Sunday afternoon arrived with a sky that couldn't decide if it wanted to be sunny or overcast, so it settled for something in between - bright enough to warm the pavement, grey enough to make the shadows soft. Toyama was quiet in that particular weekend way, the streets filled with people who had nowhere urgent to be. Families strolled along the Jinzu River. Couples browsed the shops near the station. An old man fed the carp in the moat of Toyama Castle while his grandson watched with the intense, motionless concentration of a child who had just discovered that fish could open their mouths very, very wide.

Kama was waiting for them near the fountain in Kansui Park, one leg crossed over the other, her back against the low stone wall. She'd tied her blonde hair back in a ponytail that swished when she moved, and she'd dressed for the weather - a grey tank top that left her arms bare, loose white shorts that stopped halfway down her thighs, and a small black fanny pack slung across her chest like a bandolier. She looked, for all the world, like a normal teenage girl enjoying a normal Sunday afternoon. The only thing that spoiled the image was the fact that she was halfway through a paper bag of takoyaki and had been for the past ten minutes.

Ezume spotted her first. He was wearing his favorite conspiracy t-shirt today - a stylized eye inside a triangle, with the words GOVERNMENT CONTROL printed beneath it in bold, slightly cracked letters. Sato had given it to him for his birthday two years ago. Ezume had worn it approximately once a week ever since. Sato had regretted the gift approximately once a week ever since.

"Hey ! Over here !" Kama waved at them with her free hand, the other still clutching the takoyaki bag. "I got here early. Thought I'd grab a snack."

"You got here early and ate an entire food stall," Sato said, falling into step beside her. "That's impressive."

"I didn't eat the stall. I ate the takoyaki. There were eight pieces. That's barely a snack."

"That's breakfast and lunch."

Ezume trailed a half-step behind them, watching Kama polish off the last takoyaki ball with the efficiency of someone who'd been eating quickly for centuries. Which, he reminded himself, she probably hadn't been. The teeth were prosthetics. The eyes were contacts. The window jump was acrobatics. She was normal. Normal girls ate takoyaki. Normal girls wore tank tops and fanny packs and tied their hair back in ponytails. There was nothing unusual about any of this.

Except that she'd already eaten an entire bag of takoyaki and was currently eyeing the crepe stand across the park with the quiet, predatory focus of a cat watching a bird.

"So," Sato said, "what's the plan ? You said you wanted to see more of the city."

"I do !" Kama brightened, the crepe stand temporarily forgotten. "Yesterday was great, but you mostly showed me food places. Which I appreciate. Deeply. Food is important. But I want to see, like, the actual city. The history. The culture. The stuff I can brag about to my friends back in Kyoto."

"Your friends back in Kyoto," Ezume repeated.

"Yeah that's kinda true that I did not have that much friends... But the point is, I want to see Toyama."

Sato cracked his knuckles. "Alright. We'll give you the proper tour. The one we didn't finish yesterday. We'll start with the castle, then the glass museum, then the riverside. By the end of the day, you'll know this city better than Ezume knows conspiracy theories."

"That's a high bar," Ezume said dryly.

"That's the joke."

They started walking toward the castle, which rose in the near distance with its white walls and dark sloping roofs. Kama fell into step beside Sato, asking questions about the history of the city, pretending to be fascinated by the answers. She was good at this. She'd been doing it for decades. But underneath the performance, she was running a parallel operation - one that required her to obtain a specific piece of information without anyone noticing she was asking for it.

The boy's name. His family name. She couldn't just ask. "Hey, what's your last name ?" was the kind of question a normal girl would have asked on the first day, not the third. Asking it now would be suspicious. It would imply that she'd been paying attention to him specifically, that she had a reason to want to know. And she couldn't have Sato answer for him, either - Sato would definitely notice if she asked him instead of Ezume. So she had to be clever about it. Subtle. Indirect.

She hated being indirect. It was tedious. But it was also the mission.

"So," she said, as they passed through the castle's main gate, "are family names a big deal around here ? Like, old Toyama families, that kind of thing ?"

Sato shrugged. "Some are, I guess. The Fujiwara name used to be huge, back in the Heian period. There's still a few families with old roots. Why ?"

