*A darkness is swallowing the mountain—and the exorcists are doing nothing.*
When lower ayakashi vanish from the Yatsuhara range without a trace—not exorcised, not devoured, but hollowed out until nothing remains but empty vessels waiting for orders—the Matoba clan's young head, Seiji Matoba, is the only one who sees the threat for what it is. A forbidden art. Ayakashi-name binding. The greatest taboo of the exorcist world, and someone is using it.
But Seiji has spent his whole life learning t
The Law of Ayakashi: Seiji Matoba's Conviction - The Night of Calling Names — How Are You Different from Me?
The second floor of the Kirinoya—a six-mat room.
The night's chill seeped through the old wooden walls, creeping steadily into the room.
Matoba Seiji lay on his back atop a futon that had been left spread out. His black suit jacket had been stripped off, and the collar of his white shirt hung open. At the nape of his neck, sweat not yet fully dried glistened wetly in the dim light of the paper lantern.
His breathing was shallow.
With every breath, a grinding pain shot through his chest. A heavy, dull agony, as though every bone in his body were being crushed from the inside. From his fingertips to his toes, a chill like emptiness poured in without cease—the aftermath of having his spiritual power torn out by the roots.
(...So this is what it means to lose every shikigami.)
Matoba stared vaguely at the grain of the ceiling.
His vision wavered from time to time.
That moment in the abandoned village surfaced again and again in his mind. Blocked by the barrier, pinned to the ground, watching his shikigami—one after another—called by name and sucked into the register.
(My shikigami...)
The back of his right hand burned.
An old burn scar. When he was small, the day his father's shikigami—a white fox—vanished on a mission. The day he reached out to grasp the fading light, and the backlash of spiritual power seared itself into this hand.
Now it throbbed, as if trying to resurrect the memory of that day along with it.
(Father...)
Behind his eyelids, a white light burst.
It had been a night of falling snow.
Matoba's small, frail hand stretched desperately into the darkness.
"Wait! Don't go! Please—don't leave me alone...!"
The young Matoba's cry echoed uselessly into the snowy night.
Before his eyes, his father's shikigami—the white fox—crumbled into motes of light. He reached and reached his small hand out to grasp that light. But it slipped through his fingers, smooth and untouchable.
"No...! No, no, no...!"
His vision warped and blurred with tears.
The instant the white fox vanished completely—
—Throb.
A searing, lancing pain shot through the back of his right hand.
"—Ah... aah...!"
The young Matoba collapsed where he stood. He clutched his right hand with his left, desperately. But the pain wouldn't stop. As if the final scream of the vanishing shikigami had been burned straight into this hand.
(This is punishment.)
That was what the young Matoba thought, then.
(Because I gave my heart to Father's shikigami. Because I thought of an ayakashi not as a tool, but as a friend—as family.)
(So this is punishment for me.)
Tears fell onto the snow, opening small holes.
(Never again. I will never again give my heart to an ayakashi.)
(An ayakashi is a tool. You use it, or you discard it.)
(Otherwise, I'll taste this pain again.)
—From that day on, the man called Matoba Seiji had lived by telling himself exactly that.
That was how it should have been.
And yet, now.
Now, having lost every shikigami, this burn scar burned as fiercely as it had that day.
(...No. This is different from then.)
Matoba gritted his back teeth.
(Then, I was just a small child. But now I am the head of the Matoba clan. I cannot afford to weaken over something like this.)
(...I cannot. And yet—)
His body wouldn't obey.
Even moving a single finger required tremendous force of will.
(Douan...)
Matoba recited the name in his mind like a curse.
(You took everything from me. My shikigami, my pride, my standing as head of the Matoba clan.)
(And now you mean to take even this life of mine.)
That was when it happened.
"Matoba-san."
From the corner of the room came a young man's voice.
Matoba slowly turned his head toward it.
In the dim light of the paper lantern, a single boy stood.
