And so the three of us set out, walking through the darkness of the market district to the canals, our path lit by Keine's lantern. The entertainment district was on the opposite side of the canal that ran through the middle of the village, on the north side of town. That was the only place Renko and I had ever run into Sekibanki and as we approached the river I looked over the bridge toward the northern gate. All along the road lanterns had been hung over the doors of bars and on ropes that extended across the road. There were plenty of people to be seen traveling between the taverns, playhouses and seedier establishments deeper in the entertainment district, all out and about despite the fact that during the day word of the increased number of youkai attacks was all you could hear being discussed on the streets. I suppose even during dangerous times bars and brothels were likely to keep their doors open. So long as the people of the village continued to work, they would continue to need somewhere to relax afterward.

"Banki usually targets people stumbling out of the bars at closing time, doesn't she?" Renko asked. "We're too early for that."

"That's why we're going to her house," Keine said, turning to the right and heading east rather than crossing the bridge to the north side of the river.

Hieda manor lay on the east side of town, but it was on the north side of the river as well, along with the houses of several prominent artisans. Here on the south side the easternmost quarter, the village was mostly slums and tenements to house the village's indigent workers. I had never given much thought to where Sekibanki might live in the village, but she had to live in a proper residence somewhere, I supposed. If she were to just hide away in an abandoned house or a storage shed or the like then she was bound to be noticed sooner or later and it would be hard to keep up the façade of being just a regular human. Ironically, if she wanted to hide, she had to do it in plain sight.

The roads here were narrow, twisting things, crowded by two-story wooden buildings that leaned out over their footprints, huddling together in cluttered alleyways that stank of rot and decay. The streets and alleys weren't named here, but Keine clearly knew the way to go, leading us through convoluted passages until we came to a narrow strip of dirt that ran alongside one of the smaller sanitation canals. Buildings here crowded close up against the embankments in places, but where they didn't a few willow trees had been planted. We wound our way amongst these as we proceeded on.

All at once I noticed a shape lunging towards Keine out of the branches of one of the trees. I opened my mouth to warn her but was cut off when the falling shape cried out with a fearsome yell.

"Booo! Quake in terror, human!"

The figure had dropped out of the tree at a sharp angle and zoomed right toward Keine, but rather than colliding with her it stopped just in front of her and thrust a long cylindrical object at her. Was it... an umbrella? Yes, it was definitely an eggplant-colored umbrella.

"Be afraid! Cower in fear of the rulers of the night! Bwaaa!" The figure thrust the umbrella forward into Keine's face and popped the canopy open, twirling it about.

"Oh, Kogasa, it's just you. Good evening." Keine said, unperturbed.

"You're surprised, right? You weren't expecting to see me here in the village. This is a business trip, no one would expect me to show up now. Normally I wouldn't try to scare three people all walking together, but right now I feel like I could do anything! Hey look, look!" Kogasa said excitedly, slowly rotating her umbrella so that the eye on the edge of it swirled in a hypnotic pattern. "Surprised, surprised, you are getting steadily more and more surprised..."

"Kogasa are you drunk? You usually have more sense than this." Keine asked, placing her hands on her hips and shifting her weight.

"I'm not drunk! I'm strong! Night is the time of monsters and us tsukumogami are just as strong as any other youkai! So be afraid already! I'm not outdated or cute, I'm terrifying! Fear the revolution of the forgotten tools, human! Your age of dominance has come to an end!" As she had been saying that, Kogasa had popped her umbrella closed and begun waving it about like a club. As she shouted the last sentence she leaped at Keine, the furled umbrella drawn back to strike.

The blow never landed. In one smooth motion taking less than a second, Keine had pressed the lantern she was holding into Renko's hands, turned to the side to avoid the strike as the umbrella whiffed past her face, then quickly twisted and grabbed Kogasa by the wrist, first yanking her forward to further unbalance her and lead her into a handful of stumbling steps, then smoothly grabbing the back of her neck with her other hand and reversing her momentum to hurl her to the ground.

She landed flat on her back with a thud. I had never actually seen Keine fight before. Was that aikido? Whatever it was she had made it look effortless. Kogasa lay spread out on the ground, blinking up at the sky while Keine stood over her, resting one hand on her hip. "If you're going to start directly attacking humans, you know that I can't overlook that, right?"

Kogasa leapt to her feet, scooping her umbrella up and popping it open as she backed away. "Now you've done it!" she shouted. "I'll show you the new order of things! Humans are to be used and discarded! Surprise!" She thrust the Umbrella forward again, still open this time. Rather than merely dancing with the umbrella in a vaguely threatening, comical manner as was typical for her, the lolling tongue of the umbrella shot out, quick and rigid as a spear, aimed straight for Keine's throat. Keine never flinched for a moment, simply brushing the lancing muscle aside with the back of her hand then reversing her grip and seizing the tongue. She coiled it around her fist then yanked sharply downward. Kogasa pitched forward and faceplanted into the dirt, still gripping the handle of her umbrella tightly.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! 'Stop it, stop it, that hurts!" Kogasa screamed, kicking her legs and wincing as if it were her own tongue and not the umbrella's that Keine had grabbed.

