CHAPTER 18: GOING HUNTING
–––[[MIYABI]]–––
It's been two days or so since the last meeting, and everyone is still hard at work preparing with more training.
While Imu and Murasaki are sparring together – a rare sight, I might add – the gunpowder trio are at their shooting range, shooting and meddling with their guns. While Ryouna mostly minds her own business in her own section and shooting her own targets, I can see both Seo and Ryoubi together on their section of the range. Seo is more on the meddling part, with tools and rifle parts all strewn over the table where he's at.
"Oh. Hey, Miyabi." He addresses me as he's loading his magazines.
I glare at him. "Having fun?"
"A day at the range is never not fun." He responds with a smile.
I notice that he's using Ryoubi's rifle, while she's using his – which seems to be shorter in length than usual. Seems like they just swapped rifles as I can still hear the latter complaining about the weight of his rifle. As they both shoot at targets down range, it doesn't seem that either of the two of them have any trouble with their new weapons. Despite that, Ryoubi still bickers with him about who's the better shot, while Seo not even attempting to reciprocate.
As I was about to get a headache from all that noise, Suzune-sensei showed up.
"Seems like you all are getting along just fine." She comments as she stands by me.
"I guess you can call it that, Suzune-sensei."
In the meantime, the two had stopped firing and now swapped their weapons, before proceeding to clear their weapons. Curiously, Seo had his rifle tilted, with Ryoubi looking on. He then yanks the back of his rifle quickly and I see the ejected bullet fly upwards into the air. He tries to grab it… only to miss it entirely. Seeing this, Ryoubi let out a cackle.
"What are you trying to do, trying to look cool?"
"Nah, it's a trick I saw somewhere else that I wanted to try out. Also, it saves time on trying to pick it up off the ground." He replies to her as he bends down and picks up the bullet from the ground. "How about you give it a try?" He then hands Ryoubi his rifle again.
With a new round now loaded in the chamber, Ryoubi tries her luck at it but she too would miss the ejected bullet.
"Dammit!"
He chuckled. "Well, there you go."
As Seo now goes back to loading his empty magazines, Ryoubi continues to practice on the bullet catching trick but eventually she gives up and leaves Seo and his rifle by himself.
As I turn to face Suzune-sensei, I notice that she's lost in her thoughts, along with her slightly troubled expression. "…did something matter, Suzune-sensei?"
"…ah, sorry. My apologies, it's about the recon team, Miyabi." She voices out her concerns. "They haven't responded to their hourly reports since earlier this morning."
"…odd."
Seeing how we're already gathered, Imu and Murasaki joined us. Ryoubi and Ryouna would soon follow suit, and Seo had finished packing his things into his bags by then. He then joins our group once he's done clearing up the table.
"Something going on?" He asks, seeing how everyone is already gathered together.
Suzune-sensei nods to his question, before replying. "It's about the recon team we sent out a couple of days ago. We lost contact earlier this morning, and I fear for the worst."
Just then, Suzune-sensei's phone started buzzing. Judging from the tone of her ringtone, it was a text message, and her eyes immediately widened as she read it.
"Who was it?"
"One of them just managed to send in a distress signal. You all need to be there, post-haste. I'll get you the coordinates of the recon team's area as soon as you're ready."
"Got it!"
–––
Following the coordinates given by Suzune-sensei, we eventually reached the recon team's staging area within the hour. It was a campsite, given how there's a small campfire that had been put out some time before. There's nobody around, however.
"Alright, we're here, but I don't see anyone."
"I guess they are still deep in the woods? How'd we know which way they went, though?" Ryoubi questions.
"I've got a feeling that someone made a quick run here so that they can get the message out." Imu theorizes.
"Good point, Imu. Everyone, keep on a lookout and see if we can find any clues on their position."
The girls then scatter around to look.
Minutes later, Seo raises his hand and signals to us, before pointing out what he sees – a blood trail leading away from the campsite. They even looked fresh. He then went ahead with his rifle raised in ready position as the point man to follow the trail, while the rest of us followed him from behind.
