The Catacombs were quiet tonight.

Kama walked alone through the ancient stone corridors, her boots echoing softly against the worn flagstones, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her trench coat. The paper lanterns overhead flickered in their usual lazy rhythm, casting unsteady pools of amber light across the walls. Somewhere deeper in the complex, water dripped onto stone. Somewhere even deeper, a door boomed shut. The sounds were so familiar she barely registered them anymore. She'd been walking these corridors for a hundred and fify-seven years. They'd stopped being interesting about a hundred and fifty-six years ago.

She kicked at a loose pebble and watched it rattle into the shadows.

"What a drag," she muttered.

The day had been exhausting. Not physically-she could have run laps around Toyama without breaking a sweat. But mentally. Socially. The kind of exhausting that came from spending hours pretending to be someone she wasn't, surrounded by people she didn't care about, doing things she had no interest in doing.

First, there was the over-enthusiastic one. Sato. The red-haired insomniac with the big mouth and the bigger opinions. He'd spent the entire afternoon talking-about ramen, about coffee, about his sleep disorder, about the best places to see in Toyama, as if she hadn't been hunting in this city since before his great-grandparents were born. He'd shown her the "hidden gems" with the pride of a tour guide unveiling ancient secrets, and every single one of them was a place she'd either fed at, fought at, or gotten bored of decades ago. That takoyaki stand near the station ? She'd eaten the owner's grandfather's dreams in 1923. That little shrine tucked behind the post office ? She'd had a territorial dispute there in the sixties that left scorch marks on the torii gate that were still visible if you knew where to look. And Sato had shown her these places like he was giving her a gift, grinning the whole time, completely oblivious to the fact that she knew this city better than he ever would.

And on top of that, he was an insomniac. A complete, irredeemable waste of oniric energy. The boy barely slept. He barely dreamed. Every time he opened his mouth to talk about his sleep disorder-which was often-she had to resist the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Just close your eyes and dream, you idiot. Do you have any idea what you're wasting ? Do you have any idea how rare good dream energy is ? And you're just-throwing it away. Every night. For years.

But she hadn't said that. She'd furrowed her brow and made sympathetic noises and said "that sounds awful" like a normal person. Like a girl who'd just transferred from Kyoto and was trying to make friends. She'd been doing this for so long that the performance was second nature, but that didn't mean it wasn't exhausting.

And then there was the other one. Ezume.

She let out a long, exasperated breath that echoed in the empty corridor.

The paranoid conspiracy theorist who'd asked her if she was a yokai. Right to her face. First meeting. Who does that ? What kind of person's first instinct, when confronted with a slightly unusual situation, was to jump straight to "mythical creature from Japanese folklore"? A complete lunatic, that was who. And a paranoid. Sato had mentioned it like it was a funny personality quirk, but Kama had been quietly horrified. If this kid was that perceptive-that suspicious-keeping her cover was going to be a nightmare.

And yet he'd bought the explanations. The fangs. The contacts. The acrobatics. He'd sat there, watching her with those careful, analytical eyes, and he'd accepted every single lie she'd fed him. Not because he believed her, she didn't think. But because he wanted to. Because the alternative-that she really was a monster-was too strange to hold onto in the daylight, over coffee and cinnamon rolls.

He was paranoid, but he wasn't stupid. That was the problem. A stupid paranoid person was easy to manage. A smart paranoid person was dangerous.

And then, to top it all off, he'd covered his eyes when she took off her sweater. Like she'd committed some kind of indecent act. She'd been wearing a tube top. It covered more than a swimsuit. And he'd slapped his hands over his face like she'd stripped naked in the middle of the café. The memory made her snort—half amusement, half genuine bafflement. What kind of seventeen-year-old boy was that shy ? That easily flustered ? That... weirdly endearing ?

She shook her head, annoyed at herself for even thinking the word.

"Not endearing," she muttered. "Weird. Just weird."

The whole day had been a grind. Smile. Laugh at the jokes. Pretend to be interested in the tour. Pretend to be embarrassed about last night. Pretend to be a normal girl who'd transferred from Kyoto and was looking for friends. The mask had stayed perfectly in place, because it always did, but underneath it she'd been bored out of her skull. Bored, and irritated, and increasingly aware that this mission was going to be so much more tedious than she'd anticipated.

She'd traded her territory for this. Her entire territory. Handed over to Urazuki on a silver platter, all so she could play tour guide with two teenage boys and pretend to care about ramen noodles.

"Ugh."

She rounded a corner and stopped, pressing her back against the cold stone wall. The corridor ahead was empty, the lanterns spaced further apart here, the shadows deeper. She let her head fall back against the stone and closed her eyes.

Just a few more days. A few more days, and she'd have his energy refined enough to satisfy Tamonten. A few more days, and she could stop pretending. A few more days, and-

"A successful approach, I take it ?"

Kama's eyes snapped open. She was off the wall and in a defensive crouch before her brain had finished processing the voice, her mask already half-materialized on the left side of her face, the red ember in its socket flaring to life.

Morosuke was standing about three feet away, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression one of mild, slightly apologetic surprise. He was dressed in his usual gray salaryman's suit, the jacket immaculate, the tie perfectly knotted. His bald head gleamed faintly in the lantern light. He looked, as always, like a small, tired accountant who had somehow wandered into a supernatural realm and decided to make himself useful.

