The morning at Seimeidou always began with the scent of ink. A spirit talisman inscribed with Sanskrit characters glowed white for a single moment. A paper bird took flight into the void. Then, three seconds later, it scattered into mist. For three days, she had repeated the same thing. "…Next." Itsumi Souichiro's voice quietly cleaved the air of Seimeidou. The master-rank onmyoji, past forty, bearing sensitivity level "Four," a man who had long overseen the training of the Aindou family's children—offered another white spirit talisman in silence today. Neither reproach nor consolation. Only a slip of paper extended, as always. Akina received it. As she did, her consciousness drifted toward the northwest. Through walls, through the copse of trees, beyond the sealed torii gate. For three days, her thoughts had been drawn back to that place again and again. Like the pull of a spirit vein, she could not stop it. Gingetsu's voice clung to her ear. Low, serene, bearing the accumulated weight of three hundred years—that voice. How many times Akina had replayed it in her mind during shikigami training, she had long since stopped counting. The paper bird scattered. Three seconds. Itsumi's gaze grew heavy for a moment. It did not become words. Yet—this taciturn master could not possibly fail to sense that Akina's concentration was scattered. The air of Seimeidou was sensitive to spiritual power. A disrupted focus would transmit even to the rosewood floorboards, she had once read in a treatise on technique. "We shall end here for today." Itsumi said this while putting away the talismans. It was an earlier dismissal than usual. Akina bowed in silence. That night, before the lamp in her own room, Akina sat for a long time with her calligraphy notebook of spirit talismans resting on her lap, lost in reverie. The brush, laden with ink, had stopped upon the paper. The first stroke of the Sanskrit character she had meant to write was drying, incomplete. *(I thought I was withholding my answer.)* That was who she had been three days ago. Carefully considering the offer of a transaction. Calmly judging the danger of touching forbidden arts. Such pretense had existed somewhere. But. The amber glow of the lamp illuminated the notebook's page. The first stroke of the Sanskrit character hung suspended there. Akina set down her brush and looked at her own right hand. Those fingertips that had traced the seal mark on the stone pillar. *(I am afraid. Of giving my answer.)* If she gave her answer—whichever answer she gave—there would be no more reason to go there. If she said "I accept the transaction," she would step onto the path of forbidden arts. If she said "I refuse," the pretext for standing before that torii gate would vanish. Either answer would end something. Akina thought thus far, then took up her brush again. She wrote the continuation of the Sanskrit character. Clumsy characters lined up on the paper. Still in her training garments, she put on her wooden clogs. She did not take the rain cape. Tonight was overcast, but it was not raining. More than that—the self-justification of going as an extension of her training was no longer necessary. She realized it was no longer necessary only when she entered the outer realm, in the chilled air. The damp scent of decomposing leaves reached deep into her nostrils. As the trees grew denser, the night air grew heavier. With each step, the temperature seemed to drop—a coldness of a different kind than autumn's night chill, creeping up the sleeves of her training garment. At last, the stone seal torii came into view. There, Akina's feet stopped for a moment. The outline of the spiritual aura emanating from the seal mark—was closer to this side of the torii than it had been three days ago. Faintly, yet certainly. As though the torii itself were leaning slightly toward her—the weight of the fact that something had begun to change in these three days spread slowly through the depths of her chest. *(I have come again.)* Something stirred within her breast. Not fear. Not quite expectation either. Akina had long since consciously avoided giving that thing a name. Yet she felt the texture of that "stirring" alone, cradled in the palm of her hand. "Three days, then." The voice came. Gingetsu stood just inside the sealed torii—certainly closer than before—his silver-white long hair trembling faintly in the night air, his deep crimson eyes quietly capturing Akina. His pale, translucent skin seemed to bear a strange luminescence even in a moonless night. There was no surprise in his voice, no gesture of welcome. Only as a confirmation of fact. The way he had counted three days as a matter of course seeped through his low, smooth tone. "…I have come." Akina said. It was not an excuse. Only, honest words were all she had. Gingetsu's deep crimson eyes narrowed slightly. "Is it your answer to the transaction?" "No. Not yet." "Then why have you come?" Akina paused for a moment. "…Because I wished to come here, I came." Silence. Gingetsu seemed about to speak, then stopped. Akina felt the quality of that silence shift slightly. A being who had lived three hundred years, momentarily thwarted by a single word from a human girl—it was that rare kind of stillness. "You are as troublesome as ever." His voice held exasperation, yet there was no sign of turning her away. "Then come. Not here, but there is a pavilion a little to the east." ＊ Fifty paces east of the sealed torii—a crumbling pavilion, overgrown with ivy and moss, stood in the copse of a moonless night. *Oborou-tei*, Akina called it in her heart. She did not know if it had an actual name, but she thought such a name suited this place. Ivy clung to the rotting pillars, and through gaps in the roof, the night sky was visible. Someone must have built it long ago for moon-viewing—now, as a place no one visited, it lay forgotten in the moss. "This pavilion has existed for three hundred years," Gingetsu said. The spiritual power of the sealed torii did not reach this far, so its outline grew faintly thin—yet still in his materialized, pale form—he lowered himself to sit at the roots of an old tree. Three hundred years. Those words fell upon Akina's breast with concrete weight. When this pavilion was built, present-day Tokyo did not exist. Streetcars did not exist, moving pictures did not exist, the Spiritual Affairs Bureau did not exist. Gingetsu has been in this place since before all of it. It was in this moment that three hundred years became not a number, but a sensation that truly reached her breast. *(This person…has been here for three hundred years.)