“Sumire, are you even listening?” Sumire’s friend, Momo, asked, breaking Sumire out of her thoughts.

Nodoka Momo was a childhood friend of hers, a short girl with cropped brown hair and big brown eyes that always sparkled with joy. Right now, those brown eyes were full of concern.

“Sheesh, did you spend the night hunting yokai again? You must be tired”, Momo said.

“I’m sorry, Momo”, Sumire apologized with a sigh. The lack of sleep was beginning to get her, it seemed.

“Oh well, homeroom is about to start. Do you need to wash your face? I can cover for you,”, Momo asked.

“I’m alright”, Sumire answered.

Momo looked like she was going to argue, but then their homeroom teacher, Mr. Saegusa, walked into the classroom. Trailing behind him was a male student Sumire had never seen before.

The new student wore his uniform sloppily, with his tie loose and his shirt creased in places. His long black hair was tied in a simple bun, and his silver eyes gazed lazily at the class. His face, though, somehow familiar.

And then it hit her.

It was the yokai hunter from last night.

“— Shiba Natsuno, nice to make your acquaintance”, the new student introduced himself with a small bow and a grin that was a little bit too sharp.

Then, his silver eyes flitted to where Sumire was sitting on the front row. They gleamed with arrogance that made the hair at the back of her neck rise.

—

Sumire cornered Natsuno on the rooftop during lunch break. Correction: she dragged him there, before slamming his body to the wall.

“Oh wow, impatient much?” Natsuno asked with a cheeky grin that was still a bit too sharp. “If I knew saving your life would make you react like this, I would’ve done it sooner.”

“Why did you drive the enenra away?” Sumire asked back, ignoring the boy’s quip.

“I was saving your life, in case you didn’t catch it the first time”, Natsuno answered, his hands raised in a surrendering gesture. “Though it did require a rather unconventional method to do so.”

Sumire’s cheeks heated up, remembering the boy’s lips on hers the night before. But she shook the thoughts away and sharpened her gaze.

“It took me two nights to track it down”, Sumire said icily.

“Only two nights?” Natsuno returned. “This enenra has been haunting the neighborhood for ten days.”

Sumire frowned. “It wasn’t in the report the police gave us.”

Coming from a well-known family of yokai hunters gave Sumire access to information that wasn’t available to the public. Sumire’s grandfather gave her the police report and the task to track down the yokai, as part of her training as a yokai hunter. Obviously, Sumire had done her homework; she memorized every single thing in the report. She knew when the enenra’s first victim disappeared.

What she didn’t say had to have shown on her face, because Natsuno turned away with a small, derisive snort.

“Of course it wasn’t”, he said, linking his fingers on the fence and staring into the distance.

Up above, thunder clapped violently. The wind was beginning to pick up, carrying the scent of rain. Soon it would pour. The two of them should really get back into their class.

Yet, somehow, Sumire’s feet were rooted to the ground. Everything about Shiba Natsuno was shrouded in mystery, and as a hunter, it itched at her curiosity.

“The cops wrongly deduced that it was the work of a serial killer. Of course, they didn’t want to admit that kind of blunder to the public. So, they created two different cases for the public”, Natsuno said. “You probably heard about the corpse of a woman found in her home, just around last week.”

She didn’t. How did Natsuno know about all of this?

“I need to take care of some stuff first”, Natsuno turned abruptly, staring her dead in the eye. “Let’s meet up at the house by the shrine. We should end it tonight.”

With that, the boy walked away, leaving Sumire with unanswered questions.

—

The archive of the Kazahana Family kept records of both yokai and their hunters throughout the centuries, how to battle and seal the yokai, lists of existing spells and spirit weapons, and prominent victims of yokai. As one of the oldest families of yokai hunters, their archive was the oldest and most extensive out there.

But it was lacking on the information Sumire was currently seeking. Though the archive kept track of news about yokai-related incidents, there was nothing else. There was nothing about the dead woman that Natsuno mentioned, so it couldn’t be related to a yokai… right?

Failing that, she tried to find out about the Shiba family. If Shiba Natsuno was a yokai hunter, his ancestry should be recorded in the archive, just like every family of yokai hunters ever existed. However, wherever she looked, she only met with dead ends.

Frustrated, Sumire let out a small sigh. She was about to leave the archive when the door slid open, revealing Sumire’s grandfather.

Kazahana Fuyuta was an old man with white hair and a severe expression. Sumire never saw him smile, but there was a certain air around him that brought comfort whenever he was around. Like the comforting presence of a mountain that towered over a village, ageless and unchanging. It kept Sumire grounded.

Sumire bowed slightly and stepped aside, allowing her grandfather to enter the archive. Fuyuta’s gaze swept the room, landing on stacks of books about known families of yokai hunters, before turning on Sumire.

“Do not let any trivialities distract you from your task”, Sumire’s grandfather warned her. “Remember, all yokai must be sealed into Yomi.”

“I won’t be distracted, Grandfather”, Sumire responded, then hesitated. Would her grandfather know anything about the Shiba family, or would he deem it a distracting triviality?

In the end, her grandfather was right — it all didn’t matter. Not Shiba Natsuno’s mysterious identity, or the cover-up the police did to the enenra case.

The enenra was a danger to humans, and that was all that she needed to focus on.

—

Natsuno was already waiting for her in front of the abandoned shrine. He was toying with a silver bracelet on his left wrist, which gleamed dangerously in the sunset light. Sumire recognized it as a spirit weapon. Was it the lantern he used the night before? Seemed like an unconventional shape for a spirit weapon.

“Thought you wouldn’t come”, Natsuno greeted her as he stood up. “Did you manage to find anything about my family?”

Sumire ignored the bait. “Where is the enenra?”

“Of course you didn’t”, Natsuno let out a mocking sigh. “And here I thought what we had was something special.”

Sumire held back the sudden urge to roll her eyes. But when she made a move toward the steps up to the shrine, Natsuno stopped her.

“You won’t find it there”, he said. “The enenra will take another victim tonight, and, as it turns out, I can guess who it will be.”

Sumire eyed Natsuno doubtfully, but whatever Natsuno was doing, he didn’t seem keen to share more than those vague words. He wanted Sumire to follow his lead. Such insolence.

Eventually, Sumire remembered his grandfather’s words, and conceded.

“Show me the way”, she told the boy.

“Sure, sure”, Natsuno grinned, all sharp teeth and sharper eyes.