The Shadow Behind

The moon set and the sun rose, bringing the arrival of day. As the darkness gradually receded, a new day began.

Morning sunlight spilled across the campus. Students from all over took their places and began their day of learning. As the sun climbed higher, the morning classes were already half over.

"Ugh..."

At a seat by the window, a girl with long chestnut hair, Hayakawa Rin, stretched deeply. After a wide yawn, she rubbed her bleary eyes, her face a mask of exhaustion.

"So sleepy... I really shouldn't have stayed up late gaming... I almost fell asleep in class..." Hayakawa Rin muttered in a tiny voice. She looked down at the textbook on her desk and pouted.

'This is bad... I've been in a daze all morning. I didn't catch half of what the teacher was saying... and I didn't have the energy to take notes... I feel like I've missed so much.'

Thinking this, Hayakawa Rin scratched her head, wondering what to do. Finally, her gaze landed on the black-haired girl sitting in front of her.

"Um... Fushimi, could I borrow your notes to copy? Just for the last few classes..." Standing up slightly from her seat, Hayakawa Rin spoke softly to the girl in front.

"Sure... here." With a flat tone and without looking back, Miketsu handed her notebook over her shoulder. Hayakawa Rin immediately took it with a look of joy and placed it on her desk.

She pulled out her own notebook, straightened it, and gripped her ballpoint pen. Once everything was ready, Hayakawa Rin flipped open Miketsu's notebook. But the moment she prepared to start copying, she froze in place.

"This..."

After a long pause, Hayakawa Rin felt like she didn't even know where to start. Staring at the contents of Miketsu's notebook, she felt dizzy.

'Fushimi's handwriting... it's so cursive, and it's almost entirely Kanji... I can't read this at all!' Hayakawa Rin screamed internally. The way Miketsu wrote was simply too difficult for her to decipher.

Since returning to the modern era and having the convenience of ballpoint pens, Miketsu's writing ability had improved significantly. While her handwriting was still quite cursive, it was no longer the crooked mess of a brush pen; it was actually quite legible. However, Hayakawa Rin still couldn't understand it for one simple reason: the proportion of Kanji was absurdly high.

Modern Japanese is very different from the Japanese of the Heian period a thousand years ago. In the Heian period, writing was done almost exclusively in Kanji. Modern Japanese, to reduce the cost of learning, added Hiragana and Katakana—essentially phonetic scripts.

These Kana can be used to spell out the sounds of the language, simplifying the learning process. Japanese people start learning Kana in elementary school and can write entire essays using them. However, essays written purely in Kana suffer from issues like homophones and ambiguity. To increase clarity and eliminate confusion, students learn Kanji in middle and high school to replace parts where Kana might be problematic. A mix of Kanji and Kana is used to construct a normal text. Generally, the more professional or formal the document, the more Kanji is required to express precise meanings.

Therefore, while there is no fixed rule for the ratio of Kanji to Kana, it is generally true that the higher one's education, the more Kanji they use. Elementary school essays are pure Kana; middle school uses Kana with a bit of Kanji; high school uses a moderate amount; and university papers are heavy with Kanji.

Hayakawa Rin was a high school freshman. However, Miketsu's notes were written in a style that screamed, 'If I can use Kanji, I won't use Kana.' Normally, Japanese is Kana interspersed with Kanji. Miketsu's notes were Kanji interspersed with a bit of Kana. The Kanji density was so high it was ridiculous, making it completely unintelligible to Hayakawa Rin, who had just graduated from middle school.

'This... there are way too many Kanji I don't recognize... even a university professor wouldn't write this many Kanji in one article! I can't read a word!'

Looking at the notebook, a bewildered Hayakawa Rin screamed helplessly in her heart. Meanwhile, in the front seat, Miketsu was scrolling through the news on her phone. Her gaze fixed on one headline.

"Bus accident in Midori-cho yesterday evening; no fatalities reported..."

'It's already been suppressed... they move fast,' Miketsu thought while munching on a potato chip.

After the incident yesterday, she had immediately used her contract to send a message to Tsuruha at the main shrine, telling her to use the shrine's influence to handle the situation and erase the impact of the event.

Nowadays, the Inari Shrine was far more than just a federation of shrines. After a thousand years of development, its role as a religious institution in modern society was merely a facade. In reality, it was a shadow empire hidden beneath the surface of the modern world. Its influence reached into military industry, energy, communications, technology, the internet, and machinery. Many major corporations and zaibatsu were actually controlled by Inari. Its sphere of influence covered Japan and reached across the globe, possessing countless secret organizations and maintaining close ties with the Lunar Capital.

