It had been three days since the exams concluded.
That night, Shion tossed and turned in bed, unable to find sleep.
Shion had heard through the grapevine that the exam papers had been graded yesterday, and scores were now being compiled for ranking. She had spent the entire day consumed by anxiety, and even now, she was still restlessly rolling around in bed, sleep eluding her.
Truthfully, she hadn’t been this nervous even before the exam, her only thought then being to finish quickly and finally rest. Yet, now that the results were imminent, an unsettling dread had begun to creep in.
What if the results came out tomorrow and her scores were terrible? Everyone had studied with her for so long, some even sacrificing their own revision time. If her grades hadn’t improved even a little, it would truly be a profound disappointment to their expectations.
No, no, that couldn’t be. Shion shook her head on the pillow, swiftly dismissing the thought. The rustling sound of her long white hair against the pillow felt incongruous with the silent night. Her grades were typically in the bottom 10% of her entire grade, practically rock bottom. This time, however, she had at least completed the entire paper. Even for those dreaded math problems, Shion had at least memorized the formulas. While she wasn’t sure if she’d recalled them correctly, the method—memorize the formula, plug in the data, calculate the result—was precisely what Shigure had taught her. Shion might be slow, but Shigure was incredibly smart. Therefore, no matter what, her performance couldn’t possibly be worse than before.
After all, when you’re already at rock bottom, every path leads upwards.
Despite reassuring herself, Shion remained deeply worried. Ultimately, she still lacked faith in her own abilities.
‘Heh, to think I, Hoshimori Shion, could actually associate myself with the word ‘ability’ when it comes to academics.’
As she inwardly scoffed at herself, she gazed through the window lattice, watching the pale moonlight outside filter through a gap in the curtains and fall softly upon her cheek.
‘The moonlight tonight is truly beautiful,’ she mused.
With that thought, Shion closed her eyes and drifted into a deep slumber…
‘Sleep, my foot!’
Just as Shion was on the verge of drifting off, a sudden alert chimed from the system: [Evil spirits surging.]
‘Damn it! Didn’t I offer prayers today? And I didn’t sense any significant evil spirit surge back then! Why is it only alerting me now?’
Internally grumbling fiercely, Shion threw back her covers. Realistically, the situation wasn’t so dire that she absolutely had to go; it was merely a minor surge of evil spirits, not yet beyond control, and could even be handled tomorrow. However, Shion had already struggled to sleep tonight, and just as she was finally nearing slumber, this sudden notification of evil spirits surging had arrived.
‘No, this won’t do. I must completely eradicate these evil spirits today, in sacrifice for my lost sleep!’
Shion swung her legs out of bed, made her way to the shrine’s main hall, and offered a respectful bow and prayer to the divine. Then, seizing Spirit Cutter, she turned and ventured into the enveloping darkness.
****
Following the faint traces of the surging evil spirits, Shion walked steadily along the darkened street.
This time, the location of the evil spirit surge wasn’t the back mountain; it was…
As Shion continued to track the evil spirit’s aura, she was genuinely surprised when she finally heard the sound of crashing waves.
This time, the evil spirits had manifested by the sea.
Under the cloak of night, the sea stretched out as an endless expanse of pitch-black. There were no lighthouses or similar structures on the water’s surface to illuminate the ocean, only the scattered starlight in the distant sky and the moon’s glow, half-obscured by the night clouds.
However, her enhanced spirit-exorcism abilities also granted Shion the power to clearly perceive these evil spirits even in the dark. Her vision was now remarkably sharp. A group of humanoid evil spirits was steadily approaching her.
Shion pursed her lips. These were far weaker than the evil spirit soldiers she had faced last time; exorcising them would be no problem at all.
White flashes of her blade tore through the black night sky, accompanied by the agonizing shrieks of the evil spirits. One after another, the sword slashes pierced through the spirits’ forms, causing them to dissipate into wisps of black smoke in the air. She didn’t even need to employ any martial arts; she simply stood, wielding Spirit Cutter as if peeling an apple, and the evil spirits were discarded like apple skins into a waste bin.
The aura of the surging evil spirits had vanished, and Shion was just about to sheathe her blade and leave. However, just before Spirit Cutter was fully returned, she suddenly detected a faint trace that seemed almost like an evil spirit’s presence.
It was an exceedingly weak evil spirit aura, so faint that Shion wouldn’t have perceived this subtle trace at all had her abilities not been enhanced. Moreover, this aura merely ‘resembled’ an evil spirit’s, rather than definitively ‘being’ one.
Shion closed her eyes, and her sensory range for auras rapidly expanded as she searched for the evil spirit’s presence.
‘There it is,’ she thought. ‘Still by the sea.’
She once again followed the suspected evil spirit aura, proceeding along the shore as the ocean’s tides echoed in her ears. Eventually, Shion spotted a round stone, and behind it, the faint silhouette of a girl. Shion could vaguely sense that the suspected evil spirit aura, incredibly faint, was emanating from that very girl.
The girl retrieved a can from beneath the stone, shook it, and smiled with apparent satisfaction. Then, with practiced ease, she popped open the can and began to drink, gulping it down.
‘Wait, isn’t this where Nanami hides her fruit wine?’ Shion suddenly recalled.
Shion sheathed Spirit Cutter and approached the girl. What ordinary girl would be drinking fruit wine by the sea in the middle of the night? Well… except for Kazama Nanami. But the girl before her was clearly not Nanami. While she also had blue hair, Nanami’s was an aqua blue, whereas this girl’s hair was a much lighter, pale blue.
The girl noticed Shion as well, and an expression of considerable surprise crossed her face.
“Can you see me?” the girl asked, setting down her fruit wine and gazing at Shion in astonishment.
Shion nodded. “Um… hello?” She glanced at the fruit wine in the girl’s hand; it was the same strawberry fruit wine Nanami had offered her that day.
“That fruit wine… it doesn’t seem to be yours, does it?” Shion asked, her gaze fixed on the girl, hesitating to say more.
“Oh, this?” The girl casually swayed the fruit wine in her hand, looking up at the sky. Shion could even catch the strawberry aroma of the wine. “Nanami likes to keep her fruit wine here; I know all about it, you see.”
“Eh? How do you know Kazama-san? Even her parents don’t know about this spot,” Shion exclaimed, surprised.
“Perhaps it’s because I understand her so well,” the girl said, taking another sip of fruit wine. “We’ve been together since childhood, so I suppose you could call us childhood friends?”
‘Childhood friends?’ A name immediately sprang to Shion’s mind, yet a degree of suspicion lingered within her. Nevertheless, she voiced the question on her mind: “Then you are…”
“My surname is Hanami,” the pale-blue-haired girl replied with a lively smile. “Hanami Yuki. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”