* Akina touched her hand to the pavilion's pillar. The coldness of the moss and the ancient wood beneath it reached her fingertips. "…It is a complex feeling," Akina said quietly. "Why?" "Because I am touching something that has existed since three hundred years ago, for the first time tonight." Gingetsu did not answer for a while. His deep crimson eyes watched Akina's profile with a certain quietness. Akina withdrew a spirit talisman from her sash. She always kept a few in the pockets of her training garment. It was habit. "…If I may, would it be all right to practice a little?" Gingetsu's response was delayed by a beat. "The order is reversed." "In what way?" "You say you came because you wished to come to this place, yet you are trying to create a reason to practice spirit talismans." Akina's hand stopped. It was a direct hit. Completely, a direct hit. She had come because she wished to come—that alone should have been enough, yet she had been trying to create the pretext of practice within herself. A demon who had lived three hundred years had seen through human shallow self-defense in a single sentence. "…I apologize." Akina said it honestly. Gingetsu let out a short breath, something like exasperation in it. "Very well. Try." "I may practice?" "In any case, there is a problem with how you use your spiritual power. I shall observe." Akina took up a spirit talisman. She sharpened her consciousness to a fine point. The Sanskrit character written in ink glowed faintly as it received the spiritual power from her fingertips—and the paper bird took flight into the void, scattering into mist after three seconds. "You are overflowing, as I thought," Gingetsu said quietly. His gaze, observing Akina's hands, bore a strangeness—not the look of a teacher, but something more oddly personal in its attentiveness. "Your spiritual power flows all at once, so the vessel cannot receive it all. Like threading silk through a needle's eye—thin, sustained consciousness." Akina took up the next talisman. Thread it through. Thin. Sustained. Change the form of consciousness—this was a different way of teaching than Master Itsumi's. Itsumi had said "adjust the amount of spiritual power." Not amount, but quality. The manner of threading, Gingetsu was saying. Akina attempted it. With the image of drawing her spiritual power thin, she guided it along the first stroke of the Sanskrit character in the talisman. Like oil being drawn up by a lamp wick, Akina thought. Not poured in haste, but drawn up naturally as if by capillary action— The paper bird took flight. Three seconds passed. It did not scatter. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Akina's eyes followed the paper bird. Above the hazy pavilion in the moonless night, the white paper bird circled. Threading through the gaps in the roof tangled with ivy, it swayed gently, yet continued to fly with certainty. Thirty seconds—at last the paper bird made one circuit around the pavilion and returned to Akina's hand. "…!" Words would not come. Three seconds. What had flown for only three seconds now flew for more than thirty. Akina's eyes followed its trajectory until the paper bird scattered into mist. Something burst within her chest—joy was not the word for it; the sensation of one part of the wall she had pursued for three years cracking, spreading through her entire body. "Like oil being drawn up by a lamp wick." Akina spoke as though to herself. Excitement spilled from her lips and would not stop. "Not pouring water all at once, but letting the wick draw it up naturally—it was that feeling." Gingetsu seemed about to speak, then stopped. There was a pause. "…You verbalize it more interestingly than I expected." His voice had changed. Not exasperation, not praise—something like the pure surprise of a being who had lived three hundred years encountering something unforeseen. Akina noticed the shift in his tone and felt her face grow warm. *(Why is my face warm. Why.)* Akina tried to compose her expression while keeping her gaze on the scattered traces of the paper bird. The very act of trying to compose herself felt like a confession of something, which only made her more troubled. She took up the next talisman. She attempted again. The paper bird flew again. This time twenty-five seconds—shorter than before, yet the three-second barrier was long since broken. Again she attempted. Over thirty seconds. Again, again, again— Thin beads of sweat had formed on her brow from the continuous release of shikigami. In that moment. Something cold touched her brow. Porcelain-like, without body heat, yet bearing a certain will—a fingertip touched Akina's brow once, then withdrew. Akina's movements stopped. Her breath stopped. Her hand holding the talisman froze in the air, and Akina looked toward Gingetsu. She looked. Deep crimson eyes were right there. At some point, Gingetsu had risen and come to her side. His fingertip had already withdrawn, but its sensation remained on her skin—cold, porcelain-like, as though the coldness of three hundred years had been condensed— "Sweat is poison to the body." Gingetsu said. His voice held something like a pretense. As though he himself thought it somewhat abrupt—that rare quality was in his voice. Aki