Natsume felt the blood drain from his face. He had no idea what his expression must have looked like, and found that he couldn't quite bring himself to care. "What?" he said. Some part of his mind absently noted than this voice had gone hoarse and choked, the word coughed instead of spoken. "You...?"

It had been staring at Nyanko-sensei, but at his outburst, turned to him, white features blank and black eyes scrutinizing. He wasn't sure what it was looking for, but narrowed his eyes and scowled for all he was worth. Something tight and painful had lodged itself in his chest, and he was having trouble working coherent thoughts around it.

It smiled. Natsume idly wondered when his fists had clenched.

"You are! You are!" It looked like it was about to hug him, but settled for beaming at him from a safe distance with that unsettlingly wide, toothless smile. "I finally found you! Just like Reiko said!"

Natsume felt his anger splutter to a confused stop. "Oh? And what do you want with him? I'm warning you, he's my prey." Nyanko-sensei was being unusually serious about this.

The lucky cat's words went unheeded. "I found you, I found you." It nodded to itself and gestured to Natsume in a 'come hither' motion. "So, so, let's go!" It cheerfully ambled off through a path in the bushes -a path that was not there a second ago.

"It... Expects us to follow it?" Natsume asked Nyanko-sensei as it rapidly flitted out of earshot.

"Does it think we're stupid or something? Jeez, what a pain. Let's go, Natsume." Nyanko nudged Natsume towards where he assumed the path back to the dorms were, before waddling off. "That one's bad news." Natsume cast a long glance at the path the youkai went down, left open invitingly and promising answers and secrets, before he shook the temptation off. (Nyanko-sensei's quickly retreating back helped a great deal.) He made his way through the trees, trusting his bodyguard to know the way.

That youkai was dangerous, and obviously not right in the head. It was better to walk away. The promise of answers was almost impossibly tempting, but this youkai wasn't like the others; it claimed to have eaten Reiko-san, and even if it didn't seem hostile, he didn't want to get involved in something so dangerous. (Whatever Sensei might accuse, he actually wasn't suicidal.)

Still, as he stumbled onto the beaten dirt path, he had the nagging suspicion that he had yet to see the last of it.


Over the next few days, the suspicion faded and became slowly buried under schoolwork, hanging out with Nishimura and Kitamoto, and the exhaustion of returning names in secret.

In the middle of the night.

Apparently, word had spread to the youkai in the area that that Natsume was nearby and returning names, as they came flocking to his dorm room once the sun had set. He'd had to resort to moving to the bathroom after everyone else fell asleep to hide the light of the ritual from the rest of the students, and it was exhausting. (He'd fallen asleep in there once, and was subject to the endless ribbing and concerned teasing of his friends the next day.)

In short, he'd been too horrendously busy to give the strange youkai much thought until, on the train ride home, he blinked and found it quite suddenly sitting in the empty seat next to him.

"Gah!"


A/N: Okay, I lied. It's not longer than the first chapter. But! It came out much faster than promised, so... That's all good, yes?

...It might turn out to be longer than ten chapters if I keep spamming you with chappie-drabbles like this. But the cliffhangers amuse me far, far too much XP

I'm trying to make my A/N's shorter, since apparently people are more likely to read them if I ramble less. But I like my ramble-ness. So it's a work in progress... TT_TT