The blood splatters on the ground leads us deeper into the woods, and eventually we come across a girl leaning against a tree and in pain. Her leg is bleeding, and she's clutching her leg with one hand, while gripping her weapon with the other.
As soon as he appeared in her line of sight, she quickly raised her wakizashi, but lowered them as soon as she saw me and the rest approached Seo from behind.
"…Hebijo Elites… thank God, I thought I was done for…" She mumbles as everyone circles around her.
"Are you part of the recon team? What happened to the rest of your team?" I asked her immediately.
"Yes." She gasps to catch a breath before resuming to answer me. "We fled when we're discovered during our recon runs and scattered. I don't know what happened to the rest of my team but they are out there somewhere in the woods."
"What did you find there?"
"There's a small village, and we found out that those villagers deify the yoma that was living there for protection. One of them is the champion of that village." She gasps, still clutching the bleeding wound on her leg. "I don't know what else they are planning but I wouldn't doubt that there's more with them."
"We'll take care of it."
Just then, I heard the sound of a zipper being opened. I turn around to see Seo taking out a packet out of his first aid pack before approaching the wounded recon.
"What are you doing?" The rookie asks as Seo tears the packet open and takes out a plastic syringe out of it. He takes off the cap from the tip of the syringe with his mouth and spat it off elsewhere.
"I'm going to fix your leg. Hold still, this is going to sting for a bit." He instructs as he holds down her leg.
True to his words, as he's injecting the contents of the syringe into her open wound, she groans in pain. Once the syringe is emptied, he discards the syringe into the brushes and wraps a compression bandage tightly around the wound, before sticking the torn packaging in between the bandages.
"What was that just now?" She asks again.
"What I just gave you are hemostatic granules; they'll stop your leg from bleeding any further. Keep that bandage tight and stay put until help comes, and you'll make it." He then hands her a small blue tube from his kit. "This is a morphine injector. If the pain's a bit too much or you need to run in an emergency, take out the cap, and stab your leg with it."
"…alright." She then takes the injector and clutches it in her hand, as Seo stands up.
"You should have saved your medical kit for yourself, Seo." I chided him.
"Don't worry, I brought extras." Seo then stows away his kit. "I know what you're thinking, but let's save it for later, yeah?"
I only let out a grunt as a response.
"The village is that direction. Be careful out there." The recon chimes in and points to the direction of the village.
"We'll handle it." I then take out my phone and see that for the time being I have a signal for my mobile connection. I then sent a text message to Suzune-sensei. "Suzune-sensei, we found the recon team but she's by herself. The rest of her team are scattered around the area after an ambush."
"I see. What's the situation there?" She replies to the text message after a short pause.
"According to her, there's a village who deified the yoma as a protection for the village. She's by herself at the moment, but Seo already gave her first aid."
"I'll get people to fetch her if they can get to her in time. Keep me posted, and be safe out there."
"Not sure how the signal reception would be further ahead, but will do." I then put my phone away.
"So… what's our ROE, Miyabi?"
I just stare blankly at him, trying to process what he just asked me. "What?"
"I mean our rules of engagement."
I sigh in exasperation. Him and his abbreviations are really getting on my nerves. "If it wants to kill you, kill it first. Is that good enough for you?"
"Sounds good to me." He replies as he pulls up his face cover.
I then signal my team to move forward.
–––
Following the recon's directions, we sneak deeper into the woods until we eventually find the village. From how the houses were constructed, it looked more like a shanty town than a proper village. We circled around the village to get a better view, until we ended up on a cliff overlooking the village. Once we're perched there, we can see that the village is already on full alert, with the villagers running about everywhere as if they are chasing something or someone.
At the same time, Seo spots something down below and points it out to everyone. I can't see what he's pointing at, so Imu hands me a pair of compact binoculars. As I peered through the binoculars, only then I saw what he's pointing at, and it's a shinobi in our uniform.
