April sunlight poured through the windows of Class 2-F at Sobu High School, carving bright patches of light onto the floor. Dust motes drifted lazily in the air, mingling with the faint lingering scent of cherry blossoms at the end of the season. It was an afternoon so ordinary it could not be more ordinary. Yet for Natsume Yuu, this very ordinariness was the greatest treasure he had longed for ever since he ended up in this world.
He sat in the second to last row by the window, propping his chin on one hand, gaze lazily turned outward. On the field, the boys from the baseball club were working up a sweat, shouting to one another as the crisp crack of the bat meeting ball reached the classroom through the glass, distant and unreal. To him, it felt like a picture of peaceful everyday life
"Hey hey, Yui, have you heard? That rumor about the old school building."
In the row ahead, a girl with dyed golden curls, Miura Yumiko, was excitedly chatting with her friend. The "Yui" she mentioned was one of the core members of the class's popular clique, the so-called Popular Group, a cute girl with a pale peach bun hairstyle... Yuigahama Yui.
Natsume's hearing was very sharp. Even in a drowsy afternoon class, he could clearly catch those scattered fragments of conversation. He normally had no interest in the gossip of high school students, but one particular word made him glance over.
Rumor.
In this seemingly peaceful world, "rumors" were often the door leading to another side of reality.
"Eh? What rumor?" Yui blinked, her natural airheadedness making her a beat slower than everyone else.
Yumiko lowered her voice, putting on a deliberately mysterious tone. "You know, that one, 'Hanako of the Toilet'! They say on the third floor girls' bathroom of the old building, if you go to the third stall from the inside, knock three times on the door, then ask, 'Hanako-san, are you there?', you'll hear someone answer from inside."
The moment this classic school ghost story left her lips, the girls around them all showed expressions that were equal parts scared and thrilled.
"Waaah, that's so creepy."
"Is that for real? Has anyone actually tried it?"
Yui's face went a little pale. Her fingers tightened unconsciously around her pen. She was terrible at dealing with this kind of topic, but as part of the group, she had to "read the mood," to stay in step with everyone else.
"Ah... well, it does sound kind of scary." She forced a slightly stiff smile, trying to make herself look like the others, as if she were simply enjoying a little harmless thrill.
Natsume withdrew his gaze from the window and let it fall on Yui's back.
In his eyes, the world unfolded in a completely different way.
Those pale blue irises, praised once as the "Six Eyes," could see the very nature of all things. The air flowing through the classroom was not just oxygen and nitrogen, but faint, thin particles of cursed energy. Around each person, there clung a haze of negative emotions, weak or strong, like stains that only he could see.
And on Yui's body, the negative emotion called "fear" was spreading like a drop of black ink falling into clear water, slowly blooming outward, thicker than anyone else's in the room.
She was terrified.
Natsume calmly reached that conclusion in his heart.
He sighed softly. With his experience as a former jujutsu sorcerer from his previous life, he could not be more familiar with this sort of thing. Curses born from human negative emotions often crawled out from such rumors and urban legends. They were the embodiment of human fear, the filth lurking beneath everyday life.
To exorcise curses and save people, that was a jujutsu sorcerer's duty.
But after countless battles where life and death were separated by a single misstep, Natsume had grown tired. In this peaceful world stitched together from multiple slice-of-life anime, all he wanted was to live as an ordinary high school student, to experience the warm and mundane youth he had never known.
So he chose to transfer to Sobu High. He chose to keep his head down on purpose.
"Yui, your expression looks really stiff, you're not actually scared, are you?" Yumiko keenly noticed her friend's unease and teased her.
"N... no way! I just think... it's better not to mess with that kind of thing, you know?" Yui waved her hands in a panic, desperately trying to cover up her guilty conscience.
"Relax, relax, it's just a legend." Another girl, Ebina Hina, pushed up her glasses with a grin. "Still, it sounds really fun. How about we go check it out after school?"
That suggestion was like a stone tossed into a still pond, instantly stirring up a thousand ripples.
"Yeah, yeah, let's go!"
"Let's all go together! If there's a crowd, it won't be scary!"
