The atmosphere froze slightly for a brief moment.
However, as the fireworks erupted in the sky above the shrine, Fujiwara Chika's expression became lively once again.
"So to summarize."
The young girl's head shimmered beneath the fireworks, looking quite amusing whether viewed from above or from the side: "Today's investigation was a major success."
"Rather than an investigation," Asakura sighed: "it feels like we did nothing but play around."
The fireworks erupted once more.
Golden and red light fell onto the water's surface, and the firelight from the floating lanterns was illuminated even brighter in an instant.
Chika raised her head and lifted both hands: "Tamaya————!!!"
That voice shouted louder than even the children around them.
"So beautiful, it's just like a double cheese garlic loaded celery bacon bits lava-center omurice!"
"What an exceptionally appetite-inducing analogy." Asakura stared at the sky for a while, feeling that it was merely the most ordinary golden-red fireworks.
When the fireworks died out, the river surface darkened briefly.
Asakura looked down at the water's surface, the reflections of the lanterns swaying.
In the distance on the river surface, several lanterns suddenly went out one after another with a "gu-dong" sound, as if someone had gently snuffed out the flames.
The surrounding crowd didn't pay much attention; some even thought the lanterns had taken in water for too long and extinguished naturally, continuing to take photos and make merry.
Asakura didn't say anything, but merely cast a few more glances.
The sound of taiko drums still rang out incessantly with a steady rhythm, and the liveliness of the festival swallowed that slight abnormality rapidly like a rising tide.
After the fireworks concluded, Asakura and Fujiwara Chika left the shrine.
"None of these stalls sell double cheese garlic loaded celery bacon bits lava-center omurice, huh." The young girl's gaze continuously paced over the signs of the stalls.
"It'd be a miracle if they sold a dish that sounds like something only an internet-celebrity shop would launch." Asakura criticized.
Don't harbor too much expectation for stalls at a festival.
"More importantly, you've eaten five different things already; is your stomach really going to be fine?" he asked Fujiwara Chika.
"Four types," she corrected. "Hawthorn is used to stimulate the appetite, so it doesn't count as food!"
"Isn't your definition of food a bit strange?"
It felt almost identical to a certain flat-chested girl's definition of friends.
"If you care too much about these random bits and pieces, you'll become unhappy, you know," Fujiwara Chika instructed with a straight face. "I often secretly run out to eat ramen, completely ignoring other people's gazes. Feasting to your heart's content on just the noodles and soup is the true essence! It's just that recently I often run into another blonde girl who is also all by herself..."
Night had completely descended.
The light from the lanterns became steadier.
The rhythm of the taiko drums did not stop; instead, it seemed to grow more and more regular, beat after beat, as if the festival were operating within a specific tempo.
The crowd was still vast.
But compared to the beginning, the clamor seemed to have been lowered a bit.
But it was understandable; after all, even the fireworks had already been let off. If one were to describe it using a match, it had already entered the garbage time of the second half.
"Oh! That one is so cute!"
In the middle section of the sacred approach path, there was a stall selling masks—foxes, ogre faces, fox half-masks, all shapes and sizes.
Chika was instantly drawn to it.
She picked up a fox mask, "Asakura-kun, you wear this!"
"No way." Asakura looked at it with complete disgust.
"Why!"
"I don't like this kind of thing."
"Don't boys all absolutely love Kamen Rider?"
"This is this, that is that. Don't mix them up into the same thing." Asakura said, "You wear it yourself."
"If I wear this, I'll turn into a shrine maiden."
"Don't underestimate shrine maidens!"
Chika smiled and gestured the mask against her face, then put it down under the stall owner's disappointed gaze.
"Forget it, it's inconvenient to eat while wearing it."
"If you want Kamen Rider, actually I have them here too." The stall owner suddenly brought out a row of brand new masks: "These are all hidden editions."
"...No, it's purely just old stock that couldn't be sold, right?" Asakura looked at the dust on top of them and couldn't help but criticize, "And besides, the Kamen Rider is even Ichigo; you could at least give me a Heisei-era one..."
Despite saying so, Asakura still bought one in the end, wearing it askew on his head.
The two of them walked forward while playing around like this, returning to the entrance of the sacred approach path.
"Wonderful————" Chika stretched herself out, displaying her graceful bodily curves that even a yukata couldn't fully conceal: "Today feels completely devoid of any abnormalities."
"Mhm." Asakura fiddled with the transformation belt he had bought from a secondhand stall, speaking half-heartedly.
"Asakura-kun is playing quite to his heart's content too, huh," the young girl said.
"No such thing." Asakura put on the belt properly and began to fiddle with the Spark Lens and Taro Badge that he had also bought from the exact same stall.
"I actually thought there would really be some sort of 'Return of the Dead' theatrical movie plot line where Chika here could showcase her grand skills to help out the Exorcist Master." She looked left and right, "As it turns out, it's completely just an ordinary festival."
"Are you disappointed?" Asakura cast a sideways glance at her.
