The morning after the secret garden was different. Aiko woke in Kaito's arms to the sound of birds outside and the scent of brewing coffee already in the air. The peace was no longer a temporary ceasefire; it felt like a permanent treaty.
They shared breakfast in his quarters, the silence easy and filled with small, intimate gestures—the passing of a cup, a shared smile. The ghost of danger that had haunted every previous moment was gone, replaced by a hopeful, sunlit calm.
But Kaito was a man of purpose, and he knew their new life needed one, too. After breakfast, he led her from his private wing to a part of the estate she hadn't seen. It was an office, but unlike any she had ever imagined. It was a fusion of old and new: sleek, modern workstations were set against walls lined with ancient scrolls, and a large, interactive digital map of the city was mounted next to a centuries-old painted screen.
"This is the heart of my organization," Kaito explained. "Our information hub. And it is where you will work."
He led her to a specific workstation, clean and empty, waiting for her. "Master Jin will continue your formal education in the afternoons," he said. "But in the mornings, you have a new role. A job that only you can do."
He brought up a file on the large screen. It was a complex, sprawling diagram of the now-defunct Kageyama clan's assets.
"When we absorbed the Kageyama," Kaito said, his tone shifting to that of a clan leader, "we inherited not just their money and territory, but their relationships. Decades of pacts with spirits, deals with informants, and promises to lesser yokai. It is a chaotic, tangled mess."
He looked at her, his trust in her absolute. "My men can read the financial ledgers. They see names and numbers. I need you to see the souls behind them. I need you to go through all the data we captured—the ledgers, the files, everything—and map their supernatural network. I need to know which spirits were enslaved and are now dangerously free. Which were allies who might now be enemies. And which might be convinced to become our allies instead."
He was giving her an immense responsibility. She was to become the Ishikawa-gumi's chief advisor on supernatural diplomacy.
"I can do that," Aiko said, a thrill of purpose running through her.
Her first day on the job was a deep dive into a world of secrets. With Mochi purring on the corner of her desk, she sifted through encrypted files and ancient-looking account books. It was like untangling a thousand knotted threads.
Late in the morning, Chiyo entered the office, carrying a tray with a fresh pot of tea. Her movements were as stiff and formal as ever. She placed the tea on Aiko's desk, her eyes flicking over the complex diagrams on the screen, then at Aiko.
"Is there anything else Tanaka-sama requires?" Chiyo asked, her voice polite but cold.
"Yes, thank you, Chiyo-san," Aiko replied without looking up from her work. "Could you have someone bring me the historical territory maps of the Arakawa ward from the main archive?"
Chiyo paused, surprised by the specific, work-related request. This girl wasn't just idling in the master's office. She was working. "Immediately, Tanaka-sama," the old woman said, and bowed before leaving. It wasn't warmth, but it was a flicker of acknowledgment.
Aiko worked for hours, completely absorbed. She was mapping a web of resentful spirits and broken promises. As she cross-referenced a financial ledger with a list of yokai sightings, she found a strange pattern. A series of regular, high-value payments made to an entity listed only as "The Silent Shrine." There was no location, no spirit name attached. It was a ghost in the machine.
But what was stranger were the reports attached to the payments. They weren't financial. They were medical. Detailed notes on a strange, wasting sickness that seemed to affect spirits, causing them to fade or go mad. The Kageyama weren't just paying for silence; they were paying for a cure, or perhaps a weapon.
Aiko felt a cold chill crawl up her spine, the same feeling of "wrongness" Kaito had taught her to trust. This was not a standard pact. This was something else. Something dark and hidden.
She pulled the files related to "The Silent Shrine" into a separate, encrypted folder. The Kageyama war was over, but it seemed they had left a final, poisoned secret behind. A loose thread in the great, dark tapestry of the city.
And Aiko had just started to pull it.