With the tongue still coiled around her right fist and held high, Keine stepped forward and placed one foot on Kogasa's shoulder, pinning her to the ground. "What's this all about, Kogasa? This isn't like you. Are you and all the other weak youkai who live around the edges of the village working together or something?"

"Owwwohow! Give me back my tongue! I'm doing this on my own 'cause all us tsukumogami are strong now! No one will ever forget about their umbrella again! From now on umbrellas will leave humans behind! We're invincible! Let me go so I can kill you!"

Keine took her foot off of Kogasa's shoulder then drew it back to give Kogasa a swift kick in the ribs forceful enough to roll her over onto her back, twisting the tongue of the umbrella she was still clutching. Kogasa tried to rise to her feet but Keine Yanked hard on the tongue, pulling her back down onto her back before pinning her once more with her foot. With Kogasa's shoulder firmly pinned under her shoe, Keine squatted down onto her haunches, bringing her face near to Kogasa's. "Are you done yet?" she asked calmly.

"What are you being so mean for! Isn't it a youkai's job to attack humans?"

"Maybe, but you're a tsukumogami and you've gotten by just fine without hurting anyone up until now." The tone Keine used was the same one I had heard her use when talking to a child at the school who had gotten themselves into trouble. She wasn't scolding or angry, but sounded both disappointed and interested in hearing Kogasa's explanation. It was a hard attitude to square with the terrific violence we had just seen her dish out.

"Well maybe I've finally realized what I should have been doing all along! No one was coming to the graveyard any more, so I came here! I'm fulfilling my duty as a youkai! Soon we'll be the ones on top!" As Kogasa said this the tongue wrapped around Keine's hand had been squirming. All at once it bulged with muscular force then slipped wetly out of Keine's grip, slapping at her as it rapidly retracted. Keine had to step off of Kogasa to avoid being hit and as soon as she did the tsukumogami surged to her feet. Kogasa looked like she might have been about to try something more but before she could get her bearings Keine stepped forward while rearing her body back and delivered a headbutt that struck with a colossal crack. I winced involuntarily. I knew all too well how much that must have hurt. Kogasa stumbled back, dazed and reeling. She stopped when she bumped into something though. I craned my neck to see what it was. There was something nearly spherical floating in the air behind Kogasa, a ball-like object that wasn't connected to anything but hadn't moved when she stumbled into it. Upon colliding with it, Kogasa whirled around. At that same moment Renko raised the lantern and stepped forward, evidently interested to see what it might have been as well.

None of us were prepared for the shocking discovery revealed by the light of the lantern. A severed head, floating suspended in midair, its face frozen in a rictus of agony.

Kogasa shrieked and leapt to the side. Her sandal clacked against the slope of the stone embankment bordering the sanitation canal then slipped sideways with a clatter. There was barely time for her to let out a surprised yelp before she cartwheeled into the river below. A tremendous splash resounded as she disappeared under the water. A moment later her umbrella bobbed to the surface, already a dozen meters downstream and receding quickly. I looked back toward where the severed head had been a moment before but it was already gone too, floating up and away. I saw it for only the briefest of instants before it disappeared behind a building.

"Sekibanki!" Renko called out. Rather than saying anything Keine took off at a sprint, running in the direction the head had gone. Renko followed behind her and I had to follow along or be left behind. I'm sorry Kogasa. I feel like these casefiles are always showing you at your worst. I almost feel bad for including this scene, but it would be remiss of me not to mention you altogether or to absolve myself from abandoning you to your watery fate as I did just then. Poor Kogasa, the abandoned umbrella was discarded and left behind once again.

I caught up with Keine and Renko as they rounded the corner but none of us ever caught up with Sekibanki. Her head had ascended into the sky and while we caught a brief glimpse of her headless body under a far off willow tree, she turned and disappeared into an alley before we could reach her. By the time we got to where she had been there was no sign of her.

There was no doubt in any of our minds that the figure we had seen in the darkness had been her. While it was too dark to make out distinct details at that distance, the figure we had seen had been running around without a head on their shoulders. That narrowed the possibilities somewhat. Why had she scared Kogasa and then run away from Keine though? If weak youkai were being driven berserk shouldn't she have attacked us, as Kogasa had?

Once it became clear that we had no idea where Sekibanki had run off to Keine put her foot down. "Alright, there's no point to trying to track her any further in this darkness. The two of you head straight home. I'm going to check out her house and then see if I can spot her from the air, but if even harmless youkai like Kogasa are attacking I can't guarantee I'll be able to keep you two safe. Head home, turn off the lights and go to bed."

To my and perhaps Keine's surprise, Renko didn't argue. I doubted she had been scared into doing something sensible, of course, but it seemed like she didn't think there was anything more we could do tonight. She spent the trip home in silence, with her fingers fiddling with the brim of her hat. We returned home without incident and slept through the night. In the morning we headed out early and got to the school a half hour before the start of classes to have a chat with Keine, but she told us that she hadn't had any further luck either. Sekibanki was nowhere to be found and hadn't come home all night.

For the time being I let the mysteries of the case fall from my mind and dedicated my attention to teaching my students. Whenever my mind had a moment to wander, however, it kept coming back to the same question over and over. What could have happened to Sekibanki?