HALCYON [Minamoto Teru]

33

Akane clicked his tongue and let out a growl. "Is it wrong for me to care?"

"Of course." Caring too much in a witch that did not would be even more useless than a pointless plummeting investment that had no hope left within.

Nora's hands landed onto her own shoulder, peering down on it as her skin felt like the ripples of water. Spiders felt like they were crawling all over her body as she twitched, hand shaking in an almost unusual manner. In the midst of summer, it made absolutely no sense for a witch to be cold, whether she had body heat or not.

The lotus flower furled. It's roots slowly felt the toxicity in the water seeping through the crevices of its core.

"Tch, fine then!" The burgundy haired boy spat, although it wasn't one of hate, simply bashfulness in a way.

"Now, now, I said play nice, Nora." Teru placed a hand on both of their heads before retracting the touch from Akane and instead grabbed both of Nora's palms that were quivering. Not of fear, not of coldness, but rather .. a sensation of an overwhelming flood that broke through the barricades so carefully put up.

Nora felt it.

Something had gone amiss .. something had went awry .. someone had interfered with Nora's original plans.

Like a cube twisting and turning, flicking its circuits that lit to life, Nora lowered her umbrella. "Teru .. what are the odds of our little underclassmen going against our orderly advice?" The ravenette's eyes flickered over to Akane whose lips parted as he blinked in confusion.

Teru let out a long hum, scratching the back of his head. "Mmm .. ve~ry probable. After all, they're in their rebellious stage right now." The blonde exorcist chuckled, but the witch hadn't found it amusing, sending him a deadened glance, in which Teru's laughter died into the ghost of a smile.

"They went in?"

"They went in."

The witch of the void grew weary.

"Into .. the Red House?" Akane pitched in with a wallowsome tone. After having class with Yashiro Nene, bumping into Minamoto Kou, and acquainting himself with the Seventh of the Seven Wonders, Hanako, nothing idiotic they did surprised him any further.

Nora only shook her head in exasperation. "Never good news from them unless they're safe." The ebony haired feline muttered, biting on the nail of her finger. "That apparition .. all this time .." It had been months, and Nora had been closely monitoring every drop of a pencil, every tip of a hat .. and every wandering spike of spiritual energy.

No matter how closely someone tried to hide it, a black cat long receptive of the foul stench, knew when death lurked the halls.

"This time I wouldn't say its Natsuhiko and Sakura .." As two humans, Nora couldn't exorcise nor pass judgement on the pair. Once a contract with an apparition was made, it was a sealed deal with the bounds of fate on the ropes, sitting on a scale of balanced discordance.

The apparition responsible for coming up with the idea of altering rumors of other spirits in Kamome Academy, the very same one whom the peridot haired Sakura was bound with; an antagonizing patronizing child who thought he'd been playing the witch for a dainty little fool.

"The Mokke rumor, Nene's kidnapping into the void, the boundary of mirrors, the death of the former No.3 of the Seven's Hell of Mirrors .. No matter how many humans you surround to mask your scent .. no one can rid the dead of the odor they reek, drenched in the grimmest of reaper's hollow shackles .. Not quite a Wonder, but not distant from it either. A spirit that can grant wishes of the dead."