"That's one of our recon team…" Imu spoke up. "…and she's all by herself."
"So they were indeed scattered around."
Indeed, the lone recon shinobi is fighting off the other villagers by her lonesome, but since she's obviously outnumbered, she's slowly losing.
"Imu, Ryouna, you two watch our backs. Seo, can you tell what's the range from here to the village?"
"Okay!" Both Ryouna and Imu responded to my orders, while Seo pointed his rifle at the village, and a small device on the top of his scope mount lit up, showing three-digit numbers. "Range is approximately 160 meters from here."
"You and Ryoubi, get in position. Fire on them on my mark."
"Got it."
The two then get in position to fire upon the village, with Seo unfolding his bipod before going prone while Ryoubi adjusts her sights, getting on a knee and using her left arm propped on her right knee as a support. As soon as they are ready to fire, I call out targets for them to shoot. Seo fired first, before Ryoubi followed up with hers. As soon as they both hit their targets, the villagers panicked. I continued on calling out more targets for them, prioritizing the ones with weapons and anyone trying to get any close to the downed shinobi, only stopping when both Seo and Ryoubi had to reload.
"I think that's enough turkey shoot for now. Let's get them up close."
As Seo gets off the ground and is folding his bipod, Imu speaks up. "…say, Miyabi."
"What is it?"
"Did you realize that up until now we haven't seen any small fry yoma at all?"
Ryouna stops for a moment to give it a thought. "Now you mentioned it, Ryouna was thinking the same too! Usually those flying critters would be around a bigger one but all we're seeing so far is just people doing weird stuff."
"That'll make things easier for us, then." I replied to her. "Let's go down there and see what else those fools are up to."
"Roger!"
All of us then descend down into the village from our sniping spot, weapons at ready.
Seo is in the lead, and he's already yelling at the armed individuals, demanding that they put their weapons down. It seems like standard procedure, up until one of them started charging at us. Before he could get close, Seo shot him once in the shoulder and then another to the chest. The man then fell on his back, unresponsive.
That did the trick, as the rest of the villagers stopped dead in their tracks and took a step back.
"Anyone else wanna be brave? C'mon, the next person who tries gets two in the chest and one in the face for free."
With his intimidation tactics working against them, Imu and Murasaki approach the injured recon team member, and drag her off to cover on the side. She is indeed injured and shaken, but at the very least her injuries are not too grave.
"Who's that guy?" The recon shinobi asks, pointing to Seo.
"Ignore him, he's not important. Tell me what's going on here." I tell the recon.
"People who squatted here deify the yoma who lived here, and they decided to form a cult around her. From what me and my team managed to observe, they tried summoning more yoma as their protector, but it didn't work at all."
"That's a relief, but at the same time disturbing." Imu chimes in.
"They are quite fanatical of her, even though she's not issuing orders. I think they are desperate to the point that they decided to try one more thing – human sacrifice." The recon continues.
"What about the one that's already here?" I continue to ask questions.
"I'm not so sure where that yoma is right now. All I know is that the villagers went hunting for us as soon as they noticed us spying on them."
"That doesn't sound like the yoma is in charge." Imu comments.
Suddenly, Seo raises his voice, calling out on something. "Be advised! Unknown contact, 200 meters high, directly ahead of us!"
Hearing that, I quickly looked up and saw a figure standing on top of a tree. That definitely looks like the yoma that the other recon shinobi mentioned. It soon jumped off the tree and landed in front of Seo and Ryoubi.
"That's her!" The recon shinobi points at the yoma as soon as it lands on the ground.
"You… you shouldn't be here!"
Seo raises his rifle at the yoma. "What makes you think you own this place?"
"Because I was here first before they did! DIE!"
I unsheathe my katana as soon as I saw the yoma raise its fist and strike, just as Seo and Ryoubi jump out of the way.
"Stop asking questions and start shooting, you idiot!"
"I was about to!" Seo yells back.
