Hana's shock stemmed entirely from how she perceived the relationship between Haruki and Miko.
In her eyes, Miko had summoned Haruki with a single phone call, and the moment he arrived, Miko had practically lunged into his arms. Combined with Miko's recent behavior—the constant spacing out and her distracted, anxious state—there was only one logical conclusion.
"He's your boyfriend, isn't he, Miko?!" Hana blurted out the only possibility that made sense to her.
Haruki didn't react much to the misunderstanding, but Miko's face turned bright red as she sputtered an immediate denial. "N-No! He's not! Why would you think Haruki-kun is my boyfriend?!"
"Then why did you call him out of the blue and then tackle-hug him the second he showed up?" Hana countered, her logic ironclad in her own mind.
"..." Miko felt like crying. She couldn't answer the question without admitting she could see ghosts, and she wasn't ready to do that. In this situation, letting Hana believe they were dating seemed like the only way to keep the secret safe.
Meanwhile, Haruki was still fascinated by the shift in his perception after absorbing such a massive amount of Ghost Qi. He looked around, seeing numerous blurry, wispy shadows drifting near him. He could clearly see the black miasma coiling around his right hand—the spectral energy harvested from the two spirits he had slain.
He realized that if he kept hunting and absorbing this energy, he could eventually condense it into a "Ghost God," granting him true supernatural power. To do that, Miko's eyes were essential.
Just as Haruki reached this conclusion, Hana stepped closer. Although it was her first time meeting him and she felt the natural shyness of a teenage girl, she steeled her nerves for the sake of her best friend. She had to judge Haruki's character and see if he was reliable enough to be trusted with Miko's heart.
"Um, you're Aizawa-san, right?" Hana asked, looking up at him. "My name is Hana Yurikawa. I'm Miko's best friend."
"Hello," Haruki nodded. He was about to give a standard greeting when his brow furrowed.
Through his new spectral sight, he noticed that the orange-haired girl before him radiated an incredibly powerful Life Force. While life energy is usually invisible, his recent absorption of Ghost Qi allowed him to see the "aura" of living things. In Haruki's eyes, Hana's aura was so blindingly bright that minor ghosts wouldn't be able to get within several meters of her without being scorched.
This one isn't ordinary either... Haruki thought.
While he was analyzing her, Hana gathered her courage. "Aizawa-san... what exactly is Miko to you?"
"Miko?" Haruki recalled her role in his plans and answered honestly. "She is an incredibly important existence. I absolutely must have her."
Haruki was speaking the literal truth—he desperately wanted her "Yin-Yang Eyes" to help him find more spirits. However, his choice of words led to a massive misunderstanding for Hana.
H-He's actually a devoted guy?! Hana stared at him, her suspicion melting into approval.
Beside them, Miko understood perfectly what he meant and looked deeply conflicted. If it were up to her, she'd never want to deal with ghosts again, even with her special eyes. But since she had already called him for help, there was no going back.
"Sigh..." Miko let out a long, resigned breath. She realized her fate was now inextricably tied to this boy and the world of the supernatural.
After dealing with the alley spirit, Haruki wanted to head home. The countdown for the Multiverse System was almost over, and he wanted to prepare for his first mission. However, Hana insisted he stay and help them find a replacement for Miko's broken prayer beads.
"You're Miko's boyfriend, after all. You should come with us!"
"Boyfriend?" Haruki looked at Hana, confused by the title. But as a pragmatic adult, he noticed Miko's pained expression and realized she was using him as a cover for her secret. He nodded, accepting the role. It was just a label, after all; it didn't cost him anything to play along.
Miko, seeing him accept the "boyfriend" title so easily, felt her heart do a complicated little somersault.
Hana led them to a shopping district and straight to a specific fortune-telling shop. Rumor had it that the shop was legitimate and that the owner sold prayer beads of much higher quality than the mass-produced ones.
Inside, they found the shopkeeper: an elderly woman in a dark hooded cloak who looked well over seventy.
"Hello! Do you have any powerful prayer beads for sale?" Hana asked immediately.
"What a lovely group of customers," the old woman said in a practiced, professional tone. She was about to start her usual sales pitch, but her eyes quickly sharpened as she realized these weren't ordinary students.
First, the orange-haired girl—her Life Force was abnormally potent. It would incinerate weak spirits but act as a beacon for powerful, hungry ones. Then, the black-haired girl—she looked ordinary, but her eyes held a depth that even the old woman found captivating.
However, as unusual as the girls were, they didn't rattle the veteran medium. It was the boy on the right who terrified her.
She could clearly see a staggering amount of black Ghost Qi coiled around his right arm. Even though it seemed perfectly suppressed, the sheer density of the miasma told her that it had come from an incredibly powerful and malevolent spirit.
A spirit that terrifying would never submit to a human voluntarily. There were only two possibilities in the old woman's mind: either this boy was possessed by a high-ranking demon or a god, or he had personally destroyed such a creature and forcibly bound its essence to his flesh.
Have I run into a fellow professional?
Mitsue Takeda, the shopkeeper known as the "Godmother of Downtown," looked at Haruki with deep suspicion. She initially thought he might be an exorcist like herself. But she quickly dismissed the idea. Haruki was too young. Even a prodigy would need decades of training to bind an entity of that caliber.
If he wasn't an exorcist, then he was either possessed by a "Great Ghost" or an "Avatar" of a god walking the earth. Regardless of which it was, Mitsue knew she couldn't afford to offend him. The fact that he could walk around with that much concentrated malice on his arm without showing a hint of pain or corruption meant that whatever was inside him was a true monster.
While Mitsue was wary of Haruki, Haruki was quite interested in her. He had assumed the shop would be a scam, but looking at the beads on display, his opinion changed. He could feel his right arm—his "Ghost Hand"—twitching with an uneasy restlessness whenever he got close to the merchandise. The beads actually had a suppressing effect on spiritual energy.
To Haruki, the effect was minor—like a mosquito bite—but it proved the existence of spiritual tools. Knowledge about the supernatural was exactly what he needed to refine his Ghost Slayer techniques.
"Old lady, how much for these beads?" Haruki asked, picking up a set.
Mitsue Takeda's mind raced. He's possessed by a nightmare and he's asking for my beads? Is he trying to pick a fight?
Though she was old, Mitsue had been a famous exorcist in her youth. She wasn't about to back down in her own shop, regardless of what was inside the boy. She decided to see what he was made of.
"Wait a moment."
Mitsue disappeared into the back of the shop, rummaging through a cluttered storage room until she found a heavy safe. After fumbling with the combination, she pulled out a sealed wooden box.
I never thought the day would come where I'd have to bring this out, she thought, a confident smirk returning to her face.
Inside the box was a set of prayer beads infused with the peak of her spiritual power from her younger days. It was a masterpiece, designed to suppress even the most vicious of spirits. While it might not be enough to handle a "God," it should be more than enough to pin down the Ghost Qi on the boy's arm and give him some relief.
She felt a surge of pity for Haruki. She assumed he was a victim of possession, and while she couldn't exorcise a spirit that strong, she wanted to at least use her best tool to help the poor boy regain some control over his body.
However, Mitsue Takeda was about to realize she had made a very big mistake in her assessment of Haruki Aizawa.