The brief meeting with Gojo had been like a stone tossed into a still lake, sending ripples through Natsume's heart that refused to fade.
Outwardly, he remained as calm and unruffled as ever. Deep inside, though, a long-absent sense of danger was quietly spreading, refusing to let him go.
Gojo's appearance was a signal in itself. It meant the higher-ups of the Jujutsu world had already turned their attention to Chiba's growing anomalies. His own overwhelming bursts of cursed energy had dragged him, completely and violently, out of the role of "ordinary high school student hiding among civilians" and shoved him back under their gaze.
More trouble was bound to follow.
That only made Natsume treasure his fragile peaceful daily life even more.
...
In the days after the shrine incident, life seemed to settle back into a familiar quiet.
Natsume went to school on time, left on time, and basked in drowsy afternoon sunlight during class, as if that world-shattering battle had been nothing but an unreal dream.
However, there were always people determined to remind him that he was already part of the "non-everyday" world.
"Natsume! Your Occult Research Club has been running this long and has not submitted a single proper activity report. If this keeps up, I am going to ask the student council to shut down this suspicious club of yours."
In the clubroom, their advisor Hiratsuka held an unlit cigarette between her lips, hands on her hips, and delivered what sounded very much like a final ultimatum to the lazy bunch in front of her.
Inside, Natsume was leisurely drinking black tea. Yui and Eriri sat nearby, flipping through fashion magazines in total boredom. In the far corner, Yashiro sat upright like a model elementary school student listening to a lecture, while Eiko gently combed out her long hair.
This looked less like a club for investigating the supernatural, and more like a laid-back afternoon tea salon.
"Hiratsuka-sensei, spirit investigation depends on timing and circumstance. It is not something you can force results from", Natsume said, setting his teacup down and spouting nonsense with a straight face.
"Cut the crap."
Hiratsuka smacked the table.
"Anyway, you lot are gonna do something today. I want to see an activity. I do not care if it is just you giving some kind of lecture about your so-called 'special field'."
"Fine, fine."
Natsume sighed in defeat.
He cleared his throat and let his gaze drift over the misfit girls in front of him.
"All right then. I will keep it simple and talk a bit about the nature of cursed energy. Cursed energy comes from negative emotions, but the energy itself is neutral. In theory, if you can control it precisely, you can do almost anything. For example..."
He did not get to finish.
The old wooden clubroom door creaked open from the outside.
Everyone's eyes turned toward it at the same time.
A small figure stood in the doorway.
The newcomer wore a baggy gray hoodie that wrapped her body almost completely. The oversized hood was pulled low over her face, hiding her features in shadow so thoroughly that no one could see what she looked like. She stood there with her head down, motionless, wrapped in an aura of confusion and helplessness that did not fit the room at all.
"Um... do you need something?" Yui was the first to stand up, worry in her voice.
The girl did not answer. Her body trembled slightly, as if she had to summon an enormous amount of courage just to move her feet. Finally, she took a step inside and slowly walked toward the center of the room.
Under the warm ceiling light, they finally saw who she was.
"Yukino?!"
Yui and Eriri blurted out in unison, shocked.
The visitor was Yukino, who should have been resting at home.
Natsume's brows, however, drew together the moment he looked at her.
Through Six Eyes, he could see far more than the others.
In his sight, Yukino's state was very strange.
Her body still carried a faint residue of the cat curse spirit from before. Yet this residue was no longer malicious. Instead, it was gently fusing with her own life force and with the faint cursed energy that had been stirred up in her by the shock to her soul.
It was like a drop of ink dissolving into a glass of water. It changed the color of the water, but became part of it as well.
This is... a yokai transformation?
A rare term flashed through his mind.
"Yukinoshita, your body is not fully recovered yet. Why did you come to school?" Yui hurried forward, anxious.
Yukino flinched away from her touch.
She kept her head bowed, her cheeks hidden in the shadow of the hood. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper, trembling ever so slightly.
"I... I came to see... Natsume."
Natsume watched her quietly.
His pale blue eyes seemed to cut through every layer of disguise and land directly on the fear and turmoil in her soul.
"Take off the hood, Yukino."
His voice was not loud, but it carried a quiet force that left no room for refusal.
"Hiding like this will not solve anything."
Yukino's shoulders jolted violently at his words.
Her hands, hidden inside the sleeves of her hoodie, clenched into fists so tight her nails were probably digging into her palms.
Everyone in the room could feel that something was off, but none of them understood what was happening. They just watched the two of them, bewildered.
The seconds stretched in silence.
Under Natsume's steady, unfathomable gaze, Yukino seemed to finally reach some kind of decision.
With trembling hands, she reached up and pinched the edge of her hood.
Then, in one sharp motion, she tugged it down.
The hood fell, revealing a face that was still cool and beautiful, yet now twisted by shame and despair.
But that was not what seized everyone's attention.
What froze their eyes in place was...
On top of her silky black hair, there was a pair of soft, quivering, silver-grey...
Cat ears.
They were not cosplay props. They were not a headband. They were growing naturally from her head, as if they had been there since birth.
The silver-grey fur shimmered softly under the lights, the tips tinged with a faint pink. Because their owner was so tense, the ears had flattened back on their own, pinned in a classic "airplane ears" pose.
Time stopped.
The clubroom was so quiet a pin dropping would have echoed.
"..."
"...Cat... cat ears?!"
The first person to break the silence was Eriri.
The twin-tailed blonde's eyes blazed with a light she had never shown before, the kind of burning excitement she reserved only for new inspiration. The soul of a doujin artist roared to life inside her.
"A real... a real catgirl!"
Her scream of joy made no sense at all. She practically teleported in front of Yukino, staring at the fluffy ears with sparkling eyes, and, unable to restrain herself, slowly reached out one sinful hand and gently...
Poked.
"Mm!"
Yukino's whole body jolted. The ears twitched as if shocked, and her cheeks flushed so red it looked like her blood might spill out.
"S-so soft. And they move," Eriri gasped, her excitement going up yet another level.
"Yukino, are you all right? Did the curse come back?" Yui asked, face pale with worry.
Hiratsuka, meanwhile, had gone completely stone still. The cigarette fell from her lips to the floor. She pointed at Yukino's head, mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
Faced with the chaos around her, Yukino could no longer maintain that icy facade.
Humiliation and helplessness swelled in her chest, and her eyes filled at once.
She spun around and looked straight at Natsume, the only one who still looked calm.
Her voice shook, tinged with tears, almost pleading.
"Natsume... I... I woke up like this this morning."
"It is not just the ears... there is a tail too..."
"I do not know what to do. I did not dare tell my parents, I did not dare go to a hospital. The only person I could think of... was you."
"Please... help me."