The Yukinoshita family's influence was enormous.
After just a few phone calls, a black Rolls-Royce Phantom with special plates slid smoothly to a stop in front of Sobu High's gate without anyone daring to get in its way.
The interior of the car was extravagantly spacious. Soft leather seats and calm wooden paneling shut out the noise of the outside world completely.
Haruno sat in the front passenger seat, phone pressed to her ear as she handled family matters one after another. Every so often, she would turn to glance at the back seat, a faint mix of scrutiny and hope flickering in her eyes.
The atmosphere in the back was... a little complicated.
Natsume looked the same as always, unshakably calm, leaning by the window with his eyes closed as if taking a nap. Yui sat right beside him, close enough to almost touch, like a small animal seeking shelter. She was both nervous and curious, her gaze wandering all over the interior of the car.
Hiratsuka, on the other hand, could not seem to find a comfortable way to sit at all. She looked at Natsume, then at Haruno, her lips parting several times, but in the end she swallowed back the words "are you all insane."
As a responsible teacher, there was no way she could relax while her student was involved in this kind of spooky nonsense. She had come along partly to keep an eye on him, to make sure Natsume did not cause trouble.
The car glided smoothly down the road and finally slowed as it passed a small park in the middle of town.
"Miss Haruno, we are here," the driver said respectfully.
"Thank you. Please wait a moment," Haruno replied with a nod.
Reiko got out of the car and walked toward a small figure sitting alone on a bench in the park.
It was a little girl who looked like she was only in the lower grades of elementary school. She wore a black gothic lolita dress and clutched a worn rabbit plush tightly in her arms. Her hair was long and jet black, her bangs cut straight across her forehead.
Beneath those bangs sat a pair of eyes far too large for her small face, eyes as dark and flat as obsidian, void of any childish innocence. Deep in her pupils, there was a darkness utterly at odds with her age, the kind that made people's hearts skip a beat.
"That is Reiko's cousin, Houzuki Yashiro," Natsume explained quietly, opening his eyes at some point.
Soon, Reiko returned, leading the girl called Yashiro into the car.
"Long time no see, Natsume-kun," Yashiro said. Her voice was as steady as if she were reading from a textbook, with none of the lightness one would expect from a child.
Her gaze lingered on Natsume for a moment before drifting to the others. It finally stopped on Hiratsuka.
"This auntie has a lot of leftover negative filth clinging to her," she remarked in a tone that was pure fact.
"A-auntie?!"
Hiratsuka felt a vein throb in her temple.
"Yashiro, do not say things like that," Reiko scolded awkwardly, patting her cousin on the head.
"IQ 160 child prodigy and an even more professional 'professional' than you would think," Natsume added, introducing her. He then glanced at Reiko. "If I remember right, we only met in the first place because of Yashiro, did we not?"
"That is right," Reiko said, face still showing a trace of lingering fear at that memory. "Back then Yashiro was still experimenting with her half baked homemade sealing technique. It went sideways, and the evil spirit she caught almost turned on her.
"If you had not happened to pass by, I do not even want to imagine what would have happened."
Natsume remembered that well.
A special grade cursed spirit had taken up residence at an abandoned shrine. Yashiro had trapped it with a crude but effective snare. Unfortunately, her seal, created from ordinary human blood and a mashup of Shinto rituals, had not sealed the spirit at all. It only enraged it and sent its power out of control.
He had dealt with it with a single casual "Red," vaporizing the berserk curse along with half the shrine in one go. That display of overwhelming destruction had clearly left a very deep impression on the two cousins.
"Yashiro's ability is special," Natsume went on. "She can capture evil spirits and throw them into specific containers, then let them kill each other. The one that survives to the end is what she calls a 'graduate.'"
"In other words, raising ghosts."
His light, offhand explanation made the temperature inside the car seem to drop a few degrees. Yui and Hiratsuka both stared at the seemingly harmless little girl with open horror.
Even Haruno frowned. She might have turned to the supernatural for help, but the phrase "raising ghosts" sounded a little too twisted, even for her.
"Hmph."
Yashiro did not seem pleased that Natsume was airing her secrets. She hugged the rabbit plush closer and turned her head away, sulking.
"Oh my, what a cute little girl and such an adorable plush," Hiratsuka said, attention successfully stolen by the rabbit doll.
