Instead of taking her to the shrine, Natsuno took her to the urban area a few minutes away from it instead. It was already dark, and the streets were empty, save for a housecat she saw. Its belled collar jingled as it scurried away.

Soon, they arrived at a house. It looked unassuming, and Sumire didn’t know why Natsuno was taking her to this particular house. However, her attention was pulled away by a loud crashing sound coming from inside the house, and the yelling of a man that followed after.

“Have you ever said ‘Yokai hunters, stand back!’ like in the movies?” Natsuno asked all of a sudden, throwing Sumire off-guard.

“What?” she blurted before she could stop herself.

“AAARGH!! GHOST!” the man inside the house yelled again. “Where did it come from? Help me, you useless woman!!”

“Yep, that’s our cue”, Natsuno quipped, and threw the front door of the house open. “Yokai hunters, stand back!”

As the scene before her unfolded, Sumire could only stand dumbfounded. Thick, black miasma surrounded an older man, perhaps in his fifties, in a choking hold. It tried to suffocate him, while the man flailed helplessly as he tried to tear the smoke away from him.

Kneeling a few meters away from him was a sobbing woman, broken shards of porcelain surrounding her. Even from outside the house, Sumire could see a stark red handprint on her cheek and a black spot surrounding her eye, marks of abuse, and alarms rang inside Sumire’s head as her body moved on its own.

“Are you okay? Do you require medical assistance?” Sumire asked once she was kneeling by the woman.

“Y— no. Uh, who are you?” the woman asked, briefly turning to Sumire before she returned her attention back to her husband.

“My name is Sumire. I am a yokai hunter”, Sumire introduced herself to the woman. “I will save your husband. Please wait outside. Things might get dangerous.”

The woman let out another choked sob, before standing unsteadily. She cast Sumire another worried look, before heading out of the house.

Once the house was secure, Sumire turned her attention back to the enenra, which was now backed into a corner. In Natsuno’s right hand was an ornate mirror casting eerie blue light — a spiritual relic that Sumire now recognized as an ungaikyo, a spirit-trapper. In his left hand was a katana, which dimly glowed in golden light.

“How’s the victim?” Sumire asked.

“Still has his soul, so I’d say we’re just right on time”, Natsuno answered without breaking his focus on the enenra. “I’m going to purify it.”

“Purify?” Sumire repeated, surprised.

“This enenra is the vengeful soul of the dead woman I told you about”, Natsuno explained. “Holding the grudge toward the husband who beat her to death and corrupted by the evil miasma from Yomi, it turned into the enenra.”

His explanation didn’t make any sense to Sumire. “I’ve never heard of a human soul turning into a yokai”, she said, still baffled.

“Clearly you haven’t heard enough”, Natsuno mocked.

In that brief moment, the enenra suddenly lashed out at them. Sumire dodged right on time, and so Natsuno was right behind her.

Sumire turned the wooden bracelet on her wrist into her bow, and shot two sealing arrows which the enenra dodged harmlessly as it slithered its way toward her. The enenra seemed to be avoiding Natsuno and his ungaikyo — the display of intellect really didn’t make any sense. Enenra were supposed to be low-level yokai.

If what Natsuno said was true… but that still didn’t make any sense!

“You who reign over Takamagahara, whose blood runs in our veins”, Sumire began to recite the sealing spell, as she put more power into her next shot. “Lend us the light to fight the darkness and—”

“Stop!” Natsuno shouted, breaking Sumire’s focus. “I told you I will purify it!”

“It’s a yokai!” Sumire retorted, avoiding tendrils of smoke that made their way toward her.

“Made of human soul!” Natsuno shot back. “You can’t seal her into Yomi!”

His words made sense. Yokai were the creatures of Yomi, but dead human souls belonged to the Underworld. The two shouldn’t mix.

But a yokai made of a human soul threw everything Sumire knew out of the window. Human souls just simply didn’t have enough spiritual power to wreak havoc and cause evil, because they were not tainted by Yomi, unlike the yokai.

This was the most fundamental thing that shaped the spiritual world.

And yet—

Sumire remembered her grandfather’s words. All yokai had to be sealed into Yomi. This was the oath all yokai hunters had to take when they began their training, the same oath Sumire took all those years ago.

“You who reign over Takamagahara, whose blood runs in our veins, lend us the light to fight the darkness and put these evils in chains!” Sumire finished the sealing spell and shot it toward the enenra that loomed over her.

It hit it right at its core, tendrils of light binding the smoke and shadow before swallowing it whole. Eventually, the light dispersed, leaving nothing behind.

Her duty was fulfilled, for tonight. Her task was done. The enenra was sealed.

As Sumire lowered her bow, Natsuno approached her and shook her shoulders hard.

“What have you done?!” he hissed. “What! Have! You! Done!”

“I was doing my duty”, Sumire answered icily. “All yokai must be sealed into Yomi.”

“It was a human soul!” Natsuno argued. “It doesn’t belong in Yomi! You’re going to cause imbalance in the spiritual world!”

Sumire didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

“You Big Yokai Hunter Clans are all the same”, Natsuno spat the words like they were venom. “You can’t see past your creed and your pride. Well, I hope you’re happy, because you just doomed a human soul into an eternal nothingness.”

With that, Natsuno stormed out of the house, although he stopped by the sobbing woman from earlier. By then, neighbors had come out to watch the commotion.

“You might wanna call the cops on your husband. For, you know…”, Natsuno paused, hesitating.

“I know”, the woman answered faintly.

Natsuno seemed to doubt her, but left without saying anything else. Letting out a sigh, Sumire followed his example.

“The yokai has been sealed”, Sumire told the woman. “Apologies for intruding on your house.”

“It’s alright”, the woman said. “Will… Will my husband be alright?”

Sumire was taken aback by her concern. She was beaten black and blue, and she still worried about her abusive husband?

Sumire couldn’t understand it.

“My acquaintance was right”, Sumire said, in the end. “You should call the police.”