I jumped at the yoma and swung my sword at it. "Take this!" I felt a jolt as my sword connected to my target, but it didn't cut through as I expected, as the yoma was using her wrist to block my sword.
"You think your puny sword can stop me?" The yoma laughs, clearly unfazed even as my sword dug into its flesh.
"You little–"
Before I could get the rest of the words out, it swung its arms and that move tossed me backwards, but I recovered and landed on the ground with a backflip.
It rushes at me to continue with its attack, only to be distracted by Seo and Ryoubi taking potshots at it. I could clearly see the injuries inflicted on the yoma's body, and now it directs its aggression on him instead of Ryoubi. Instead of backing down, Seo continues to fire at the ringleader yoma, and only dodging its strikes at the very last minute.
I went ahead on the offensive to take some heat off of him.
"One at a time! You'll get your turn in dying!" The yoma yells as it swats Seo off his feet, and he lands on his back with a pained grunt.
Despite that, he's still able to get up and pick up his weapon, before he gets behind a cover while Imu and Ryouna jump in to push back the yoma away.
"Giving up already?" I ask sarcastically as I land beside him with Ryoubi.
"Don't give me that, Miyabi. I'm not completely out of the fight yet." He replies, patting his armor. "Plates are holding up well, she just took out the air out of me with that punch." He then detaches the magazine from his rifle. "By the way, you saw that right? I shot at her and the bullets didn't bounce off her?"
I roll my eyes in irritation at his obvious observation. "Yes, I saw that. What of it?"
"I had an idea."
"What?"
Instead of answering right away, Seo slips his backpack in front of him and unzips it, dumping the empty and partially empty magazines from his rear pouch and the magazine pouches in his plate carrier into the bag. He then replaces the empty front pouches with the full ones from his backpack. I notice that the tips of the bullets in the new magazines are colored black, and so does Ryoubi too as I glance at her.
"Black tips? Wait, are those armor piercing?" Ryoubi asks as she recognizes what those bullets are.
"Nope. These are frangible rounds." He replies, showing both of us the identification sticker on the bottom of the magazine he's holding.
"Frangible? What does that do?" I ask.
"They are designed to shatter into pieces upon impact with a hard surface, so that less chances of bullets ricocheting off surfaces in unpredictable manner. Since I can penetrate her flesh, these rounds technically would shatter in her flesh and would deliver more hurt on her." Seo explains further. "Think of it like a hollow point in a way."
"Technically? Wait, so you don't know if it will work or not? Why don't you just use armor piercing instead?"
"Well, for one she's not armored and it will over-penetrate. It's a waste of expensive ammo plus less damage at the end of the day anyways."
"Why don't you aim for the head then?" I protest further.
"With someone as big as that and the head being the smaller target and her moving around like that? Center mass is a better choice, but don't tell me I didn't try, though!" He then loads the magazine with frangible rounds into his rifle and then charges the rifle with its ejection port pointing to the sky, ejecting the round already in the chamber out upwards, and he catches it just as it falls back down. "Hehe, nice." He chuckles to himself as he pockets the round.
"Goddammit." Ryoubi mutters.
"Alright, I'm back in the fight. Let's go!"
Seo runs into the open, promptly attracting the yoma's attention.
"There you are! I thought you'd run away like a coward!"
Instead of quipping back, Seo simply lifts up his rifle and fires bursts into the yoma. The moment his bullets hit the latter, the yoma visibly recoils – an indicator that Seo's frangible rounds works wonders.
"Gah! That hurts!" The yoma yelped in shock, clearly not expecting that. "You bastard!"
"You like that? There'll be more where that came from!" Seo taunts, just as he evades the next fist coming for him.
"I'll make you pay for that, human!" The yoma yells as it continues to throw hands at Seo, and eventually the punch would connect with him, throwing him backwards and onto his back. "Got you now!"
"LEAVE HIM ALONE!"