"No." She shook her head, "Ordinary is also very fun."
Having said that, she suddenly perked up again.
"Then let's keep playing!"
"Still want to play?"
"Of course!" She took it as a matter of course, "Right now is the golden hours of the night!"
"But my transformation time is only three minutes." Asakura said.
"That's way too short!"
"Now it's time to return inside the pumpkin carriage."
"Cinderella?! Is that what you mean by transformation?!"
"Oh dear, I accidentally dropped my glass transformation device."
"No, no, no, it was completely Asakura-kun deliberately and theatrically throwing it on the ground, right? It's still making strange sound effects; what on earth is 'Shabadoobie~ Touch to Transform' supposed to mean?!"
"Since things have come to this, I can only go home first." Asakura wanted to use the opportunity to slip away as if nothing had happened, but his hand was pulled back by the girl.
"Keep accompanying me to play!" Fujiwara Chika said coquettishly, "It's a rare chance to play outside without having to follow a curfew!"
"..."
Asakura let out a sigh with a bit of a headache: "Alright, stop shaking me, your goldfish is almost getting carsick."
"Haha, how can a goldfish get carsick!" The girl laughed.
Not quite. Asakura looked at the goldfish bag in her hand; the goldfish inside was already spinning incessantly as if it had been sucked into some kind of whirlpool.
"Not quite."
For an instant, Asakura thought he had accidentally spoken his words out loud, but he immediately realized that someone nearby was speaking.
Both he and Fujiwara Chika subconsciously looked over toward that direction, and as a result, they saw a strange little girl.
She stood in a spot where the light had not yet completely spread out, looking like she was deliberately maintaining a distance from the festival to avoid being disturbed.
Deep purple hair fell down to her shoulders, the ends flipping outward slightly, while a rebellious strand of hair on the top of her head swayed gently, as if drawn by an invisible current.
A tiny bunch of hair tied up on the side moved slightly along with her breathing, appearing somewhat out of place in the still air.
Her left eye was covered by a white eyepatch of the exact same style as Asakura's, the thin strap extending along the side of her face, fitting just right.
That did not seem like a simple concealment; it looked more like a boundary intentionally maintained—as if beneath it, there lay something that should not be easily displayed to others.
The exposed right eye was clear and bright; that gaze did not make one feel it was sharp when it landed on a person, but on the contrary, possessed a bit of emptiness, as if what she was looking at was not just the scene before her eyes.
She raised her head, her fingertips pausing at the edge of her eyepatch, her movements gentle and practiced, as if this had already been repeated countless times.
"The deceased have indeed already returned... at that boundary line invisible to the eye... which is hard for mankind to reach!"
The air seemed to become a bit quieter at that exact instant.
Her other hand rested on her waist, her body leaning forward slightly, her posture natural yet carrying a touch of a bizarre sense of pressure.
It was not a pressure brought by strength, but a kind of... difficult-to-explain focus, as if she were listening to something at any given moment.
Black over-the-knee socks outlined the slender lines of her legs, making her entire being appear delicate and upright.
Everything was very ordinary.
Yet it also seemed as if it did not completely belong here.
She stood there, as if if only another instant passed, that invisible boundary would be quietly pulled open—and after that, it would no longer be a world familiar to anyone.
Fujiwara Chika froze for a moment, instinctively looking toward Asakura.
While Asakura knit his brows, slightly shaking his head.
He was unable to sense any magical power from the other party's body.
But the other party was clearly not some simple character; regardless of her tone or her posture, they both manifested her uniqueness.
Asakura could even subtly sense a bit of a gaze from beneath the other party's eyepatch—this meant that she was different from him; she was not blind, and beneath the eyepatch was a perfectly intact eye.
It was clear that a normal person would not use an eyepatch to cover a perfectly intact eye.
Was it some kind of mystic eye that temporarily could not be gathered and released freely at will?
Or was it an organ hosting some kind of power or extraordinary existence?
Or perhaps it was a distortion that made her unfit to be seen by people, caused by a magical curse running wild?
Asakura remained silent for a brief moment, then actively took a step forward, shielding Fujiwara Chika, who was acting as an ordinary person, behind his back as if nothing were amiss.
"...May I ask who you are?"
"There is no need to care about my identity," for some reason, the moment she was asked this by Asakura, the eye of the girl that was left exposed immediately lit up, and her expression instantly shifted from that deadpan expression carrying a bit of nihilism just now into a state resembling a low-tier minor actress who had finally managed to be noticed, trying hard to suppress her joy while forcefully maintaining a calm facade: "It's merely a chance encounter, that's all. If I must say... right, call me the Tyrant's Eye Master."
"The Tyrant's Eye..."
Asakura's gaze rested on the other party's eyepatch once again.
As expected, is there something fishy about that eye?
The girl looked at him without explaining, but instead said softly:
"Are you here to welcome them."
Her tone was very flat, not sounding like she was asking, but exactly as if she were confirming something.