He also hadn't been there three seconds ago.

Kama's heart was hammering against her ribs. She forced herself to straighten up, willed the mask to recede, and glared at him with as much dignity as she could muster.

"Do you have to do that ?"

"Do what ?" Morosuke asked, his voice dry and papery.

"Appear out of nowhere. Right next to me. Without making a sound."

"I was standing here for some time," Morosuke said. "You were muttering to yourself about ramen and sweaters. I assumed you had noticed me."

"I hadn't."

"Evidently."

Kama pressed her palm against her chest, feeling her heartbeat gradually slow. "You're going to give me a heart attack one of these days."

"I doubt that. Your cardiac resilience is well above human baseline." Morosuke paused. "Though I suppose there is a first time for everything."

"That's not comforting."

"It wasn't intended to be."

Kama let out a long, slow breath and shoved her hands back into her pockets. "What do you want, Morosuke ?"

"The same thing you want, I should think. The successful completion of your mission." He tilted his head slightly, his expression unchanging. "You've made contact with the boy. You've established a social connection. You've provided plausible explanations for the... incident. All of this is good. Tamonten will be pleased."

"Great. Tamonten's pleased. I'm thrilled."

"You don't sound thrilled."

"I'm exhausted." She pushed herself off the wall and started walking again. Morosuke fell into step beside her, his shorter legs moving at a brisk, efficient pace to keep up. "Do you have any idea what it's like to spend an entire afternoon pretending to be a normal teenage girl ? It's exhausting. It's brain-melting. The red-haired one talked about ramen for twenty minutes. Twenty. Minutes. About noodles."

"I heard the red-haired one is an insomniac."

"Don't remind me."

"A frustrating waste of potential, I agree." Morosuke's voice was perfectly neutral. "But he is not the target. The other one is. The paranoid one."

"Ezume."

"Yes. Ezume." Morosuke paused, as if tasting the name. "You've confirmed that his energy is as extraordinary as we suspected ?"

"It's insane," Kama said. "I've never tasted anything like it. And I've been doing this for a long time."

"You'll need to refine it. Prolonged exposure. Daily contact. You'll need to be near him for several hours each day, ideally in a variety of contexts-social, academic, domestic. The more time you spend in his presence, the more his energy will... mature."

Kama stopped walking. "Domestic ?"

Morosuke stopped too. He turned to face her, his expression unchanging. "The mission, as Iroha outlined it, requires you to integrate yourself into the boy's daily life. You've already established a social connection. You'll begin attending his school shortly, which will cover the academic context. But the most efficient way to refine his energy is through proximity during his resting hours. When he is relaxed. Unguarded. When his dreams are closest to the surface."

Kama stared at him. "You want me to move in with him ?"

"That would be the most efficient approach, yes."

"Into his apartment. Where he lives. With his mother."

"Iroha has already discussed this with Tamonten. A cover story is being prepared. You'll be presented as a transfer student from Kyoto with no local family, in need of a homestay arrangement. The boy's mother is known to be accommodating."

Kama opened her mouth, then closed it. She thought about the apartment building she'd been watching for the past two nights. The living room light. The smell of miso soup. The woman in the nurse's uniform who'd nearly collided with her on the street and apologized like it was her fault.

"You want me to live with the paranoid conspiracy theorist who asked me if I was a yokai on our first meeting ?"

"It does seem like the most efficient solution."

"It seems like a disaster waiting to happen."

"Perhaps." Morosuke's expression didn't change. "But Tamonten is insistent. And Iroha agrees. The boy's energy is too valuable to waste. We need it refined, and we need it soon. Whatever risks are involved in close proximity are outweighed by the potential benefits."

Kama was quiet for a moment. The corridor stretched ahead of them, dark and silent. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped onto stone.

"There's one problem," she said.

"Only one ?"

"The boy's name. His full name. I don't know it. Sato introduced him as 'Ezume,' but I don't know his family name. I can't exactly ask without sounding suspicious. And Tamonten can't arrange a homestay without a family name."

Morosuke inclined his head. "That is, indeed, a problem. A solvable one, I should think. You'll simply need to acquire the information."

"Acquire it how ?"

"I have every confidence in your resourcefulness." Morosuke turned and began walking back the way they'd come. "I'll inform Tamonten that the mission is proceeding as planned. Do try to obtain the boy's name before the school week begins. It would be awkward to register a transfer student without one."

Kama watched him go, his small, suited figure receding into the shadows of the corridor.

"Yeah," she muttered. "No pressure."

She stood alone in the quiet for a long moment, listening to the drip of water and the distant rumble of the Catacombs settling around her. The day's exhaustion was still pressing against her shoulders, but underneath it, something else was stirring. Something that felt almost like anticipation.

She was going to move in with him. Live in his apartment. Share his space. Watch him sleep. She was going to be there, right there, when his dreams were closest to the surface. She was going to taste that energy again-clean, bright, impossibly pure-and this time, she wasn't going to let him scream.

She smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

"Guess I'd better learn his name."

SEE YOU FOR CHAPTER 13...