Kaito checked the windows and doors one by one.
Kitchen, bedroom, bathroom.
All closed.
He picked up his bag from the floor, pocketed his keys, and walked to the front door.
On the wall opposite the door, the talisman hung above eye level.
Old paper, old ink, the edges slightly brown.
It kept the house sealed — no Ghost, no Lingering Spirit, no Umbral could cross into a closed space it protected.
The rules were simple.
Any opening in the house and they could enter.
An Aberration already inside was a different problem entirely — the talisman couldn't touch what was already through, and whatever got in could leave whenever it wanted but couldn't return without finding another opening.
Simple rules.
They had kept him alive for a week in his aunt's house.
He gave the talisman a small nod and turned to the door.
He looked through the peephole.
The porch was empty.
The front path was empty.
The street beyond the gate sat quiet in the morning light.
He opened the door.
Shizuka stood on the porch with her arms spread wide, silver hair catching the sun, her smile wide and warm and waiting.
"Kai~~~ I was waiting for you."
He stepped back on instinct. She stepped forward.
"You look nice today." Her red eyes moved over him slowly, top to bottom. "Black suits you. It always suits you."
"Don't." He held up a hand.
She ignored it.
She reached out toward his collar, fingers light, straightening something that didn't need straightening.
He slapped her hand away.
She laughed, low and unhurried, and pulled her hand back without any urgency. "So cold in the morning, Kai~~~. Give me a hug at least. Just one."
"No."
"A smooch then."
"No."
She tilted her head. Her smile stayed exactly where it was. "You're leaving for university?"
"Yes."
Her smile shifted — still there, but softer at the edges, the kind of soft that had nothing gentle underneath it.
She leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed, the black jacket falling open.
"Take a holiday," she said.
"Stay home. We could spend the whole day here."
"No."
She held his gaze for a moment. Then she exhaled, slow, and looked away. "Fine. But come back early. Don't stay late."
"I'll be back when I'm back."
"Kai~~~." Her voice dropped slightly. Still sweet. "Come back early for me, won't you?."
She pushed off the doorframe and stepped toward him, arms opening.
He put his hand out and drove it straight into her upper stomach, spiritual energy flaring pale in his palm.
The shockwave hit the air with a sharp crack.
Shizuka left the ground, cleared the porch railing, and hit the outer wall back-first with a thud that shook the bushes.
Her body hung there for one second, pressed flat against the bricks, before dropping down into the greenery below.
"Don't come close to me," he said.
He stepped off the porch and walked out the gate.
"Try not to miss me too much… actually no, miss me a lot~~~." Her voice floated up from the bushes, still cheerful.
He didn't look back.
She didn't follow.
She never did.
The Reizen name was known enough that clan members or people connected to them moved through the same parts of the city.
The nosy ones would look into her background.
Her existence.
And if something felt off, they would run a detection spell.
A detection spell on Shizuka would tell them exactly what she was.
An Umbral.
After that, they would come to seal her, and shame him more for being associated with an Umbral.
She knew that.
So did he.
He breathed out and walked toward the metro station.
The street was already moving.
People heading to work, school kids in loose groups, a few university students with bags and earphones.
Nobody was in a hurry exactly, but nobody was stopping either.
Everyone just wanted the day to start so it could finish.
He had spent most of his life inside the Reizen estate and he still hadn't gotten used to how much he liked this — the ordinary weight of a morning that had nothing to do with him.
He looked around.
A few Lingering Spirits drifted through the crowd, slow and pale.
Most people walked straight through them without knowing.
A woman in old clothes stood at the corner, her eyes on the school kids passing by, her face still.
A man in a company uniform sat on a bench with his hands on his knees, staring at the street ahead, going nowhere.
An old man in a grey jacket caught Kaito looking.
His eyes went wide.
Kaito raised a hand.
The old man stared for another second.
Then, slowly, he raised his hand back.
Unsure.
Like he was checking if it was really meant for him.
Kaito smiled and kept walking.
He got to the metro station, swiped through, and scanned the platform.
A train was already there.
He stepped on and found an empty seat near the window, settled his bag on his lap, and sat back.
The doors closed.
The train pulled out and the city began moving past the glass — dense and packed near his stop, the streets narrowing and widening, the buildings older and newer in patches.
Gradually the skyline opened up and the streets below got cleaner as the train pushed into the university district.
He watched it all and didn't think about anything in particular.
The front gate of the Uni was loud when he arrived.
Students moved through it in pairs and groups, falling into conversations mid-step, comfortable with each other in the easy way of people who had been around the same faces long enough that it stopped requiring effort.
He stood just inside the gate for a moment.
A girl near the vending machines was laughing, her hand on her friend's arm.
Two guys from what looked like his classmates had their phones out, comparing something between them.
A group by the steps were making plans for after class, their voices overlapping.
He wanted to walk over to any one of them.
Ask something simple.
Say anything that didn't come out wrong.
But he couldn't.
He had been here a week — five university days — and he had spoken to exactly four people.
Two of those conversations had ended in a silence long enough that he was fairly certain both parties had quietly decided it hadn't happened.
He started walking toward his building.
The problem was simple.
He had no practice at it.
He had grown up inside the Reizen estate.
Tutors instead of teachers.
Training, instead of after school clubs.
The people around him were family members who measured everything by spiritual strength, and his was low.
That was the beginning and end of what they thought about him.
His sister hated him openly.
He was more scared of her than his father.
She hadn't even tried to stop him when he said he was leaving.
His cousins had found his weak output funny.
The kind of joke that gets made once and then keeps getting made until it isn't a joke anymore.
There had been no classmates. No school trips. No years of sitting next to the same strangers until they stopped being strangers.
He had simply never learned how any of it worked.
His father had given up on him formally.
No conversation. No discussion.
One day the training assessments stopped including his name. That was it.
His last birthday had passed without a word from him.
His cousins, he was glad to be away from.
His mother loved him. She was the only one from his family he missed. He texted her every day.
He pushed through the door of his Introduction to Psychology classroom and found a seat in the middle row.
Not too close to the front, not too far back. The seats around him filled up one by one. He pulled out his notebook and uncapped his pen.
The class was manageable.
He was behind on a few things from the first week but not badly enough to panic.
He wrote what the professor put on the board and kept up.
The door opened.
A girl came in, light brown hair loose around her shoulders, a canvas bag in one hand.
She scanned the room.
The front row was mostly taken.
Her eyes moved across the seats and landed on him.
She smiled.
Direct and warm, her eyes bright.
She walked over.
"Is anyone sitting here?" she asked.
"No," he said.
She pulled the chair out and sat down, settled her bag under the desk, and pushed her hair back from her face.
She turned to him and held out her hand.
"I'm Hana," she said.
He looked at it for half a second. Then he shook it.
"Kaito," he said.