cat shadows in disbelief. Were all of these possessing him because of sympathy?
So, this teacher is actually a good person? Mr. Xia wouldn't lie to her, so she was judging a book by its cover?
Miko's heart was somewhat unsettled. She had thought she could judge a person's nature based on the ghosts possessing them, but now she was told that such a judgment wasn't necessarily correct.
"So... did I misjudge the teacher?"
"Yotsuya-san? Yotsuya-san?"
"Huh?" Hearing someone call her name, Yotsuya Miko suddenly stood up. "Present!"
"Could you please read the text?" Zen Toono held up the textbook and gestured.
"O-Okay."
Although she answered that way, Miko was currently a bit stumped because she didn't know which part of the text to read since she had been spacing out.
"Oh dear, you should focus on studying first." Xia Yu reached out a tentacle from the side and pointed to a passage in the textbook... After class, during lunch break.
"Miko, why were you spacing out in class?" On a lawn bench, Yurikawa Hana asked curiously while munching on bread.
"Haha..." Miko laughed awkwardly and didn't answer.
"Because she was spacing out in class," Xia Yu, who was beside them, answered for her.
However, his words could only ever be heard by Miko, so no one responded to him.
"It's nothing, Hana. What do you think Mr. Toono is like?" Miko asked.
"Hmm..." Yurikawa Hana chewed her bread and tapped her chin with her index finger in a thoughtful pose. "I feel like I've seen Mr. Toono somewhere before, but he seems like a good person."
"Phew~"
Hearing this, Miko breathed a sigh of relief. They had encountered Mr. Toono before; he had seemingly wanted to adopt an abandoned cat they had found. But at the time, because of the black cat shadows, she thought he was a bad person who abused cats, so she hadn't given him the cat.
Fortunately, Hana didn't remember. Otherwise, she wouldn't have known how to explain to Hana why she had been hostile toward Mr. Toono.