"No reason. Just curious. Kyoto's full of old families. You can't throw a rock without hitting someone whose ancestor was a samurai." She paused, as if a thought had just occurred to her. "What about you guys ? Any samurai ancestors ?"

"My family's been in Toyama for like three generations," Sato said. "Before that, farmers. Definitely not samurai."

"Same," Ezume said. "No samurai. Just regular people."

Kama waited for him to elaborate. He didn't. She silently cursed every monosyllabic paranoid conspiracy theorist who had ever lived.

They toured the castle grounds for an hour. Kama pretended to be impressed by the architecture, which was actually quite nice, even if she'd seen it built and rebuilt three times over the past century. They visited the Glass Museum next, a sleek modern building that showcased Toyama's history as a center of glass production. Kama bought a small glass pendant from the gift shop - a tiny cat with blue eyes - and clipped it onto her fanny pack. Sato bought a postcard for Hana. Ezume lingered by the exit, checking his phone, still half-watching Kama with that careful, analytical gaze he couldn't quite turn off.

By mid-afternoon, they'd worked their way through most of the city center. They stopped at a konbini for drinks - Sato got coffee, Ezume got cola, Kama got a melon soda and three different kinds of onigiri and a packet of shrimp chips and a custard taiyaki. She ate them all in the space of fifteen minutes while they walked along the Jinzu River, the water glittering in the pale afternoon sun.

"Where do you put it all ?" Ezume asked, genuinely baffled.

Kama shrugged, licking custard off her thumb. "Fast metabolism."

"Fast doesn't begin to cover it. You've eaten like ten snacks since we met up. That's not metabolism. That's a supernatural ability."

Kama's eyes flickered, just for a moment. "Maybe I'm a yokai after all."

"I thought we established you're not."

"We did. I'm just saying. If I were, that would explain the snacks."

"Boogeymen don't eat snacks. They eat dreams."

"How do you know? You ever met one?"

"I've researched them."

"For years," Sato added. "With files."

"The files again," Kama said. "I'd love to see those files someday."

"No you wouldn't," Sato said. "They're extremely boring. He uses spreadsheets."

"I use spreadsheets for organization," Ezume said defensively. "It's efficient."

"It's a cry for help."

Kama laughed, and for a moment she forgot she was supposed to be gathering information. The conversation was easy. Natural. She didn't have to force the smiles or fake the interest. It was... strange. Unsettling, almost. She wasn't used to enjoying herself on a mission.

By the time the sun began its slow descent toward the horizon, Sato checked his phone and grimaced. "I've gotta go. Hana's got a school thing tomorrow and I promised I'd help her with her project."

"What kind of project ?" Kama asked.

"She has to build a diorama of the solar system. I'm in charge of Saturn."

"You're a good brother."

"I'm an excellent brother." Sato clapped Ezume on the shoulder. "You good to walk her back ?"

"What ? I - yeah, sure."

"Great. See you tomorrow, man. Kama, try not to eat any more snack vendors."

"I make no promises."

Sato jogged off toward the station, leaving the two of them alone on the riverbank. The silence that followed was different from the easy, three-way conversation that had filled the afternoon. It was thicker. More charged. Ezume suddenly became very aware of the space between them - about two feet of riverbank grass and uncomfortable tension.

"Well," Kama said, turning to face him with a grin that was just a little too sharp. "Just you and me now."

"Just you and me," Ezume repeated.

They started walking. Kama fell into step beside him, closer than she'd walked with Sato. Her shoulder nearly brushed his. He shifted slightly to the left. She shifted with him.

"So," she said. "Tell me something about yourself that Sato doesn't know."

"Like what ?"

"I don't know. A secret. A hobby. A deep, dark fear."

"I don't have deep, dark fears. I have well-researched, evidence-based concerns."

"That's the same thing."

"It's really not."

She laughed - that light, teasing laugh that he was starting to recognize. "Okay. Then tell me about your evidence-based concerns. What's the strangest thing you believe ?"

"Aliens."

"Aliens are sooooo boring. Give me something else."

"The government has been testing targeted power-cut systems in the Kansai region."

"That's also boring."

"It's not boring. There's a map. It forms an almost perfect circle."

