"Hey, look at this post."
"There are tons of crows circling strangely near my house. I suspect it's some kind of supernatural being, like a Crow Tengu."
On the train, several middle schoolers scrolled through their phones and chatted excitedly.
"Bet there's a garbage collection point near his house!"
Someone else replied dismissively, then immediately showed them something he'd found.
"I think this one might actually be possible: my dog's been looking at me kind of weirdly?"
"Don't dogs always look at you like that?"
The middle schoolers chatted away without a care, fantasizing about encountering the supernatural, then winning it over with friendship, love, and sheer spirit and making it their Shikigami. From then on, they'd set out to exorcise demons and save the world—their very own deranged adventure.
As high schoolers, Akihi Yu and Ai Nao naturally weren't so worked up. Nao, the Class Monitor, was seriously reading the news, while Akihi Yu rested with his eyes closed.
As for the middle-aged office workers in the carriage, most wore numb expressions and looked utterly drained.
Rising to the top overnight, lording it over everyone else—after getting beaten down by society, they knew full well none of that would ever be theirs. Instead of dreaming about things that would never happen, they might as well think about how to get through today's work.
Only when their eyes fell on the young people in the carriage did their expressions soften.
It was as if they were remembering their own youth, when they, too, had been full of confidence and thought they could do anything.
"Yu,"
"the supernatural has become the biggest topic across Japan."
Judging by the flood of news on her phone, Nao could tell that all of Japan was in an uproar after the government announced the existence