Murasaki suddenly jumps in after staying in the background since the fight started. With a scream of her shinobi secret art, she launches a ball of dark energy that pushes back the yoma. Seo rolls back on his belly and gets on a knee, whipping out his handgun from his leg holster.
"Thanks, Murasaki!"
"Y-you're welcome!"
He then starts firing his handgun at the yoma, rapidly racking the slide between shots. At first, I wondered why Seo's shots don't seem to hurt it much, but then I noticed the familiar white plastic heads of his tranquilizer darts can be clearly seen dotted all over the yoma's lower body.
Only now I recognize what his plan is.
"Hah! Your puny bullets didn't even go in that deep this time!"
"They are not meant to, musclehead! And thanks for staying still!" He yells as he flicks aside the empty magazine out of his handgun, and jamming a new one in haste.
That taunt coming from him angers the yoma as it rushes towards him, while he continues to shoot his handgun at it, tracking the yoma just before it jumps up. Murasaki quickly pulls him out of the way just before the yoma could land on him, the shockwave from the yoma's landing sending both of them rolling on the ground.
"Seriously! Don't just stand there!"
"Sorry! But that's the best chance I could get to hit her!" He replies.
"You think you're that smart, are you? These stupid little pins don't hurt at all!"
Seo pulls up his handgun to view and realizing that it's locked empty, and he drops the slide before holstering it back into his thigh holster.
"Seo, what are you doing?" I mutter when he narrowly dodges another strike, this time separating him from Murasaki.
"Useless! Useless! Useless!" The yoma continues with its attacks, now fully focused on him, and all Seo is doing is dodging as best as he can, as if biding his time for those multiple darts to kick into effect.
And it eventually did, as the yoma's relentless punches would cease, as it suddenly stops moving and dropped on its knees
"W…what? My legs feel heavy! What the he–?!" The yoma now realized where its source of numbness comes from. "What the hell is in those things?!"
"Seo! Whatever you're gonna do, do it now!"
"You don't have to tell me twice!"
Seo raises his rifle and starts firing in bursts, aimed at the yoma's left leg. The effects are immediate as it shouts in pain, and its footing falters. It snarls at Seo as it stands up and tries to hobble its way towards him, but he follows up with shots to its right leg instead.
Even as the yoma defiantly tries to stand up despite the damage done to its legs, Imu and I then step in to deliver the finishing blow with a combined strike to its chest, sending the yoma crashing onto its back. It lay on the ground, finally defeated, as Imu continued to pin it down with her enlarged staff.
"That's enough for you." I mutter venomously at the yoma, myself being exhausted from all the fighting to take it down.
Even as the yoma is soundly defeated, it glares at us in complete defiance.
"You little bastard… you and your friends are a nuisance…" It speaks up. "I should have known that those idiots were going to be the death of me…"
"Why did you let them be then?"
"Does it matter?"
In the meantime, Seo approaches us as he replaces the magazine to his rifle.
Once he's right next to me, he pulls down the face cover he's wearing as the yoma shifts its head and directs its glare towards him at the same time. What I didn't expect was that I noticed that its anger-filled glare would slowly shift into one of disbelief.
"What? Something on my face?" Seo questions, noticing the yoma's change of behavior as well.
"…you… I think I know you from somewhere…"
Hearing that, I raise my eyebrow.
"We literally just met today, what are you talking about?"
She ignores Seo's banter. "…you look familiar…" The yoma responds.
Upon hearing that, Seo furrowed his brows. "…what?"
"You remind me of someone I met before. A long time ago…" It continues muttering with a change in its tone – from disbelief and back into that of anger.
"If there's something I don't know that you know, now's a good time to actually tell me."
"Why should I?"
"Stop talking in circles, asshole!" Seo suddenly raises his voice and his rifle.
The yoma only scoffed at him in response to his demands. "I refuse."
"That's enough. I don't need to hear all this prattling coming from you, yoma." I interject, raising my sword and ready to kill the yoma.
