Afraid of Death / Tōno Zen ...

What would have happened if the weak Miko hadn't been as strong as she was?

Would she have ended up like that poor little kitten, dying in the hands of a human who tortured cats?

Or like the person important to Rom, whose identity she still didn't know? Even knowing that the Mountain God had killed that person, she could do nothing but endure her pain and urge others not to enter the mountains.

She held out her right hand again and looked at the scar, where the blood had long since dried. Yotsuya Miko's gaze gradually grew distant.

"Kyosuke, do you know where there's a calligraphy competition?"

Kyosuke, who was still sulking nearby about his sister, couldn't help but freeze. Still, he answered her honestly.

"I think there really is one nearby."

As for calligraphy, in this small country, it had probably retained some of its heritage. The people here treated it like tea or cherry blossoms—as part of everyday life.

"Is this the place?"

Yotsuya Miko looked at the building in front of her, then checked her phone's navigation again.

Calligraphy competitions were usually popular among students—or perhaps it was better to say they were something students aspired to. Many high schools held major regional competitions, followed by national ones. Of course, there were also small, privately run competitions, though they usually didn't attract much attention. Miko's school held official calligraphy competitions too, but this year's autumn tournament hadn't come around yet.

After hesitating for a moment, Miko entered the registration office and filled out an entry form with the staff's help. After that, all she could do was wait for the competition to begin.

"A calligraphy competition..."

Even after leaving the office, her mind still felt foggy. She didn't know why she'd done something like this, yet she felt oddly comforted by it. Still, looking on the bright side, if she won the competition, she could get a prize of tens of thousands of yen.

Trying to reassure herself, she brushed past a woman beside her who looked utterly lifeless.

She glanced at the Ghost clinging to the woman and silently flicked an iron pellet at it. She supposed she'd suddenly felt like doing a good deed.

Through her Spiritual Sense, she felt the Ghost disappear without a trace, mercilessly reduced to nothing. The woman it had possessed suddenly stopped, patted her own face, and felt as if she'd perked up a little.

"What was that...?"

Before she could make sense of it, a staff member came over to guide her to the calligraphy competition registration desk. She set her question aside and went to sign up.

Only after she'd finished everything did she come back to herself. She silently took a small silver-white ball from her pocket.

"What is this?"

The young office worker, plagued by insomnia and depression, squeezed the little ball repeatedly. No matter how she looked at it, it seemed perfectly ordinary. And yet the heavy burden weighing on her seemed to have lifted completely.

"A gift from a god?"

The young woman, given to daydreaming, carefully tucked the little ball into her wallet as a good-luck charm. She had a feeling that it would keep protecting her.

"Has anyone else ever had anything like this happen to them?"

Naturally, she thought to ask about it on X.

Yotsuya Miko, meanwhile, didn't have the energy to concern herself with any of that. She was still in a terrible mood, and she'd even turned down Yurikawa Hana's invitation. She just dragged herself aimlessly through the streets. Whenever she saw a Ghost, she killed it outright. If she saw one possessing someone, she flicked an iron pellet into it. She wasted most of the iron pellets she'd accumulated in this pointless spree.

She didn't care.

It wasn't until the sun began to set and her stomach started to growl that she finally came to, as if waking from a dream. With a long sigh, she dragged herself home. The scar on her right hand had long since scabbed over. The wound hadn't been very deep, and now only a faint line remained. When she thought back to what had happened, she could still picture the cat-torturer's sneering face, but most of her anger had faded.

Just as Rom had said, that man had already made himself a pariah. After the media exposed him, everyone despised him. His company fired him, and even his wife turned against him. In the end, depressed, he jumped from the company building and ended his life in a hasty fashion. Just as he'd failed to respect a cat's life, he'd failed to respect his own.

The media continued to spin the story, raising the issue of the crushing workload faced by employees. What had started as a story about animal abuse became a social issue. People turned their attention from the long-dead cat and the long-dead man to labor laws, unscrupulous companies, and, while they were at it, high-ranking politicians.

That only made Yotsuya Miko feel more oppressed.

"Is death really something they take so lightly?"

Ghosts mingled among the living. For a moment, Miko was so frustrated that she wanted to kill all the people mixed in with them along with the Ghosts. And yet she still felt utterly helpless.

"I finally made up my mind to live properly, after all that effort. I've been trying so hard to deal with those things..."

