The next day.
The night had passed quickly.
"The Past and Future exist simultaneously. What Amber Mansion requires is balance."
"Every successive clan head of the Minamoto family, upon death, has had their soul imprisoned, existing as 'the Past' within Amber Mansion. A thousand years of accumulation. This place became a haunted realm long ago."
"At night, those curses emerge. Staying in your room keeps you safe. Another exchange, another cost."
Another sunless day. The sky was oppressively dark, and after so many days without clear weather, the interior of Amber Mansion had grown damp. A thin film of mold clung to the walls like a living carpet.
In the main hall, the dim light swayed and guttered. Nanami Kira explained all of this in a calm, measured tone.
"If you knew all this, why didn't you say so sooner?"
Zenin Aka narrowed his eyes. The motion tugged at the faint scar across his forehead. He fixed Nanami Kira with a steady look.
"Why didn't you speak up earlier? Sayahi-san might still be alive."
"It was only a guess. And I did warn all of you."
Nanami Kira's expression didn't change. His voice stayed quiet.
"Besides, didn't you all agree to search together? Why was Sayahi-san alone?"
"Now, now, let's not argue."
Tsuruda Tasuke waved a placating hand. He played peacemaker with a tone of practiced regret.
"Sayahi-san's passing is truly a tragedy. But we must look forward."
This old fox isn't exactly innocent either... all those pretty words hiding nothing.
Kira and Zenin Aka fell silent at the same time, as if by mutual accord. There was no point pushing further.
They had to maintain the facade of peace within the mansion.
One person had died, and the matter was dropped just like that.
A single human life. That light. That disposable.
Nearly everyone had grasped the true meaning of the succession game. In a place where you couldn't kill each other directly, eliminating the competition was the only thing that mattered.
Sayahi's death wasn't meaningless. At the very least, it confirmed Kira's hypothesis. At the very least, it taught the survivors that you did not go out after dark.
But they still had to smile at each other. Still had to maintain the surface-level civility. Still had to live their polite little lies. Still had to play at being righteous.
Nanami Kira didn't mind the masquerade. He'd lived this way for years, drifting, feigning normalcy, pretending to be the right kind of person. It was what he did best.
And Sayahi's death hadn't been meaningless in another sense. Nanami Kira's seemingly kind "warning" had, in truth, been a calculated provocation. And it had served its purpose: he'd won himself a voice within the mansion without drawing suspicion.
They spoke in the language of human beings. They discussed rescue. They talked about escape. But in their hearts, they had already surrendered to the mansion, had already accepted their captivity, had already abandoned everything for the sake of survival, and dressed it all up in the garments of righteousness. To earn the right to be kept alive, they had begun tearing at one another with their teeth.
Speaking of salvation while their hearts were already caged. Speaking of rescue while their hands already gripped the knife.
Just as Jasmine had described them:
"Livestock raised in the mansion."
One's nature, habits, personal preferences: all of it could be hidden away, concealed from others. But you must never deny them in yourself. You must never abandon them. Yet people always gave Nanami Kira a feeling of alienation. Of falseness.
It was that falseness he despised. The one thing a killer could never truly comprehend.
Perhaps this was the reason Nanami Kira could never pass as "normal."
He would never understand human beings.
Not that he counted himself among the virtuous, either. He acted only for himself, always selfish, and therefore couldn't very well reproach himself for anything.
Nanami Kira would do what everyone else did. Use every tool at his disposal. Show no mercy. Betray anyone.
To overturn this cage.
No one could domesticate a wild animal.
"Regardless, finding the barrier node is the priority."
The young lady of the Minamoto house raised a pale hand and put forward the proposal.
A futile effort, really. Setting aside the fact that Zenin Aka had already sent his shikigami to sweep the entire mansion with nothing to show for it, Hoshino Ei had searched too, and found no trace of a node whatsoever.
"Who was the last person to see Sayahi?"
"The enemy is in the shadows. The situation is deeply irregular. Our signals are blocked by the Curtain; we can't contact the outside. The most urgent thing is to elect a leader, or we'll fall apart."
"I nominate—"
The debate swirled on.
Time trickled past. Autumn rain fell and fell, drenching the season.
"I think the picture's clear enough now."
Zenin Aka sat with narrowed eyes, the black Anaconda curled around his arm, tongue flicking in and out.
"Amber Mansion has three floors. The first is just the reception hall and dining room. The second floor is where we live; each of us has a room. Every corner of both floors has been searched. No sign of the node."
"The third floor is the warehouse. And at the very back of it, there's a Curtain."
"It's the only place we haven't explored yet."
"According to jujutsu theory, by sacrificing concealment and making the node easier to find, the caster can exchange that vulnerability for a more powerful Curtain. And there's no more conspicuous place in this entire mansion than the third-floor warehouse."
"But what if it's a trap?" Sorako tilted her head. "Somewhere that obvious has to be suspicious, right? If it's a trap, we're all finished."
"You need to understand: if Amber Mansion wanted us dead, it has a thousand ways to do it. Its goal is to select an heir, not slaughter us."
Every eye in the room turned to Nanami Kira.
He leaned against the wall, nodded, and said quietly:
"I have no objections. Logically speaking, Amber Mansion wouldn't set an ambush."
He met Zenin Aka's gaze with a look that was almost a smile.
The question had shifted, from how to find the node to how to breach the third floor's barrier.
The warehouse was vast. Truly, impossibly vast; the far end vanished into darkness.
Row upon row of treasures slumbered under layers of dust: Tang dynasty porcelain, Nara-period ukiyo-e... and Cursed Tools of every description. This was the Tachibana Clan's hoard, the oldest jujutsu family's collection, amassed over a thousand years.
The great doors swung shut behind them with a heavy, muffled thud.
Nanami Kira and his group moved through the darkness. Before long, they reached the innermost chamber.
A thick Curtain blanketed it, sealing off everything within.
Powerful. Nearly on par with the one enclosing the entire mansion.
Time crawled forward. The group attempted every method of breach they could think of.
All of them failed.
Naturally. This was a Curtain that even Nanami Kira, once ranked third at Jujutsu High, couldn't break.
Everything was going smoothly. Everything was going exactly as expected.
He called out silently: Ready, Hoshino?
"Hmph! I'm not telling you! This is what Kira-kun gets for flirting with every woman in sight. I've got a temper too, you know! I'm not going to just—"
He gave the hand in his breast pocket a squeeze.
"Ngh... oww... d-damn you..."
Then, in this moment of dead silence, of total stalemate:
A strange sound came from beyond the door.
"Emerge from darkness, blacker than darkness."
Shadow poured from the abyss, swallowing everything.
"Purify that which is impure."
Something had changed.