C98 results are out!
A strangled cry of ‘No!’ ripped from Shion’s throat as she jolted awake.
Gasping for breath, she reached up to touch her forehead, finding it cool to the touch, yet slick with a cold sweat that plastered her hair to her skin.
Though the weather had already turned chilly, her sheets and pillow were drenched.
With trembling hands, Shion pushed back the covers, only to discover she hadn’t changed into her pajamas.
Instead, she had slept fully clothed in her miko attire.
More unsettling was the Spirit Cutter, which lay not on its revered stand, but carelessly abandoned on her bedside table.
‘How could this be?’ she mused.
‘Hadn’t I performed an exorcism last night? And the purification of the evil spirit had gone remarkably smoothly.
After its completion, I’d hurried back to the shrine…’
‘Wait, why was there no memory of returning to the shrine yesterday?’
Shion frantically scoured her mind for any trace of memory, yet found absolutely nothing.
Not a single detail of what transpired after the exorcism’s conclusion yesterday remained.
How she had made her way home, how she had neglected to return the Spirit Cutter to its stand when passing through the shrine hall, how she had finally fallen into bed…
It was all a complete blank.
‘Hold on,’ she thought.
‘Yesterday, I must have met someone.
Someone who, by all accounts, should have left an indelible impression.’
‘But who?’
Shion struggled to recall the person’s name, yet one detail remained vividly etched in her mind: their eyes.
They were a clear, expansive blue, like a boundless, cloudless sky, yet a shadow, as if cast by an encroaching storm, seemed to dim their depths.
Even in the moment of their meeting, Shion had merely noted the uniqueness of those eyes.
Now, however, in retrospect, they struck her as utterly mesmerizing, becoming the sole anchor of her memory of the person.
‘Wait… she… that was a girl, wasn’t it?’
Before Shion could delve deeper into her thoughts, her alarm clock pierced the silence.
With a practiced hand, she silenced the insistent ringing, then drew back the curtains, allowing the soft morning light to flood her room.
Outside, the clouds were thick and heavy today; a blanket of grey smothered the sky, lending a muted pallor to the usually vibrant blue.
‘It’s likely to be a rainy day,’ Shion mused.
‘And it’s high time I started making breakfast for Ayane.’
As for the girl she’d met yesterday… ‘Later,’ she decided, ‘if I can still recall her.’
Shion quickly jotted a note on her phone: [Person to remember: her eyes are like today’s sky.]
Beneath it, she attached a photo of the overcast morning.
****
During today’s lunch break, Shion, Ayane, and Shigure gathered in the Class A classroom, sharing their midday meal.
In the weeks following the cultural festival, Shion had made it a habit to eat with Shigure and Ayane in Class A, unless Rie and her friends had specifically invited her elsewhere.
Shigure, a student of Class A, was a natural fixture, but Ayane was another story entirely.
Now, she made a daily pilgrimage to the Class A classroom during lunch.
Where she once used to sneak in when the room was sparsely populated, she now strode in with audacious confidence.
If Shion happened to be absent, Ayane would simply retrieve her lunchbox from her bag and unceremoniously claim Shion’s desk, settling in to await her sister’s return.
“Why are there so few people today?” Shion wondered aloud, taking a bite of her rice ball as she surveyed the remarkably sparse classroom.
Ordinarily, lunchtime transformed the room into a cacophony that made sleep impossible.
Yet today, only a handful of students quietly ate at their desks, and the silence was so profound that Shion could distinctly hear the faint chirping of a bird just outside the window.
“The results are out,” Ayane mumbled, her mouth slightly indistinct from the grease around her lips.
Shion had, after all, specially added a generous portion of meat to her rice ball.
“They’re posted on the bulletin board downstairs.
Everyone’s probably gone to see them.”
“Oh,” Shion responded with a detached air, before returning to her own rice ball.
Hers contained only a modest helping of pickled vegetables and kimchi; a plain ball of white rice, she knew, would be utterly unpalatable.
Shigure gently placed a piece of meat from her own lunchbox onto Shion’s rice ball with her fork, then softly inquired, “Shion-san, aren’t you going to go take a look?”
Shion pondered for a moment, then shook her head.
“No, thank you.
I’m not particularly interested in grades.
Ayane and I are polar opposites in that regard…”
Ayane’s eyes gleamed with a mischievous glint.
“Big sister, are you truly certain you don’t want to know?
What if you’ve actually achieved your goal…?”
As she spoke, Ayane deliberately unbuttoned a single button on her school uniform, allowing her collarbone to peek provocatively into Shion’s line of sight.
Shion quickly averted her gaze, her face flushing crimson as she took a hasty bite of her rice ball, inadvertently consuming the piece of meat Shigure had just added.
“No, I don’t.
I’m sure I did terribly anyway.”
Shigure observed the sisters’ cryptic exchange with a hint of curiosity.
“What happens if Shion-san performs well?
Is Ayane-san planning a reward?”
Ayane’s grin widened, morphing into a triumphant, almost wicked, expression.
“Good grades mean rewards, bad grades mean punishments, of course!”
Shigure glanced from Shion’s deeply flushed face to Ayane’s unrepentant, impish grin, a peculiar sense of unease settling over her.
“Besides, big sister, who says you don’t care about grades?” Ayane continued, pulling out her phone and idly scrolling through it.
“You were chatting with Kujou-san past eleven last night, weren’t you, complaining that you couldn’t sleep because of your results?”
“Ayane! Uninstall that monitoring software from my phone right now!” Shion shot to her feet, lunging to snatch Ayane’s phone.
“Didn’t you delete it last time?!”
Ever since the cultural festival, Shion had made sure to uninstall the monitoring software from Ayane’s phone, and she had personally witnessed Ayane uninstalling her own surveillance app from Shion’s device.
By all accounts, without physical access to the other person’s phone, such software shouldn’t be able to reconnect, even if re-downloaded… unless, of course…
“Uh… I never said there was *only* one,” Ayane replied, her expression shifting to one of wide-eyed innocence.
“Ayane, you’ve lost your dinner privileges tonight!” Shion declared, resorting once more to her most potent threat.
For Ayane, the threat of losing dinner was, without a doubt, the most effective deterrent.
She playfully stuck out her tongue and made a face at Shion, yet dutifully handed over her phone.
“Just how many monitoring apps are there?” Shion demanded, her fingers flying across Ayane’s phone screen.
“Three…” Ayane mumbled, barely audible.
“Only three? Are you absolutely certain?” Shion lifted her gaze to meet Ayane’s, her voice laced with suspicion.
Ayane completely avoided her sister’s penetrating stare.
“Well… maybe a few more?
Perhaps around six?”
“What?! How many *exactly*?!” Shion exclaimed, utterly aghast at the escalating number, and sprang to her feet.
“Ten! Just ten! Really, truly, only ten!” Ayane blurted out, quickly seizing Shion’s hand.
“That’s all of them, I swear!”
“Are you kidding me? Ten?!” Shion gasped, scrolling through a bewildering array of unfamiliar icons on Ayane’s phone.
“Did you download every single monitoring app available in the store?!”
“Only… only the free ones,” Ayane admitted, scratching her head sheepishly.
“The paid versions were a bit too expensive.”
“*Now* you decide to be thrifty?!” Shion exclaimed, covering her face in exasperation.
She longed to factory reset the entire phone, leaving nothing but a basic calling function.
Shigure, utterly stunned, found her jaw hanging agape.
“Shion-san!” Kujou Sakuya appeared at the doorway of Class A, waving enthusiastically.
“I saw your grades!”