Miko lowered her head and looked at the considerable number of iron pellets in her backpack.

Drawing talisman patterns was agonizing. Each new pattern took hours, sometimes even more than ten hours, of trial and error. She'd learned more than thirty patterns and was still learning more. Every night, she used the hours she didn't need for sleep to practice in her room, building up her skills.

For the dolls she'd made for Hana and Yuria, she'd spent a great deal of time and effort on every single pattern, carefully working out the best arrangement before finally producing something that was at least usable.

But... why?

Ordinary people couldn't see Ghosts. At worst, they'd be possessed and weakened for a few days. So why did they have no hope of living on? Why did they even mistreat other people's lives?

"Even though... I'm scared to death, too..."

Yotsuya Miko murmured as she clutched the Eye-Eye doll tightly in her hand. The first time she'd used the Soul Collision Art, she'd feared that the Ghost wouldn't die. Then she'd realized it could sense her emotions. That was when she understood that she was afraid.

When the Soul Devouring Tribulation erupted, she'd been afraid too—afraid that its side effects would turn her into an uncontrollable monster. Even after gaining the strength to defend herself, she still feared what might happen. She feared the appearance of even stronger Ghosts.

Then the Kimono Ghost appeared, making her feel uneasy and confirming her worst fears.

She'd had nightmares about what might have happened if she'd arrived at the Cursed Building too late. She feared that after she'd used every trick she had, the Ghost would still struggle to its feet and swipe at her with its sharp claws, tearing her body apart.

She'd thought she was afraid of her own weakness. She'd never realized that, all along, she'd been afraid of death.

The moment she saw the dead cat, her emotions had already begun to spiral out of control. Her instinct to avoid death had been confronted with the stark reality of what had happened. From then on, she'd been dragged helplessly into its grip.

"I have to... make more talisman patterns..."

Still, she might as well use the Mountain God arc to fully awaken her.

"What? Have you heard? There's a new urban legend going around."

"What? You don't mean the Guardian of Silver Pellets, do you?"

"Oh—you've heard of it too?"

The lively classroom buzzed as energetic high school girls chatted about what they knew best, sharing things they'd heard and things they hadn't.

"Hey, I heard the teacher replacing Arai is a young man."

"Really?"

Their conversations jumped from one topic to another, often straying from one thing to something completely unrelated.

Meanwhile, Yurikawa Hana, surrounded by her little group, had no interest in joining the chatter. She sat in the classroom, eating her bread without a care. The girls around her were already used to her enormous appetite, and some of them even envied her figure. Sometimes the girls couldn't help but marvel that being able to eat so much—and have it go to all the right places—was a talent in its own right.

Because they envied Hana's figure, they didn't use her big appetite as an excuse to ostracize her. After all, if anything, Hana stood out more than they did—not to mention the girl beside her, Yotsuya Miko.

If this weren't an all-girls' school, surely plenty of boys would be chasing after Yurikawa Hana and Yotsuya Miko. The girls chatted with that thought in mind, briefly steering the conversation toward the two of them before drifting off to something else.

Yotsuya Miko, the subject of their conversation, had no interest in listening to what they were saying about her. She just stared blankly at her desk.

She hadn't slept well again last night. Since becoming a demonic cultivator, she'd rarely had a full night's sleep. Most nights, she used the time to draw talisman patterns. With her Spiritual Sense, she could keep at it from evening until dawn, then sleep for only twenty or thirty minutes.

No matter how strong her Spiritual Sense was, so little rest was still too much for her.

"Miko?"

"Hmm... What?"

Yotsuya Miko rubbed her aching head and forced a smile for Hana.

"Are you okay?"

Hana wasn't the most attentive person, but Miko's condition was worse than merely looking unwell. Seeing how pale she was, Yurikawa Hana grabbed her by the shoulders in concern.

"Do you really not need to go to the nurse's office?"

"No, I'm fine."

Miko shook her head and tried to steady her emotions. She'd been attempting to draw a new talisman pattern last night, but her jumbled thoughts had kept her from making much progress even by the time she needed to leave for school. She hadn't even managed to get her usual twenty or thirty minutes of sleep before rushing out. Even so, she was probably still better off than a Chinese high school senior—at least she wasn't at the point where she'd black out as soon as she closed her eyes.

