When Kaito returned to the office that evening, he found Aiko not in the library, but waiting for him, her face grim, the main monitor displaying a web of interconnected files. The easy, relaxed atmosphere of the morning was gone, replaced by a tense, focused energy.
"I found something," she said, her voice low. "Something bad."
Kaito came to stand behind her, his hand resting on the back of her chair as he looked at the screen. "Show me."
She walked him through it with the precision of a seasoned analyst. She showed him the hidden ledger, the regular, untraceable payments to an entity called "The Silent Shrine." She showed him how the payments correlated with redacted incident reports from Kageyama territory. And then she showed him the medical files.
They were written in a dry, clinical code, but the meaning was horrific. The files described a condition—a "spirit blight"—that afflicted yokai. It started with a fading of their energy, a loss of their connection to the world. It progressed to madness, memory loss, and finally, a complete and utter dissolution. The spirit didn't just die; it unraveled, ceasing to exist entirely.
"The Kageyama weren't just making payments," Aiko concluded, her voice tight with horror. "They were tracking a plague. Or a weapon."
Kaito's expression was grim. He typed the name "The Silent Shrine" into the Ishikawa clan's deepest, most secure database. The search returned nothing. No records. No rumors. The name didn't exist in the underworld's official history.
"Whatever this is, it's deep off the books," he murmured, his mind racing. "Who benefits from sick and dying spirits?"
"Someone who wants to control them," Aiko suggested. "Or someone who wants to eliminate them. Look at the name, Kaito. 'The Silent Shrine.' Shrines are places of worship, of energy, of sound. A silent shrine is a dead one." She paused, a new thought taking shape. "Maybe it's not a place. Maybe it's a person. Or a spirit. Someone who makes other spirits silent."
Her insight sparked something in his memory. "My grandfather used to speak of rogue onmyoji," he said, his voice a low growl. "Practitioners of forbidden arts. Not killing spirits, but... unmaking them. Draining their essence to fuel their own power. It was considered the blackest of heresies."
The thought was chilling. A predator that fed on the very soul of the supernatural world.
As if the universe was confirming their fears, Kaito's secure phone buzzed with an urgent message. It was from an allied clan, but not a human one—the elder of the Tsukumogami community in the Kappabashi district, the famous "Kitchen Town" where old tools were known to awaken.
Kaito read the message, his face hardening. "It's not just the Kageyama's secret anymore," he said, showing Aiko the screen.
The message was a plea for help. A hundred-year-old ceremonial knife, a respected elder among its kind, had fallen ill. Its spirit was "fading," its voice growing quiet. It was showing the exact symptoms described in the Kageyama's files.
The plague was in their territory. It was active. Now.
"This isn't just an old mess we have to clean up," Kaito said, the full weight of his responsibility as a leader settling on him. "It's a current threat. It's on my streets. Under my protection."
He looked at Aiko, his eyes filled with a new, grim purpose. Her training, her lessons—they were no longer theoretical.
"The spirits won't speak to my men about something like this," he said. "They are too proud, too afraid. But they might speak to you." He made a decision. "I have to investigate this personally. And you are the only one who can truly understand what is happening to them."
He stood up, the quiet scholar of the library replaced by the decisive clan leader.
"Your training is over, Aiko," he said, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Your fieldwork is about to begin. We're going to Kitchen Town."