As was about to plunge the tip of my blade into its heart, the yoma recovers with a sudden burst of energy. It trips up Imu and removes her staff that's pinning itself down, before I too would find myself seeing a flash of pain as I was kicked off my foothold and soon enough, I'm staring at the skies. Seo too would receive the same fate as I can hear him grunt in pain as he met the ground.
As I level my gaze back at the yoma, thankfully its legs are still injured. Its focus is directed at Seo, also in the process of getting up.
"…seems like there's a lot that they hid from you." It growls at Seo. "But I'll let you in on a secret – you and I aren't strangers."
"…wait, what the fuck do you mean by that?" He interjects.
"You'd have to find out about it yourself." The yoma responds between its gritted teeth, moments before it escapes by running off into the wilderness.
"Miyabi! Should we give chase?!" Ryoubi asks.
"No… I don't think we need to. Stand down."
As the dust had finally settled, I pulled out my phone to check on the signal. As expected, mobile reception got worse the deeper we are deep in the sticks. Even if there's some signal left, I know any message I want to send out is going to be delayed.
Regardless of that, I sent Suzune-sensei a text message to confirm our mission status.
"Suzune-sensei, the area is clear. The good news is that the village is neutralized, but the bad news is… the ringleader escaped."
There was a bit of a pause, and I watched as the message's status changed from sent to read half a minute later, much to my relief.
"Alright. The team that I sent to your position earlier is already close by, they should be arriving within the hour. Secure the village in the meantime, we'll see if we can find anything else in there."
"Oh, thank God." I muttered as I saw her reply.
"Seems like that's it for our job. I guess we can go home now?" Imu asked me, and I shook my head, much to her confusion. "So, what are we waiting for then?"
"Waiting for the second team to be done with their thing."
"You think that yoma would come back anytime soon?"
"I'd be pretty sure that she won't." Seo butts in.
"How can you be so sure?"
"We scared her off since we gave her a good beating up until the last minute." He responds. "Besides, it doesn't seem like she's recovering from those injuries anytime soon."
"How'd you explain her running off like that? You put holes in her legs."
"I could only assume she's running on adrenaline."
The second team that Suzune-sensei sent arrived minutes later, and we regrouped. I briefed the team about what had happened and they went to work on finding the rest of the recon team. They returned with some of the surviving members of the recon team, some were injured but a couple of them perished after the ambush. The first shinobi we met was among the ones that survived.
"So, what's gonna happen to those villagers?" Seo asks, breaking the silence among us.
"All I know they'd be investigated for their connections with the yoma." I respond to him. "After that, that's not our job to know."
He just shrugs his shoulders and watches as the other team starts to investigate the village one house at a time. By the time the second team was done with investigating the village, it was already dusk. I reported to Suzune-sensei as soon as the mobile signal was available, and we then left in separate groups, with the second team leaving first, carrying the dead and the wounded with them.
–––
HEBIJO CLANDESTINE GIRLS' ACADEMY, 0020 hrs.
Even as everyone else is settled in for the night, I can't stay still.
I was even thinking about going into the dojo again for my usual self-training and clearing my mind at the same time, but I felt that it might not be enough. In fact, the thing that probably made me feel like this is hearing the things that yoma said to Seo and having it loop inside my head over and over again. It just felt strange, and the fact that he had things to hide doesn't sit right with me.
As I walked through the administration corridor, I noticed that the lights in Suzune-sensei's office were on. That could only mean she's still up at this hour.
I knock on the door. "Suzune-sensei, are you in?"
"I'm here. Come in."
I then open the door and enter the office, to see her at her desk, writing something down. "Good evening, Miyabi. I see you're not spending the midnight oil at the dojo today for once."
"I just can't go to sleep, can't even train like usual. It's not like I can't do it tomorrow, but I just don't feel like it."
"Something you have in mind? It's rare that you feel that way to the point you'd skip your regular regimen."
"I guess so. What are you doing anyways, Suzune-sensei?" I ask as I close the door behind me.