As a single woman of a certain age, her buried maternal instincts flared up instantly. She could not help reaching out, wanting to touch the plushie's soft head.
"Do not touch it."
Yashiro's reaction was frighteningly fast.
She twisted aside in a blur, avoiding Hiratsuka's hand. At the same time, she pulled a rusty crowbar from who knew where, gripping it firmly in both hands and assuming a perfect defensive stance.
Those pitch black eyes were full of wariness... and the faintest hint of killing intent.
"The Sacred Sword of Physics?!"
Everyone in the car was stunned into silence by the sudden development.
Hiratsuka's hand froze midair.
The expression on her face morphed from gentle affection to pure disbelief. She had absolutely no idea why a simple, friendly pat had earned her a crowbar to the face.
"Um... Sensei," Reiko jumped in quickly, cold sweat forming on her forehead as she tried to smooth things over. "Inside Yashiro's plush is... a newly captured evil spirit. So it really cannot be touched."
"E-evil spirit..."
Hiratsuka's worldview took yet another hit.
She stared at the crowbar that looked far too heavy in a grade schooler's hands and, for a moment, had no idea what to say.
"Seems like words alone are not going to cut it."
Natsume looked at Hiratsuka's "who am I, where am I, what is happening" expression, then at Haruno, who remained silent but whose eyes still held clear doubt. He let out a small sigh.
He pressed his index and middle finger together. At the joined fingertips, a tiny bead of cursed energy gathered, so faint it was almost invisible.
"If you do not believe me, then you can see for yourselves."
"Minor technique... Jureigan ."
He flicked his fingers. The tiny light shattered into three streaks that shot into the foreheads of Hiratsuka, Haruno and Yui.
The three of them felt a brief coolness in their brows.
The next moment, the world in front of their eyes exploded into something utterly different.
The air was no longer just clear space. It was filled with countless gray-black motes drifting like dust, the lingering residue of negative emotions. Outside the car, a faint black haze coiled around some of the passersby.
Most terrifying of all was where their gazes settled, almost in unison.
On the rabbit plush in Yashiro's arms.
The plush that had looked so plain a moment ago now appeared, in their sight, as a translucent prison.
Inside the prison, a vengeful spirit shaped like a warped human face, formed from dense black mist, thrashed and howled with silent rage.
Its features were twisted together, its mouth stretched wide in a noiseless scream that seemed to drip with curses. It hurled itself against the inside of the plush again and again, each impact sending black ripples flickering across the toy's surface.
"Ah...!"
The first to crack was Hiratsuka.
She let out a short, sharp scream and recoiled, slamming back into the door behind her. Her face went shockingly pale, her lips trembling as she pointed at the plush, unable to form a single coherent sentence.
"Wh-what... what is that... thing..."
All the materialist education she had received since childhood, the science based worldview she had always relied on, were shattered into pieces in that instant, smashed to dust by the monstrous sight in front of her.
Haruno held it together a bit better, but even on her always composed face, the emotion that surfaced for the first time was fear.
Her fingers tightened automatically around her seatbelt. Her body shook faintly, her breathing quickened. Seeing it with her own eyes hit harder than any story or explanation ever could.
Of the three, the calmest was actually Yui.
Her face was white and she was clearly terrified, but she had already experienced being targeted by "Hanako" once. On top of that, her trust in Natsume bordered on blind faith.
So after a brief, panicked gasp, the very first thing she did was to reach for his arm, gripping it tightly.
As if that spot at his side was the safest place in the world.
"Na-Natsume-kun..."
Natsume turned his hand and gently patted the back of hers, reassuring her.
An eerie silence settled over the car.
The driver watched the three women in the rearview mirror, all looking like they had just seen hell itself, and then looked at the boy who remained utterly calm from start to finish.
For the first time in his career, he wondered if his job came with hazard pay.
Wrapped in that suffocating tension, the Rolls-Royce rolled slowly into a high end residential area in Chiba Prefecture and finally stopped in front of a sprawling mansion that blended traditional Japanese and modern design.
The Yukinoshita estate.
Within Chiba, the Yukinoshita family held considerable sway. Their business interests stretched across construction, finance and more. Yukino's father was a prominent figure on the prefectural council.
Yet right now, the entire mansion was shrouded in a pall of gloom that could not be seen with normal eyes.
"We are here," Natsume said, breaking the silence at last.