Twelfth Division, captain's office.
Sunlight slanted through the washi-covered wooden lattice doors onto the tatami, with tiny motes of dust drifting in the air.
Almost a year had passed since Kirio Hikifune left after her promotion to the Zero Division, but everything in the room, from the tables and chairs to the placement of the pen holder, remained exactly as it had been the day she left.
Like an abandoned kitten, Hiyori Sarugaki huddled beside the broad desk, crouching before the empty captain's chair. She hugged her knees tightly, her chin resting on them, her dead-fish eyes staring unfocused at the grain of the wooden floor.
After a while, perhaps tired of crouching, or perhaps rattled by the suffocating silence in the room, she snorted heavily and sprang to her feet, shuffling around the room in her straw sandals in an agitated circle.
She had no idea what she wanted to do. Or rather, she was merely trying to fill the gaping hole in her heart with this meaningless pacing.
A wind suddenly stirred outside, and at the same time, faint footsteps sounded on the wooden floor of the corridor.
They were loose, dragging footsteps unlike those of any Seated Officer in the Twelfth Division.
Hiyori instinctively raised her head. A breeze swept along the corridor just then, and the corner of a white haori flashed past a wooden pillar, heading straight down the corridor toward the captain's office.
Hiyori's heart gave an uncontrollable leap, and her blood seemed to rush to her head in an instant.
There was only one person in the entire Twelfth Division entitled to wear that white Captain's Haori! Before the thought that the higher-ups had already appointed a new captain could even cross her mind, her body reacted first, shooting out from behind the