"I'm doing bits of paperwork about today's mission, but I'm waiting for more reports from all of the teams who went there, and then I can debrief everyone properly by next morning."
"I see." I then sit down on the chair facing Suzune-sensei with a sigh, giving things a thought for a moment. "Maybe a few things I need to discuss with you, sensei."
"About the mission?"
"Pretty much."
"Was it about Seo? How did he perform in the mission?"
I roll my eyes a little as I recall his performance in the mission. "Terrible."
She chuckles in response. "I'm pretty sure that's not the whole story, Miyabi."
"Alright, fine… he's constantly getting into my nerves during the mission, especially with his abbreviations. Can you believe that even after we're already briefed, he's still asking me about rules of engagement?"
"You've got to understand that his ways of fighting aren't the same as us shinobi. He's a modern warfighter, and us, not so much. Anything else?"
"Well, there's the fact that he'd use his first aid kit for the injured recon team members without having to be prompted, and he actually carried more too. He's the opposite of our evil shinobi doctrine to be honest."
"Unsurprising, to be honest. Considering that he is a former military, his values differ a lot more when compared to an evil shinobi like us. I'm sure he's still holding on to those values to heart."
"Speaking of that, is he really former military?"
Suzune-sensei smiles as she stands up from her chair. "I'm glad you asked."
She then walks over to the cabinets for students' personal folders and she rifles through it. Moments later, Suzune-sensei pulls out a folder and hands it to me. That folder has Seo's name and his picture on the front cover.
I then open the folder and start reading through it, starting with his personal data. Full name, Fujisaki Seo… age 23, blood type O, and his height is about the same as mine.
As I continue to flip through his records, I end up in the section where his military service is listed. He spent about 5 years in the force, with his final rank being First Lieutenant and a Ranger to boot before he left the armed forces just as his minimum service years lapsed. He didn't continue service past then and I presumed he quit to join Void Horizon sometime later.
While he's in the military, he participated in what I can assume joint military exercises as there's pictures of foreign military members together with him, and also pictures of him together with his unit. The records show that he was not a participant of any peacekeeping mission in foreign nations, and I assume all his combat experiences were based on those exercises and then his time spent with his current private security company.
At the same time, I would continue reading through his file and came across his parents' files. His mother is still alive, but the same cannot be said about his father. His father on the other hand had passed away some time ago as the words "DECEASED" is stamped in red ink across his photo but the reason of death was not mentioned, for some reason.
"Alright, fine. I believe you, Suzune-sensei." I just sigh in defeat and close the folder, as there's no way I'm going to win this argument. I then decided to change the topic of the conversation to something else that bothered me. "That aside… after we met up with the recon team who sent the distress call, we found the village and the yoma overseeing it. It's a high-level yoma and it can talk, and Ryoubi pointed this out to me, that, for some reason, there's no small fry yoma backing up the ringleader." I then pause a bit to remember the details of the encounter. "After we defeated the yoma, it acted strange after getting a good look at Seo. It sounded as if that yoma somehow was familiar with him, but it didn't elaborate any further before it escaped."
"Intriguing." Suzune-sensei comments. "How did he react to all of that?"
"Confused, obviously."
"I see."
"What do you think, Suzune-sensei?"
"That does sound like he doesn't have anything to hide, to be honest."
"I still don't believe that."
"I'm thinking that It's probable that there's a connection between him and that yoma, that even he's unaware." Suzune-sensei continues. "To what end, I am not quite sure myself. Could be something that goes way back, perhaps."
"I think that might warrant a further investigation, Suzune-sensei."
"I agree. We could get Seo in a meeting tomorrow morning and see what else he can report about the mission."
"You think that would help, Suzune-sensei?"
"It depends. If that fails, I might get better results by looking and asking around. In the meantime, I do believe you should go and rest, Miyabi. It's already late after all, and you have classes tomorrow."
I nod as I get up from my seat. "Alright. I'll take my leave first. Goodnight, Suzune-sensei."
"Good night, Miyabi."