Kageyama Kyuusei currently had only one thought.
It happened often that his mind narrowed to a single, laser-focused point during a fight: dodge left, parry high, stab here. But this time, he swore on the Handler's miserable life, this was the biggest one.
I am dead.
Not "in trouble." Not "grounded." Not "facing a stern lecture and punitive deductions." Dead. Professionally, socially, existentially dead. He stared at the pale, fake sky of the hidden courtyard, a dimension that was strictly, irrevocably, forbidden to normies, a fact now spectacularly disproven by the cheerful-looking girl in a sailor uniform standing ten feet away.
He was a statue. A very sweaty, grass-stained statue holding a lethal weapon in front of a civilian.
His mind, in its death throes, projected a vivid montage:
The Handler, face like a stone slab, rolling up a ledger with malicious intent. Physical beatdown.
The Auditor from HQ, sighing as she stamped "TERMINATED" on his file. Financial annihilation.
The Clean-Up crew, muttering about "amateur hour" as they bundled him into a van for "re-education." Complete and utter ass-beating from every conceivable direction.
His eyes, glazed with the sheen of a condemned man, slid down to land on Aoi Rin. She was trying, and failing, to compose her face into something neutral. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks faintly flushed, and she was biting her bottom lip not in fear, but in an effort to contain what looked like... sheer, unadulterated excitement. The professional curiosity of a scientist who'd just found a new species of talking frog.
How. The word echoed in his hollowed-out skull. How did she get here? The ward should have repelled her. It should have felt like a solid wall, or given her a migraine until she turned back.
New, terrifying possibilities bloomed like poisonous flowers.
Does she have a hidden charm? A family heirloom?
Is she a sleeper agent for a rival organization? Is this a setup?
Is she... spiritually attuned? A latent? Oh gods, that's almost worse. The paperwork for an accidental awakening is a nightmare, and they'd blame ME for-
His spiraling thoughts hit a brick wall.
And shoot. I can't even use a memory-wiping charm.
BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE THEM.
GREAT. PERFECT. They're in my kit. My kit is at home. Because today was supposed to be a "normal school day." I am a fool. I am the king of fools.
"Can..." Aoi's voice cut through his internal screaming. She took a tentative step forward, then another, her earlier caution evaporating under the glow of discovery. She was in front of him now, her gaze locked on the katana with the rapt focus of a magpie spotting a glittering gem. "...I see it?"
Her hand reached out, fingers hovering just shy of the blade's surface.
"NO!"
Kyuusei jerked the katana away, holding it behind his back like it was contraband. Which, to her, it absolutely was. His voice cracked with panic. "You're not even supposed to be HERE! Now I am... officially dead! They are going to beat my ass because... a random girl - sorry, Aoi, but in the grand scheme of hidden spiritual worlds, you are a random girl! - until like, thirty seconds ago... whatever! A random girl followed me and discovered a hidden world! HOWWW GREAT IS MY LIFE?!"
He was breathing heavily, his carefully constructed persona of lazy delinquent utterly shattered, replaced by the raw, twitchy panic of a cornered operative.
Aoi Rin finally let the professional mask drop. The excited smile broke through, brilliant and utterly disarming. "So it is a hidden world! And that was a real spirit? And you... you hunt them? With the sword? Is that the part-time job?" The questions tumbled out, each one a nail in his coffin. Her eyes weren't scared. They were alight. "The calluses make sense now! And the stamina! And the weird hours! It all fits!"
"STOP FITTING THINGS!" Kyuusei pleaded, looking around the empty courtyard as if expecting black-suited men to rappel down from the fake sky. "You need to forget this! You need to... to walk back through that... glitchy wall thing, and go to Watanabe-sensei's class, and decide you had a very vivid daydream about gardening!"
"But it's not a daydream," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. She pointed at the pile of ash that was once a demonic tree. "That's evidence. And you're evidence." She looked him up and down, not with judgment, but with appraisal. "Kageyama Kyuusei, Spirit... Hunter? Slayer? What's the official title?"
"The official title is 'Screwed,'" he moaned, dragging a hand down his face. "Look, Aoi. Please. For my continued physical and financial well-being. You have to pretend this never happened."
Before she could answer, and he could see the refusal already forming on her lips, probably wrapped in another impossibly sharp question, the air in the courtyard changed.
The shimmering ward at the entrance didn't just part. It flexed, like a soap bubble being poked, and then a man stepped through.
He was unremarkable. Mid-forties, a slightly rumpled grey suit, a face that screamed "mid-level management" and a briefcase that probably contained crushing bureaucracy. He had the tired eyes of someone who processed existential violations for a living.
The Handler.