The direction of the conversation had completely slipped out of Yui's control. She could only watch, helpless, as her friends enthusiastically planned this "after-school expedition," while the word "no" stuck in her throat, refusing to come out. She did not want to be called a scaredy-cat, and she did not want to be pushed out of the group.
Natsume took in the entire scene, then gave a small shake of his head. Humans were like this. They were always swept along by the will of the crowd, doing things against their own heart. Many tragedies, in the end, were born from this kind of idle curiosity.
"Ding dong..."
The final bell of the day finally rang, the teacher's voice announcing dismissal sounding like a horn of liberation.
Natsume packed his bag at an unhurried pace, fully intending, as usual, to be the first "go-home club" member to walk out of the classroom.
However, just as he stood up, he was called to a halt by the center of the popular group... Hayama Hayato.
"Natsume-kun." Hayama gave him a bright, easygoing smile, the kind of smile that almost no one could bring themselves to refuse. "We're heading to the old building to do a little exploring. Do you want to come?"
Natsume glanced at him and calmly declined. "No, I've got something to do."
His answer was crisp and decisive, without a second of hesitation, and the smile on Hayama's face froze for a brief moment. The classmates around them shot surprised looks in Natsume's direction. After all, refusing Hayato's invitation was practically unheard of in Class 2-F.
Natsume could not care less about those looks. He just wanted to leave this place of trouble as quickly as possible.
Yet as he walked past Yui, he suddenly paused.
He leaned slightly closer and spoke in a low voice that only the two of them could hear.
"If you don't want to go, then don't force yourself."
Yui's whole body trembled. She jerked her head up and stared at Natsume in shock. H... how did he know what she was thinking? This transfer student who always kept to himself, who hardly spoke to anyone, why would he suddenly say something like that to her?
Her lips parted, wanting to say something, but Natsume had already slung his single-strap bag over his shoulder and walked out of the classroom without looking back.
"Yui, what are you spacing out for? Let's go!" Yumiko grabbed her hand, not giving her a chance to refuse, and pulled her straight into the middle of the group.
Surrounded by her friends, Yui turned back to look at Natsume's figure disappearing at the far end of the corridor. A complicated emotion rose in her chest. That sudden, gentle concern was like a ripple in her heart, sending ripples spreading outward, one after another.
In the end, she still could not muster the courage to say no to her friends.
...
By the time dusk fell, the setting sun had dyed the sky a warm orange.
The old school building of Sobu High stood quietly in the shifting light and shadow, a silence that felt oddly eerie. It had long since been abandoned. Ivy crawled over the cracked walls, and the shattered windowpanes looked like empty eye sockets, hollow and watchful, spying on every person who dared step into this place.
"Whoa... this is creepier than I imagined."
"I'm suddenly kind of regretting this..."
The girls huddled together, their voices carrying a faint tremor. Whatever excitement they had felt at first had been washed away by the oppressive atmosphere before them.
"What are you scared of? There are so many of us here." Yumiko tried to sound calm and encouraging, but the way she clung tightly to Yui's arm betrayed her own nerves.
In the end, after rounds of hesitant nudging and pushing, they still forced themselves to go through with it. The one they pushed to the very front, of course, was the one who looked the most "harmless"... Yui.
"Yui, we're counting on you!"
"Yeah, yeah, you go knock on the door!"
"Eh? W-why me?!" Yui's expression was on the verge of tears.
"Because you're the cutest! Hanako-san definitely won't have the heart to scare you!"
That completely illogical reasoning somehow earned unanimous agreement from the group.
Unable to refuse and with nowhere to escape, Yui stood before the old wooden door of the girls' bathroom on the third floor. Her heart was pounding wildly, as if it would leap right out of her throat. Her friends were hiding far away at the stairwell, only their heads peeking out as they watched her nervously.
She took a deep breath, as if she were about to complete some solemn ritual, and slowly lifted her trembling hand.
All she could hope for now was that the rumor was fake, that nothing would happen.
As long as nothing happened, she could run away from this haunted place at once.
Yet she had no idea that in the shadow behind her, a curse invisible to ordinary eyes had already opened its mouth wide, a twisted grin forming silently, full of malice.