Just as she was wondering how to ease Hana's concern, the bell rang. The students, who'd been chatting noisily, hurried back to their seats and waited for the new Japanese teacher.

Their former teacher, Arai, had applied for maternity leave the day before. Today was the new teacher's first day. The girls were very curious about him. After all, young men were few and far between at an all-girls' school, so it was a rare thing to have a young male teacher come teach them.

Yotsuya Miko hadn't been paying much attention, but the moment her Spiritual Sense detected a certain presence, she felt as if cold water had been poured over her from head to toe. She came fully awake.

Cat Evil Spirits—so many of them...

And... a Ghost.

She stared fixedly at the red-haired man entering through the door. He was someone she'd seen before.

Were you someone who tortured cats, too?

Miko's expression darkened. The instant the Ghost and the cat Evil Spirits around the man tried to cling to him and follow him into the classroom, their bodies began to crack and corrode.

It seemed the female Ghost had never encountered anything like this. It let out an enraged shriek and tried to force its way toward the red-haired man. But the closer it got to the classroom, the more heavily the field targeting Ghosts weighed on it. The cat Evil Spirits possessing him had already vanished, whether or not they could find peace.

"Zen—!!!"

The Ghost stretched out its arm, trying to grab hold of something. Miko only watched coldly. A Ghost like this had no business thinking it could enter the area she'd marked off around the doll she'd made for Hana.

Besides, it was too irritating.

As the thought crossed her mind, a streak of black light shot from her fingertip and scattered the possessing Ghost completely.

"Since Ms. Arai has begun her maternity leave..."

The man, whom the Ghost had called "Zen," hadn't noticed any of this. With his back to the students, he wrote his name on the blackboard.

"Starting today, I'll be your homeroom teacher."

As he spoke, he finished writing his name. Then Zen turned around and looked at the students with dull, lifeless eyes.

"My name is Tono Zen."

"I look forward to working with you."

His eyes showed little emotion. Miko's Spiritual Sense quickly picked up on the strange state he was in.

No... That wasn't quite it. It was more like a rigid stillness, like a corpse.

Was this guy also driven to torture cats because of his emotions?

Looking at Tono Zen, who no longer had any Ghosts clinging to him, Miko did nothing else. Judging someone solely by her own impressions wasn't rational. She silently took an iron pellet from her backpack and waited for an opportunity to throw it at Tono Zen.

More than wondering whether this guy had abused cats or figuring out what the Ghost entangled with him was, she wanted to know why he seemed so rigidly lifeless—as if he didn't fear death.

Why?

Yotsuya Miko had been wrestling with that question for days. She'd been so tormented by it that she'd even started thinking, in a daze, about going straight to the Mountain God and making a scene. But fear had still overwhelmed her irrational impulses, leaving her painfully, lucidly aware of the truth.

And now, finally, there was someone who might be able to give her an answer.

Tono Zen...

The new teacher went about his work in a strictly businesslike manner, moving with the stiff, robotic precision of a programmed machine as he began his lesson.

"Now, I'll take attendance."

Ignoring the girls' playful remarks, he read the names from his attendance sheet in a cold, even voice, one after another.

Perhaps his distant manner was exactly why the all-girls' school had been willing to hire a young male teacher. Unlike male teachers who were at a loss around young girls, or even embarrassed by their behavior, Tono Zen's performance was more than just acceptable.

It was excellent.

"Hey, doesn't the new teacher, Mr. Tono, look familiar?"

The first thing Yurikawa Hana did after class was take a big bite of bread and share her opinion of the new teacher.

Maybe it had been too long, but she felt like she recognized him, even though she couldn't quite remember from where.

"Yeah, I've met him before."

Yotsuya Miko answered her question. She touched the healed scar on her right hand and suddenly felt an itch.

"It was at the park, when I was looking for an owner for the kitten. I met him there, but I didn't think he seemed like a good person, so I turned down his offer to adopt it."

She spoke frankly, thinking back on the matter. Tono Zen had seemed cold in class, just as she'd expected.

"Mr. Tono is cold and stiff."

"That's so mean, Miko." Hana hurriedly swallowed the last bit of bread, her cheeks puffed as she protested.

"Didn't you say you shouldn't judge people by their appearance? And anyway, it's really rude of you to talk about Mr. Tono like that."

"Sorry. I'll stop, then."