Kyuusei's blood turned to ice.
The man's eyes swept the scene: the dissolving spirit-ash, Kyuusei with his katana held guiltily behind his back, and the clearly non-authorized, very curious-looking high school girl.
Aoi's eyes went even wider. Another one.
The Handler's gaze settled on Kyuusei. His voice was flat, dry, and devoid of all hope. "Kageyama. Report. And explain the civilian contaminant."
This was it. The beating. The end. Kyuusei opened his mouth, but only a faint squeak emerged.
Aoi Rin, however, straightened her spine. The excitement in her eyes was now channeled into a startling, fearless composure. She looked from the terrified Kyuusei to the imposing stranger, and then did the single most terrifying thing Kyuusei could have imagined.
She smiled politely, gave a slight bow, and spoke.
"Good morning. My name is Aoi Rin. I believe there's been a fascinating breach of operational security. Shall we discuss the non-disclosure agreements?"
The Handler slowly turned his dead-fish stare from Kyuusei to her. Then back to Kyuusei.
Kyuuusei, under the weight of two sets of eyes, one demanding answers, the other already drafting terms, had only one new, coherent thought.
I was wrong before.
This is what dead feels like.
Kyuusei's survival instinct, rusty but still operational, kicked in. He snapped to attention, the katana held rigidly at his side. "Sir! Before any blaming wars commence, I did put the ward. You can check it, Sir. It's fully active. Standard Grade-2 exclusion field, keyed to spiritual signatures only." He gestured frantically at the shimmering boundary. "So, technically, if it worked as specified, she wouldn't have entered. Therefore, this is... a... hardware malfunction? Or a... a fascinating anomaly! Not a breach of protocol!" He was sweating again. He could hear how pathetic he sounded.
The Handler didn't even blink. He reached into his briefcase, pulled out a device that looked like a cross between a Geiger counter and a graphing calculator, and pointed it at the ward. It emitted a soft, steady ping. He then pointed it at the pile of ash. A series of rapid clicks. Finally, slowly, he pointed it at Aoi Rin.
The device didn't scream or flash red. Instead, it emitted a low, confused hum, the digital display scrolling through a cascade of symbols too fast to read before settling on a blinking question mark.
The Handler stared at the readout. Then at Aoi. His tired eyes sharpened, just a fraction. "Interesting."
"What? What's interesting?" Kyuusei babbled. "Is it broken? It's probably broken. I can file a report-"
"Quiet, Kageyama." The Handler's voice was like a door slamming shut. He took a step closer to Aoi, who, to her credit, held her ground, though her excited smile had tempered into one of intense curiosity. "Miss Aoi Rin. You felt no resistance when you approached the eastern wall? No sense of unease? No... mental pressure to turn away?"
Aoi thought for a second. "There was a... cold tingle. Like static. And the wall looked wrong. But no pressure. It just felt like... pushing through a curtain."
The Handler's lips pressed into a thin line. He tapped a command into his device. This time, a soft, scanning beam washed over Aoi from head to toe. The hum deepened, and the display resolved into a complex, multi-layered readout.
"Ah," the Handler said, a single syllable heavy with revelation and immense future paperwork.
"Ah? Ah what?" Kyuusei demanded, his voice edging into hysteria.
"The ward functioned perfectly, Kageyama. It repels mundane awareness and induces spiritual dissonance in untrained civilians. It did not repel her because, according to this, her own spiritual signature is... suppressing itself."
Kyuusei stared. "What does that even mean?"
"It means," the Handler said, turning his flat gaze back to Aoi, "that Miss Rin possesses a naturally high, but subconsciously suppressed, spiritual attunement. Her mind, in its default state, is effectively cloaking her own energy output, masking it even from standard detection wards. She likely perceives the world with unusual clarity, notices patterns others miss, and has a... tenacious intellect." He said it like it was a diagnosed condition.
Aoi's eyes went round. "You mean... I'm spiritually attuned? That's why I'm good at puzzles and tests? And why I always notice when people are lying?" She looked thrilled. "I have a super-powered brain!"
"You have a latent, unstable, and unregistered metaphysical condition," the Handler corrected dryly. "And your brain's subconscious cloaking mechanism interpreted the ward not as a 'Keep Out' sign, but as a 'Fascinating Optical Illusion Worth Investigating.' You weren't recognized as an intruder. You were, for all intents and purposes, invisible to the ward's exclusion parameters."
The pieces crashed together in Kyuusei's mind. Her sharpness. Her uncanny observations. The way she could seemingly read a situation. It wasn't just being smart. It was a spiritual perception, constantly feeding her data she didn't know she was receiving. Her curiosity wasn't just personality: it was her attuned mind instinctively seeking to understand the weird energy signatures she'd been sensing around him all along.
