Four o'clock, Tokyo Station.
When Kashimo rose from his seat, he felt as though his backside no longer belonged to him.
The Shinkansen ride from Sendai to Tokyo took only an hour and a half, but between leaving home, reaching the station, waiting, and transferring, he had spent nearly three hours on the whole ordeal. Crammed into a seat that was none too spacious, he couldn't stretch his legs or rest his back properly. Every bone in his body felt as though someone had rearranged it. Next time, I'm definitely buying a sleeper ticket.
The moment he stepped out of the station, June's damp air hit him in the face, wrapping his entire body in a sticky embrace. Kashimo took a deep breath and felt nothing in particular. Sendai's air and Tokyo's air were both just air to him; there was no difference. He stood by the exit, looking past the crowd as he scanned the plaza.
Then he spotted two men in black.
One was tall and powerfully built, dressed in a dark suit and sunglasses, with his hands behind his back. He stood as straight as a pine tree planted in concrete. Even through the sunglasses, his face radiated an imposing authority that needed no anger to make itself felt. No pedestrian dared come within three meters of him. The other man was slightly shorter and stood beside him, his presence as faint as an old book forgotten in the corner of a bookshelf.
Masamichi Yaga. Kashimo briefly searched his memory: Tokyo Jujutsu High's prospective principal, a capable fighter with a serious disposition who was always holding a cursed corpse. This was the man. He carried his suitcase over at an unhurried pace, his teal ponytail swaying amid the crowd.
Masamichi Yaga spotted him too. The gaze behind