The club room door burst open with a bang.
Tomoya Aki rushed in, out of breath, his glasses crooked, his shirt collar unbuttoned two buttons, and he was holding a familiar pale blue folder—the plan he had promised a week ago. His face was lit up with excitement, as if he were holding some big secret.
"Sorry, sorry, I'm late again!" He apologized loudly before he could even catch his breath, but there was no guilt in his tone, only uncontrollable excitement. "But Eriri! Utaha-senpai! This time I have a perfectly good reason! I found her! I really found her!"
Eriri stood up from her chair, her golden twin tails practically standing on end. "Tomoya Aki! How many times has this happened?! Last time you were forty minutes late, the time before that half an hour, and this time—!"
"This time is different!" Tomoya interrupted, turning sideways and opening the door wider. "Look! I brought her with me!"
The doorway was empty.
The hallway had only dim lighting, and in the distance, the faint sound of a wind instrument club practicing could be heard.
Eriri narrowed her eyes and looked Tomoya up and down. "Brought who? Air?"
"Huh?" Tomoya was momentarily stunned and looked back at the door. "Katou-san? Come in, why are you standing at the door—"
His words cut off abruptly.
Because there was really no one at the door.
Utaha Kasumigaoka put her special glasses on her nose—the glasses that could see cursed energy. Her crimson eyes swept through the lenses over the doorway, then narrowed slightly.
But she didn't see any "person" at the door.
At least, no "noticeable" person.
"Aki," Utaha said slowly, her voice terribly calm, "if your so-called 'good reason' is a hallucination, I suggest you go to the hospital and get checked out by a psychiatrist."
"It's not a hallucination!" Tomoya was getting anxious. He turned and walked out of the club room, looking down the hallway. "Katou-san? Katou-san, weren't you just following me? Katou—"
His voice stopped.
Because a figure was quietly standing against the wall next to the club room door.
It was a girl.
Probably the same age as Eriri and Utaha, wearing the Toyonoki Academy uniform—white shirt, navy blue blazer, and a pleated knee-length skirt, neat and proper.
Her hair was a soft black bob with the ends slightly layered, neatly falling to her shoulders, her bangs carefully trimmed. She had a pretty face and good features, but there was nothing striking about her appearance—the type who would never attract attention on the street.
The strangest thing was that she was standing less than two meters from the club room door, yet Eriri and Utaha hadn't noticed her at all just now.
It wasn't "carelessness." It was "not seeing."
It was as if her presence had been attenuated to near transparency by some force.
"Ah, there you are," Tomoya sighed in relief, returned to the club room, and waved to the girl. "Katou-san, come in, don't be shy."
The girl called "Katou" blinked and walked into the club room.
Her steps were light, almost soundless. Her movements were natural, but her presence was still incredibly faint. Eriri stared at her and suddenly felt a little strange—this girl was clearly standing in the light, but her eyes automatically looked away, as if she instinctively ignored the background when looking at a painting.
"This is Megumi Katou, Class 2-C, same class as me," Tomoya introduced enthusiastically. "She's the 'girl of destiny' I met at the Detective Conan event! Katou, these two are Eriri Sawamura from Class 1-A, and Utaha Kasumigaoka from Class 3-B, pen name 'Utaha Kasumigaoka'—you might have heard of her—"
"Wait," Utaha interrupted and stood up. She walked over to Megumi Katou, her crimson eyes carefully examining the girl through her glasses.
Megumi Katou looked back at her calmly, her expression unchanged, but she nodded politely. "Kasumigaoka-senpai, Sawamura-san, hello."
Her voice was very soft, flat and tasteless, like plain water.
"Katou-san," Utaha said slowly, "when did you arrive?"
"I came with Aki just now," Megumi Katou answered, her voice still flat. "I was standing behind him, but Sawamura-san and Kasumigaoka-senpai didn't seem to notice me. So I stepped over to the wall and waited."
Eriri's eyes widened. "You came together? Why didn't I—"
She didn't finish her sentence.
Because Megumi Katou suddenly turned her head and looked at the corner of the club room.
The corner that only Eriri and Utaha (with her glasses on) could see.
Genji was floating there, cross-legged, his indigo hunting robes glowing softly in the sunset afterglow. He had been resting with his eyes closed—but at this moment, he opened them.
His deep indigo eyes met Megumi Katou's calm gaze.
They looked at each other for three seconds.
Genji raised an eyebrow, the corners of his lips curling into an amused arc.
"Interesting," he said quietly, his voice only audible to Eriri and Utaha (with her glasses on). "Girl, ordinary people can't see me."
Megumi Katou blinked.
She didn't look away. She just tilted her head slightly, as if thinking about something. Then she spoke, her voice soft but clearly audible in the club room:
"But you're there."
Dead silence.
A strange, dead silence fell over the club room.
Eriri opened her mouth but couldn't speak. Utaha's glasses slipped down slightly, and she unconsciously pushed them back up. Tomoya also looked confused, looking at Megumi Katou, then at the "empty" corner where Megumi Katou was looking, completely unable to understand the situation.
"You…" Eriri's voice trembled slightly. "You can see him?"
"Him?" Megumi Katou repeated, not taking her eyes off Genji. "Are you talking about… that gentleman in the ancient clothes?"
"Gentleman in clothes?!" Tomoya also exclaimed. "Where, where? Katou-san, what did you see? Is it a ghost? Or a monster? Is this club room haunted—"
"Shut up, Aki," Utaha said coldly, but her gaze didn't leave Megumi Katou.
She took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes, and put them back on. In her cursed energy vision, Genji was clearly visible, his deep indigo cursed energy as profound as the ocean. And Megumi Katou… had almost no cursed energy reaction at all.
But her gaze was fixed on Genji.