Kama looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached up and poked his shoulder. "You're weird."

"You've said that."

"I'm saying it again. You're weird, and you're awkward, and you can't hold a conversation with a girl without looking like you're about to bolt into traffic."

"I'm not- I don't-"

"And you're doing it right now. The bolting thing. Your eyes are doing the bolting thing."

Ezume forced himself to meet her eyes. "I'm not bolting."

"You're bolting internally."

"That's not a thing."

"It's absolutely a thing. You're internally bolting. You're bolting in your soul."

He didn't know what to say to that. She was standing very close now - closer than she'd been a moment ago, closer than she'd ever been when Sato was around. He could smell her perfume again, patchouli and green tea. Her ponytail swished when she tilted her head. He was looking at her tank top. He immediately stopped looking at her tank top.

Kama noticed. Her grin widened.

"Were you just looking at my chest ?"

"No !"

"You were. You absolutely were. Your eyes went-" She mimed a downward glance. "Like that."

"I was looking at your fanny pack!"

"Relaaaaaax Ezume ! Dang, you're so bashful ! Every boy look at chests, it ain't a big deal."

"I... It's just that I don't want to make you uncomfortable..."

Kama stared at him for a long, excruciating moment. Then she burst out laughing - that loud, genuine laugh from the café, the one that didn't sound like a performance. "Oh my god. You're so easy to mess with. It's almost unfair."

"Glad to be entertaining."

"You're very entertaining. It's your best quality."

"What would be my second-best quality?"

"I haven't found one yet. Give me time."

They walked along the river a while longer, the sun sinking lower, the sky turning pink and gold at the edges. Kama's questions grew more casual, more scattered - what subjects did he like in school, did he have any siblings, had he lived in Toyama his whole life. Ezume answered them all with the same cautious brevity, still not quite sure what to make of this girl who'd broken into his apartment and was now walking beside him like it had never happened.

They reached his street just as the streetlamps were beginning to flicker on. Kama stopped a few paces from his building, her hands in the pockets of her shorts.

"This is your place ? I quite remember."

"Yeah. I'm— yeah."

"Nice building honestly."

Ezume hesitated. He should say goodnight. He should go inside. He should stop staring at the way the streetlamp light caught the edges of her hair. Instead, he found himself glancing at the row of mailboxes beside the entrance, his eyes catching on the small white label with his family name printed on it.

"Thanks," he said. "For today. It was- it was good."

"It was good," Kama agreed. "You're welcome. Now go inside before you internally bolt again."

He went inside. The glass door swung shut behind him. The hallway light clicked on, then off.

Kama stood alone on the sidewalk for a long moment, making sure he was really gone. Then she walked over to the mailboxes, casual as anything, and glanced at the label on the third one from the left.

Iekami.

She stared at it for a solid ten seconds. Then she pressed her palm to her forehead and let out a groan that was half frustration, half embarrassment.

"It was right there. It was right there the whole time. I am the worst investigator in the history of investigations."

She stepped back from the mailboxes and walked away, shaking her head. The street was quiet. The night had settled in, deep and dark, the streetlamps casting their usual pools of yellow light onto the pavement. No one was around. No one was watching.

Except someone was.

Kama stopped walking. She tilted her head, very slightly, as if listening to something far away. Then she smiled. Not the teasing grin she'd worn for Ezume. Not the social smile she'd worn for Sato. This was a predator's smile. All teeth. No warmth.

She'd felt it hours ago. A presence. A shadow. Something that had been trailing them since the riverside, slipping through the city behind them with a patience that was almost professional. It hadn't attacked. It hadn't shown itself. But it had been there, always, just at the edge of her awareness.

"Alright," she said, her voice low and quiet. "Come on out. I know you've been following us since five o'clock."

Silence. The streetlamps hummed. A breeze stirred the leaves.

Kama cracked her knuckles. The mask materialized on the left side of her face—bone-white, cracked, the red ember in its socket flaring to life. Her fingers lengthened, her nails sharpening into claws. Her teeth extended, pointed and gleaming in the lamplight.

"Don't make me come get you," she murmured, her voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. "You piece of shit."

The shadows at the end of the street shifted.

SEE YOU FOR CHAPTER 14...