"So... it's not my fault?" Kyuusei ventured, a sliver of hope piercing the dread.
The Handler's stare could have frozen lava. "You left a Catalytic Katana embedded in a Class-2 Apparition in a semi-stable dimensional fold within 200 meters of a civilian population center. A civilian who, through a freakish biological coincidence, was able to waltz in. You are at fault for the situation. She is at fault for being an anomaly." He sighed, a sound of profound weariness. "This now falls under Section 7-C: Accidental Exposure by Latent Asset."
"Asset?" Aoi and Kyuusei said in unison, with completely different inflections, hers intrigued, his horrified.
"Temporary, contingent, and highly undesirable asset," the Handler clarified, pulling a tablet from his briefcase. His thumbs flew over the screen. "Miss Rin, you have inadvertently accessed Level 3 Restricted knowledge. Standard protocol involves monitored amnestic treatment."
Aoi's face fell. "You'd wipe my memory?"
"It is standard," the Handler said, not looking up.
"But you said I'm an anomaly! A latent! Wouldn't it be more... scientifically valuable to observe how my abilities develop? Especially," she added, a sudden, terrifying shrewdness in her eyes, "since I've already demonstrated a capacity to bypass your security? I could be a useful case study. Or even," she glanced at the katana in Kyuusei's hand, "a... field consultant?"
Kyuusei choked. "NO. Absolutely not. Sir, the amnestic! Very standard! I'll pay for it!"
The Handler ignored him, studying Aoi. The bureaucratic gears in his head were almost audible. Amnestics on high-attunement latents were notoriously tricky. Sometimes they didn't take. Sometimes they caused side effects. And the paperwork for a botched memory wipe was even worse than the paperwork for recruiting a problematic asset.
He closed his eyes for a long moment, as if praying for strength. When he opened them, he looked at Kyuusei with a fresh layer of contempt.
"New assignment, Kageyama. Effective immediately. You are now responsible for the monitoring, basic orientation, and containment of Latent Asset Aoi Rin. You will ensure she signs these non-disclosure agreements," he said, producing a thick stack of digital forms from his tablet, "and you will provide a weekly report on her status and her continued silence. Her safety and her discretion are now your direct responsibility. Any further breaches will be considered your failure, compounded."
Kyuusei's world, already shattered, was now ground into a fine powder. "You're... making me her babysitter?"
"I'm making you her handler-lite. Think of it as an extension of your community service for being a walking operational hazard." He shoved the tablet toward Aoi. "Sign. Everything. Or the amnestic becomes mandatory, and we redact Kageyama's entire existence from your memories, leaving a very confusing gap in your first year."
Aoi, without a hint of fear, took the tablet. She began scrolling, actually reading the terms. "Fascinating... so many clauses about interdimensional phenomena..." She looked up at Kyuusei, her earlier smile returning, now tinged with something victorious and deeply unsettling. "It looks like we're going to be seeing a lot more of each other, Kageyama-kun. You can start by telling me what a 'Catalytic Katana' is. And what grade yours is."
Kyuusei looked from the Handler's implacable face to Aoi's eagerly awaiting one. He was trapped. Not just dead, but enlisted into an eternity of answering questions from a spiritually-cloaked, super-genius random girl who now held his entire career in her hands.
He slowly, deliberately, banged his forehead against the hilt of his katana.
Thunk.
"This," he mumbled to the steel, "is the worst part-time job ever."
After an Agonizing Day for Kageyama
The final bell was a death knell. Not of freedom, but of his temporary, fragile reprieve. The walk from the classroom to the shoe lockers was a gauntlet, and the gauntlet's name was Aoi Rin.
She materialized beside him, her steps perfectly in sync. "So," she began, her voice bright and conversational, "the non-disclosure agreements were very thorough. I have questions about subsection 4-B, the part about 'passive spiritual resonance in populated areas.' Does that mean I'm technically emitting a signal right now?"
Kyuusei stared straight ahead, his face a mask of exhausted stone. He did not turn. He did not blink. He focused on the scuff mark on the heel of the shoe of the student in front of him. A fascinating scuff. Probably from biking. Not from fighting tree demons. Focus on the normal scuff.
"Kageyama-kun?" she tried again, leaning into his peripheral vision. She'd deployed the full arsenal: the head-tilt, the wide, guileless eyes, the slightly pouted lip. The Cute Weapon. It was a devastating combo, designed to melt resistance and elicit eager explanations.