"Can you describe the person you see?" Utaha asked, her tone returning to its usual calm, with the inquisitiveness of a researcher.
Megumi Katou thought for a moment, then said slowly, "A person in blue-green… well, a teenager in dark blue-green clothes. Black hair, partly tied up with a pin. He looks young, seventeen or eighteen, but his… temperament is special."
She paused and added, "He's floating in the air, about… thirty centimeters off the ground? Sitting cross-legged, meditating."
The description was absolutely accurate.
Eriri gasped. Utaha's crimson eyes lit up—the excitement of discovering an interesting research subject.
Genji smiled.
He "stood up" from his floating position—his figure changing from sitting cross-legged to standing upright, still half a foot off the ground. He floated over to Megumi Katou and looked at her carefully.
Megumi Katou didn't step back. She calmly looked back. There was no fear or surprise in her eyes, only a faint sense of "Oh, so there's a floating person here" as a matter of course.
"You're not scared?" Genji asked.
"Why would I be?" Megumi Katou asked rhetorically. "You don't look like a bad person. And…"
She paused, and for the first time, a slight hesitation appeared in her voice. "You're the first person I've ever met who can actually 'see' me."
That was a bit strange. But everyone else in the club room understood.
Eriri remembered that Megumi Katou had been standing at the door just now, but she and Utaha hadn't noticed her at all. She thought about her faint, almost eerie presence. She remembered that even when Tomoya introduced her, her and Utaha's first reaction had been "there's no one at the door."
"Katou-san," Utaha said slowly, "is your presence… always that faint?"
Megumi Katou thought for a moment and nodded. "It seems so. It's been like this since I was a child. Teachers often couldn't call my name, classmates forgot my name, I was often left behind in group activities… I'm used to it."
When she said "I'm used to it," her tone was very flat, as if she were saying, "The weather is nice today." But Eriri suddenly felt a slight ache in her heart.
She remembered herself—the "beautiful mixed-race girl" at school, always the center of attention. She had never thought that someone could be ignored and forgotten because their "presence was too faint."
"So you can see me," Genji said thoughtfully, "is it because your 'faint presence' cancels out my 'invisibility technique'? Interesting… It's like two transparent sheets of paper stacked together, becoming visible."
He floated around Megumi Katou, his deep indigo eyes shining with analytical light.
"Your constitution is special. It's not a Heavenly Restriction—Heavenly Restriction has no cursed energy but a powerful body. You… have a faint presence, and your cursed energy flow is unusually smooth, like… well, like a 'background board of the world.'"
"Background board of the world?" Megumi Katou repeated, her expression finally changing slightly—a very faint, almost invisible hint of helplessness. "That description… is quite fitting."
"Genji!" Eriri couldn't help but say. "What's going on? Why can Katou-san see you? Does she have some special constitution? Is she in any danger?"
She fired off a series of questions, her voice full of a concern she didn't even notice herself.
Genji floated back to her and shook his head. "Don't worry. Her constitution is very special, but there's no danger. If you insist… it might be an extremely rare mutation with extremely low cursed energy affinity. Cursed energy almost never lingers on her, so her presence is naturally diluted, like…"
He thought for a moment and found a metaphor. "Like a drop of oil falling into water. It naturally disperses without dissolving."
"Then she can see you—"
"Because the essence of my 'invisibility technique' is to distort light and perception, causing ordinary people to ignore my existence," Genji explained. "But her presence itself is so faint that it's almost 'transparent,' creating a natural resistance to that distortion. It's like writing on clear glass with a marker—the handwriting will be faint or even invisible."
Megumi Katou listened quietly. After Genji finished, she asked softly, "Um… is this gentleman a ghost?"
"Shikigami," Genji corrected. "But you can think of it as a special kind of ghost. My name is Zen'in Genji from the Heian period. For various reasons, I'm possessing Eriri."
"Lord Zen'in Genji, hello," Megumi Katou nodded politely. "I'm Megumi Katou. Nice to meet you."
Her reaction was too calm. So calm that Eriri felt a little surreal.
An ordinary high school girl, suddenly seeing a thousand-year-old ghost, actually greeted him so calmly? And said "nice to meet you"?
"Katou-san," Utaha adjusted her glasses, "isn't this… all unbelievable? Ghosts, jujutsu, you being able to see what ordinary people can't—"
"It's a little unbelievable," Megumi Katou admitted. "But when you think about it, it's not that strange. The world is so big, it's normal for strange things to happen. And…"
She paused and looked at Genji. "Lord Zen'in Genji doesn't look like a bad person. Eriri-san and Kasumigaoka-senpai seem to get along well with him too. Since you're not scared, I don't need to be scared."
The logic was so simple it was almost naive, but impossible to refute.
Silence fell over the club room again.
Tomoya Aki looked back and forth, and finally couldn't help raising his hand. "Um… can I ask a question?"
Everyone's gaze turned to him.
"So…" Tomoya pushed up his glasses, his expression serious. "Katou-san can see ghosts, Eriri and Utaha can see them too, but I can't—does that mean I'm the most ordinary person in this room?"
"You're the most boring person," Utaha said mercilessly.
"And the most annoying person," Eriri added.
Genji snapped his fingers, and Tomoya looked dazed for a moment, as if he had forgotten something.
Shaking it off, he quickly placed the pale blue folder on the table and pushed it in front of Eriri and Utaha.
"Please, take a look! 'Blessing Software v2.0'! I spent a week studying over thirty books on game design, consulting with experienced staff from five game companies, and doing market research and competitive analysis! This time, it's definitely qualified!"
His voice was full of confidence.
Eriri and Utaha exchanged glances, then both picked up the folder and opened it.
Megumi Katou quietly walked to an empty seat by the window, sat down, took a textbook out of her school bag, and started reading. Her presence faded again, as if she were merging into the background.