In the last century, the Inari main shrine had even directly opposed the "State Shinto" that represented the Japanese militarist government. The two sides had engaged in decades of overt and covert struggle. Ultimately, the Inari main shrine emerged victorious and pushed for the end of the war. Since then, the Japanese government had been unable to restrain Inari's power; instead, through various secret agreements, the Inari main shrine could interfere with the government.

'But then again... the malicious spirit I encountered in the tunnel was strong enough to rival a fairly powerful yokai. Has no one bothered to deal with a creature like that when it's been running rampant in that area for so long?' Miketsu thought, looking out the window as she finished another chip.

During class time, in a second-year high school classroom, Yotsuya Miko sat in her seat, focusing on the lecture. In front of her, several grotesque and bizarre aberrations continued to wander.

'Ugh... stop blocking the blackboard...'

With a calm expression, Miko spoke to herself internally. Facing the several grotesque ghosts in the classroom, her heart was churning as usual, overflowing with terror. However, her long-practiced mental fortitude allowed her to maintain a facade of indifference.

Normally, when facing these wandering ghosts, Miko could only suppress her fear and pretend to be calm, letting the high-pressure emotions torture her mind and body. But now, things were different. She had a way to relieve the pressure.

Watching the twisted ghosts drift back and forth, the pressure of fear in Miko's heart spiked. At that moment, she reached into her desk and accurately gripped an object inside her bag. It was the handgun she had used the previous night.

The moment she gripped the gun, an indescribable sense of security washed over her. The pressure of fear was instantly alleviated, but it was replaced by a different emotion.

'I really want to just blow those guys away with one shot...'

A restless impulse stirred within her, trying to drive her to draw the gun and exterminate all the disgusting things in front of her. Miko only managed to stabilize this restlessness through sheer self-control; after all, she couldn't just pull out a gun and start shooting in a public place.

Now, Miko faced a new dilemma. If she didn't secretly hold the gun, she felt terrified. But if she did hold it, she couldn't resist the urge to wipe them all out...

Finally, the bell rang, and the ghosts left the classroom along with the students. Miko, still gripping the handgun, let out a deep sigh of relief.

'At least they're gone for now... It looks like I really need to learn how to master these eyes...' Miko murmured to herself as she pulled a business card from her bag. It was for a certain shrine.

Kagami-oboro Inari Shrine...

'I guess I have to go there after school... I should remember to buy some cola on the way...'

As Miko continued her internal monologue, a voice suddenly rang out near her ear.

"Ouch!!"

Startled, Miko turned her head to see a blonde girl who had tripped and fallen face-first in the aisle next to her. The girl was now clutching her forehead, sitting up on the floor and speaking.

"Ow... that really hurts. I tripped again... how many times has it been today..."

'How do you even trip in a place like this? If I remember correctly, this aisle is perfectly flat...' Miko couldn't help but criticize the girl in her head, but she still reached out a hand to her.

"Are you okay... Shindai?"

Miko recognized the girl. Her name was Shindai Ai, a student in her class. She was the class's famous klutz, the kind of person who was plagued by constant, inexplicable bad luck.

Tripping on flat ground for no reason, choking while drinking water, getting bitten by dogs, her umbrella breaking the moment it rained... all sorts of minor misfortunes happened to her frequently. Because of this, her classmates tended to distance themselves from her. Miko usually didn't have much to do with her, but since she had fallen right in front of her, she decided to help.

"Ah, Yotsuya! Thank you so much~" Shindai Ai's eyes lit up as she saw the offered hand. She grabbed it and stood up.

But the moment Miko's hand touched Shindai Ai, she suddenly felt a jolt. In Miko's vision, two faint figures emerged behind Shindai Ai.

One was a translucent young man. He wore a black suit, had black hair, and looked at Shindai Ai with a melancholic gaze. His features were about sixty percent similar to hers.

The other was a small, white-haired boy. His skin was pale, and he wore ancient white clothes. His face was eerie, and his eye sockets were pits of pure darkness.

'They're spirits... and they look like guardian spirits...'

Seeing this, Miko's heart tightened. After a brief hesitation in her movements, she continued to pull Shindai Ai up.

Noticing that split second of hesitation in Miko's reaction, the thin, white-clothed boy standing behind Shindai Ai let a twisted smile creep across his lips.