Chika froze for a second.
"Welcome what?"
The girl did not look at her, but instead looked toward the direction of the river.
"After the lanterns are lit, the invisible boundary line will unfold." She spoke very slowly, as if reciting something she had already memorized by heart.
"Unfold..."
Asakura chewed over the other party's words.
Does it refer to a power akin to a domain expansion?
No, it could also potentially be a demonic realm.
"They will return along the path of the lights," the Tyrant's Eye Master said softly, "First the shadows, then the voices. Finally, it's the..."
Her words came to a halt.
Although at first glance it seemed somewhat like making a mystery out of nothing, or even like she had forgotten her lines halfway through ravings and was currently thinking up settings, Asakura pondered for a brief moment and felt that nobody would talk utter nonsense on this kind of matter, so he pursued the question: "Finally, what is it."
The Tyrant's Eye Master's gaze slowly shifted back, landing on his face.
"It's the positions."
Chika: "...?"
She completely couldn't understand it.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," she raised her hand, "I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up with the settings. May I ask if it's some kind of urban legend? Like the Zoo Urban Legend or something..."
The girl wearing the eyepatch ignored her, merely continuing to say:
"The more lights there are, the more positions there are; the more people there are, the more shadows there are."
"Initially, nobody will notice it, but unconsciously, very soon there will be extras."
Her voice had no ups and downs, for some unknown reason.
The surrounding lights seemed to dim a little.
Chika glanced left and right.
"Eh? Did the light just flicker for a moment?"
Asakura didn't say anything.
This kind of situation was very common—supernatural power affecting the magnetic field, causing electrical appliances to strobe and flicker, or things of that nature.
It couldn't possibly be that the organizers of the Obon Festival failed to consult with the city office and just pulled a line from the power grid over here, resulting in an unstable power supply that caused the streetlights to strobe, right?
The girl wearing the eyepatch looked at them, and then tilted her head gently.
"Haven't you noticed yet?"
"It's already different."
Fujiwara Chika revealed an expression of being somewhat frightened.
Asakura knit his brows, feeling that he must have overlooked something, just like earlier on the river surface—
"Hey————!"
Right at this moment, a more distant voice drifted over, interrupting his train of thought: "You're running around wildly again!"
A slightly older young girl squeezed through the crowd, using a long-handled soup ladle from who-knows-where to rap the girl wearing the eyepatch on the head.
It let out a "dong" sound, which was exceptionally pleasant to the ear.
"I've been looking for you for ages!" Huffy and puffing, she grabbed the back of that girl's collar with one hand, hoisting the eyepatch girl up exactly like lifting a kitten.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," subsequently, she—whose age might very well be nearly the same as Tokiwa Shizuka—finally displayed a slightly awkward smile toward Asakura and Fujiwara Chika, "This child has a bit of chunibyo; recently she's always telling people strange things..."
Chika: "Ah, so that's how it is."
She accepted it instantly.
"I knew it!" She laughed, "That bit just now had such an amazing atmosphere!"
"...Sorry to cause trouble for you both." The older sister pulled the girl back, "Let's go."
"The invisible boundary line... does exist!" The eyepatch girl shouted toward Asakura exactly like the Pirate King who was about to be executed.
Asakura rubbed his forehead helplessly.
He felt that all the energy he had invested just now had been completely wasted.
How could someone genuinely run over to spout this kind of supernatural, rambling nonsense purely for the sake of fun!
He looked toward the direction where the girl had just disappeared.
The crowd flowed.
The lights were stable.
The sounds were normal.
Everything looked completely devoid of issues.
But——
That sentence from just now nonetheless continued to echo in Asakura's ears:
"It's already different."
It should just be an illusion, right.
Asakura let out a sigh, feeling a bit tired at heart.
"Asakura-kun, hurry up and come over here!" Fujiwara Chika stood by the torii gate at the exit, bouncing up and down while waving her hand at him—it was quite a feat that she could make this kind of movement while wearing wooden geta sandals.
"Hmm? Didn't you say you still wanted to keep playing?"
"But Asakura-kun is already tired, right? Then it really is best to stop right here." The young girl said considerately.
"So gentle and considerate, you aren't Fujiwara Chika, who are you?"
"Chika here will get angry too if Asakura-kun says that kind of thing, you know!"
"Tsk."
"Exorcist Master!"
"Mhm."
"Today was truly a lot of fun!"
"Oh."
Although Asakura acted somewhat coldly, Fujiwara Chika laughed very happily.
The light illuminated her face, looking sweet and lovely.
Looking at the young girl's happy appearance, Asakura's own expression relaxed slightly as well.
The summer night's moonlight was just right, the festival lights rippled and flowed, and the crowd was extraordinarily bustling and lively.
What a beautiful day.
Then, he froze rigidly once more.
Because he saw it.
In the midst of the crowd, for an instant——
It was truly just for such a fleeting instant.
There was a shadow.
It didn't keep up with its master's footsteps.