It bounced off the fortified walls of his annoyance like a nerf dart off a tank. He didn't just feel watched anymore; he felt autopsied. Her sudden, intense interest wasn't in him, Kageyama Kyuusei, the tired, late, held-back guy. It was in The Situation. He was just the malfunctioning vending machine from which the fascinating supernatural candy had spilled. She wanted the candy, the inner workings, the blueprints to the machine. The machine itself, its dents, its rusty hinges, its weary groans, was just an inconvenient housing.
"I understand you're probably processing," she continued, undeterred, switching to a tone of sympathetic reason. "It must be stressful, having your secret exposed. If you talked about it, it might help. I'm a very good listener." She said it like she was offering a therapeutic service.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. Processing? He was way past processing. He was in the acceptance stage: acceptance that his life was now a special kind of hell where his punishment was to be shadowed by a walking, talking, crushingly perceptive liability. Her sympathy felt like a probe.
He reached his shoe locker, swapped his indoor shoes with mechanical precision, and slammed the metal door shut with a definitive CLANG.
Aoi was there, doing the same beside him, as if they'd planned to leave together. "Which way do you go home? Maybe we could walk together? We could... debrief."
That was it. He stopped. He finally looked at her, not with anger, but with a flat, dead-eyed exhaustion that was somehow more insulting. "Aoi," he said, his voice devoid of all the frantic energy from the courtyard. It was just tired. "Debrief? There's no 'we.' There's no 'together.' You signed a paper so you wouldn't get your memories erased. That's it. My job isn't to be your tour guide to the weird. My job is to make sure you don't blab and to write boring reports about how you're continuing to not blab. That's the entire relationship."
Her cute facade faltered for a nanosecond, replaced by a flash of analytical frustration. He'd rejected the cute approach, the sympathetic approach. Time for a new tactic.
"But the Handler said orientation," she pressed, the sweetness leaching from her voice, replaced by a persistent, steely curiosity. "I have a right to understand what I'm involved in. What if I see another one of those... things? What do I do?"
"You do nothing," he said, turning to walk out the school gates. "You see a weird shimmer in the air? You walk the other way. You hear something offering to devour you in a figure of speech? You put in headphones. You live your normal, smart, cute life and forget any of this exists. That's the safest thing for you, and the easiest thing for me."
He was lying, of course. Now that her latent ability was active and registered, she'd probably attract low-level weirdness like a spiritual beacon. It was exactly the kind of thing the Handler would dump on his plate to deal with. But he could hope.
She kept pace, easily matching his long, hurried strides. The cute act was gone, packed away. Now she just looked like herself: sharp, focused, and mildly irritated at a puzzle refusing to solve itself on her terms. "You're being deliberately obtuse. I'm not going to 'forget.' I can't. Knowing is safer than not knowing. If you won't help me, I'll... observe independently."
A cold spike of genuine alarm shot through him. He stopped again, whirling to face her. "Do not 'observe independently.' That is how normies - how people - get dead, or possessed, or worse, get me a permanent demotion to sewer-cleaning duty in the spiritual runoff department. You want to know what to do if you see something? You call me. You text me. And then you get as far away as possible while I deal with it. That's the deal. You're not a consultant. You're a liability with a phone."
The word 'liability' hung in the air. He saw it hit home, not as an insult, but as a categorization. Her eyes narrowed. For the first time, her interest seemed to flicker from The Situation and land, squarely and personally, on him.
"Fine," she said, her voice cool. She pulled out her phone. "Give me your number then. Since I'm a liability you're responsible for."
It was a defeat, but it felt like she'd just backed him into a corner he'd built himself. With a grunt, he rattled off his number. Her fingers flew across her screen.
A second later, his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out. A message from an unknown number.
It contained a single, perfectly composed sentence:
'Based on observed stress markers, physiological tells, and your established pattern of evasive behavior, the probability of you successfully maintaining this level of non-communication long-term is approximately 3.7%. I look forward to your eventual, inevitable breakdown. :)'
He wondered how did she even type all of this in a second.
He stared at the screen. The sheer, audacious, analytical smugness of it. The smiley face was the final dagger.
He looked from the phone to her face. She wasn't smiling her cute smile. She was wearing a small, knowing, utterly professional smirk. The smirk of someone who had just collected a key data point.
"There," she said, slipping her phone away. "Now we're connected. Have a nice evening, Handler-lite."
She turned and walked away, her ponytail swaying, not toward the usual station, but in a different direction, as if she had other, non-supernatural business to attend to now that today's experiment was concluded.
Kyuusei stood frozen on the sidewalk, the phantom weight of a katana on his back and the very real, crushing weight of a new, inescapable reality on his shoulders. She wasn't just curious about the lore. She was... problem-solving him. And she was terrifyingly good at it.
The worst part? That 3.7% statistic felt wildly, optimistically high.