This chapter is where the story starts deviating, this is the first new content I create for this tory in over 2 years. Crazy, hope you enjoy it 3
She was like a missing piece, you know? It was like we were all sitting on this huge big thing that was always going to happen, and all the pieces for it were in place, but we needed something, or I guess someone who could set it off. That was Yura. But, well, at first, I just thought she was timid and cute! - Toori Natsumi
Yura steps off the train at Ukiyoe with a pensive heart.
The exorcist has never left the millenary capital, not even for a field trip, but she knows someone who lives here in Ukiyoe. It's been almost 4 years since their cross-roads encounter, and she wonders about the creature she saw that day. Even back then, Yura was too well-trained to ever confuse him with a boy. It's not only her past that shadows her; her future is less haunted and more uncertain. Yura keeps telling herself that she's not afraid, she cannot be.
Yura is 14-years-old now, an adult in the world where she matters most.
Ukiyoe's mission is a scary coincidence, but a part of her is a little excited if she's honest. Relieved as well, to leave the Main House behind. Yura has been running away from her home her entire life; it feels unreal to suddenly step off the bullet train to live a life three-hundred miles away. It should be terrifying, but what can possibly be scary about grocery shopping or paying rent after what she's been through?
She thinks about Mamiru's face at the train station, the faraway look to his eyes, and Ryuuji's absence. Yura knew he wouldn't show. Her brother is not one for sentimentality, and he'd shown his opinion on Yura's move quite clearly. She wants to resent him, but the young teen Ryuuji missed her departure because of none of those things. Someone had to hold her mother back after all.
There had been varied reactions about sending Yura out of all people to explore the exorcist vacuum that is Tokyo. Still, no one had reacted as violently or unpleasantly as Keikain Nadeshiko.
That's the only way her mother reacts to anything, as far as Yura can remember.
She shoulders her bags a little closer, overwhelmed by the unfamiliar skyline that greets her as she exits the station. There's no time for these useless thoughts. In the end, no one forced her to come, Yura accepted the mission by herself, and she's committed to seeing it through. There's something strange happening at Ukiyoe, and she will definitely find it.
As Yura introduces herself to her new peers at Ukiyoe Middle, she suddenly remembers one thing that scares more than any youkai: people. Specifically, people her age.
"I'm Keikain Yura," she introduces, buying to avoid looking at the widening eyes and awaiting the whispering to break out.
From the so-called exorcists?
Don't you guys get tired of ripping people off?
I'd be so embarrassed if my family were into those things.
It's youkai girl!
She steels herself. Yura is an adult, an adult. These children, with their wide eyes and frivolous disagreemnts, will say nothing she has not heard before. Her classmates back in Kyoto eventually learned to leave her alone, and it's a lesson Yura can swiftly deliver again. I'm used to be alone, she thinks. Even as she assures herself so, Yura knows it's a lie. Back home, there's Ryuuji, Mamiru, Akifusa, Grandpa. Here in Ukiyoe... Yura has no one. It strikes her very suddenly, the magnitude of what she's done.
Silence greets her introduction. Confusion sets in, cautious hope chocking her throat.
Yura raises her head slowly, warily peering at the faces of her indifferent classmates. Some are writing down on their notebooks, others examine her with open curiosity or smile her way as they meet eyes. None of them seem hostile, threatening, or mocking. Yura keeps herself from frowning as it wouldn't be polite, but she's puzzled.
Did they...?
The Kanto Region used to be Mashimaki territory. Recently, the last of their exorcist line died out, and our family offered to take over. The remaining Mashimakis were confused. They thought we had already taken over. Tokyo hasn't had exorcists protecting it for over two centuries. There's a reason the nation's capital hasn't gone to shit... and that, little sister, is what they want you to find.
Youkais' presence is at a low in Ukiyoe compared to Kyoto. To these people, folk tales are just that: tales. They do not have exorcists in their city. They have no idea who Yura is. Something burns in her eyes. For the first time in her life, no one around here knows what it means for her name to be Keikain Yura. The thought is so freeing, so unmistakably joyful that Yura smiles. It's embarrassing when some girls coo over her, but she cannot stop.
Maybe the gods are giving some of what life's taken from her back.
Unbeknownst to the smiling exorcist, two pairs of eyes in the Ukiyoe Classroom know precisely what being a Keikain means.