Grayish-brown hair. A slender frame. A pale hoodie draped over his shoulders. In his hand, he clutched a wet towel.
Natsume Takashi.
A strange boy who did not treat ayakashi as tools.
An uneasy ally, bound to Matoba only by a common enemy.
"...It's you."
Matoba's voice came out hoarse.
"How are you feeling? Your fever still doesn't seem to have come down."
Natsume knelt at Matoba's bedside. He laid the towel he held gently against Matoba's forehead. The cool sensation felt good against his fevered skin.
"...I'm not obligated to have you worry about me."
Matoba spoke with his eyes closed, as though spitting the words out.
"Maybe not. But I can't just leave you like this, either."
Natsume's voice was quiet. But beneath it lay a clear wariness toward Matoba—and, separate from that, something complicated, a tangle of other feelings.
"...What about Madara?"
Matoba asked.
"If you mean Sensei, he's outside keeping watch. Watching for Douan's shikigami, in case they come near."
"I see. ...That beckoning cat, of all things."
Matoba gave a small laugh.
"Sensei isn't a beckoning cat."
Natsume said it, sounding just slightly put out.
"...You call that ayakashi 'Sensei'?"
"I do. ...We've known each other a long time."
Natsume turned the towel over on Matoba's forehead.
"...Matoba-san."
Natsume paused a moment, then spoke.
"In that abandoned village, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't save your shikigami, couldn't break the barrier. ...If Sensei hadn't been there, I don't know what would have happened to me."
Natsume's voice trembled with frustration and helplessness.
"I chose to fight alongside you because I wanted to help the ayakashi. And yet I couldn't do a thing."
Natsume clenched his fist tight.
"...You want to save the ayakashi?"
Matoba asked quietly in return.
"I do. I can't just leave those ayakashi who were hollowed out like that."
Natsume looked straight into Matoba's eyes and said it.
"I see."
Matoba said only that.
And then, the next moment.
"—Then let me ask you, Natsume-kun."
The tone of Matoba's voice changed.
It was not the hoarse, feeble voice from before.
It was quiet, cold, sharp as a blade—the usual voice of Matoba Seiji.
"With your way—the way that never made ayakashi into tools—were you able to save them?"
Natsume's shoulders gave a small jerk.
"In that abandoned village, what did that sweet conviction of yours accomplish? That heart of yours that thinks of ayakashi as friends, as family—did it break that barrier? Did that kindness of yours save even one of my shikigami?"
Matoba's words drove relentlessly into the depths of Natsume's chest.
"...That's—"
Natsume faltered.
He wanted to argue back.
To say, No.
To say, My way isn't wrong.
Ayakashi have hearts.
Ayakashi, too, are seeking help.
That's why I want to save them.
—He wanted to shout it.
And yet.
No voice came.
(...No.)
Natsume told himself desperately, in his mind.
(What Matoba-san is saying is wrong. Treating ayakashi as tools—that's absolutely wrong.)
(...But.)
Into Natsume's mind rose the scene from that abandoned village.
Himself, blocked by the barrier, able to do nothing.
Himself, only able to watch as Matoba's shikigami were called by name, one after another, and vanished.
(I couldn't do anything.)
(With my way, I couldn't save anyone.)
(...Matoba-san is right.)
(I'm just a powerless child.)
The strength drained from Natsume's fist.
"...You ought to be aware of that softness of yours."
Matoba declared it coldly.
"An ayakashi is a tool. You use it, or you discard it. Without that resolve, no one can serve as an exorcist. ...You are not an exorcist. So you can live with those soft ideas. But that softness will, one day, destroy something precious to you."
Matoba's voice sounded as though he were lecturing himself.
"...Even so."
Natsume, head lowered, forced the words out.
"Even so, I don't want to make ayakashi into tools. I know that ayakashi have hearts. So I want to save them—in my own way."
Natsume's voice was trembling.
But in his eyes burned a strong, inextinguishable light.
Matoba stared at those eyes.
(...This boy still hasn't realized his own softness.)
(No—he has realized it, and still he refuses to let go of that softness.)
(...Foolish. But that foolishness is too bright for me to look at.)
Matoba closed his eyes.
"...I see. Then that's fine. Go on, then—walk the path I don't know, by your own conviction."
Matoba said that, and let out a small breath.
(...I, too, will simply walk my own path.)
(An ayakashi is a tool. If not, then like my father—)
Matoba murmured it in his heart.
That was when it happened.
—A crackle.
The air in the room shuddered.
"—What?"
Natsume lifted his head.
Matoba opened his eyes as well.
"...The barrier is wavering."
Matoba said it low.
In this room, Matoba had set up a simple barrier. A barrier to keep ayakashi from intruding.
That barrier was now being touched from the outside by something.
No—rather than touched, the closer word was sewn.
As though stitching cloth with needle and thread.
Slowly, but surely—as though sewing shut the barrier's rents, or perhaps sewing them wider.
"...It's coming."
Matoba tried to rise.
But his body wouldn't move.
"Matoba-san, don't move!"
Natsume restrained him.
"...You're the one who should get back. This is not an opponent for you."
Matoba glared sharply at Natsume.
"B-but..."
Just as Natsume began to speak—
—Softly.
The darkness in the corner of the room swayed.
The flame of the paper lantern flickered large for an instant.
And the next moment.
There stood a man.
A gaunt man.
Somewhere in his mid-fifties, perhaps. A body thin to the bone, all skin and skeleton. He wore a black kimono. His hair was disheveled, shot through with white. Deep wrinkles were carved into his face.
But his eyes alone were strange.
Glowing, luminous yellow eyes.
They retained a faint trace of the man Matoba had once adored as a kind uncle when he was small—and yet those eyes had already lost all human warmth.
Hiiragi Douan.
A forbidden-arts practitioner exiled from the Matoba clan twenty years ago.
And the very man who had now taken everything from Matoba.
"...It's been a long time, Seiji."
Douan spoke quietly, looking down at Matoba.
His voice was hoarse and low, with an eerie resonance, as though echoing up from the bottom of a grave.
"...Douan."
Matoba gritted his teeth.
"You've grown. The last time I saw you, you were still this small. ...Ah, but that look in your eyes hasn't changed. You're the spitting image of your father."
Douan stared hard at Matoba's face.
"...Your father was a fool who gave his heart to an ayakashi. That's why he died. ...You're his child. I thought surely you'd make the same mistake, but... it seems you're a little cleverer than your father. You've lived by resolving that ayakashi are tools, haven't you."
Douan's words drove deep into Matoba's chest.
"...Silence."
Matoba growled low.
"Do not insult my father."
"Insult? I merely stated a fact. Your father gave his heart to an ayakashi. And he was tripped up by that affection, and he died. ...A death no exorcist should ever die."
Douan smiled thinly.
"...That wound on your right hand. You got it when your father's shikigami vanished, didn't you. ...That night the white fox disappeared. You wept and tried to grasp that fading light. ...Even knowing it was futile."
Matoba's burn scar throbbed sharply.
"...Why do you know that?"
Matoba forced the words out.
"Why, you ask? ...Did you think I wouldn't know? I was once an exorcist of the Matoba clan. I was on close terms with your father, too. ...I know that night well."
Douan glanced at Matoba's right hand.
"...That wound of yours is proof of your weakness. A wound carved into you with the folly of giving your heart to an ayakashi. ...And you carry that wound while still insisting that ayakashi are tools. ...How ridiculous."
Douan's words tightened slowly around Matoba's heart.
"...Your opponent is me. Douan. ...Keep your hands off this boy."
Matoba spoke with a trembling voice.
"Oh? This boy, is it."
For the first time, Douan turned his eyes to Natsume.
"...Natsume Takashi. Natsume Reiko's grandson. ...I see
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