Chapter 54: Gentle as Water
"New Shadow Style: Simple Domain: Batto Sword Drawing!"
Kasumi Miwa shut her eyes and let instinct take over.
Fear had driven her into motion, but fear did not make her blade slow. As a Kyoto Jujutsu High student, her fundamentals were solid to the bone. The moment her feet planted, blue cursed energy wrapped around her katana, and her body snapped into the form she had repeated countless times in training.
Then she drew.
The slash cut cleanly through the air and shot straight toward Yami's chest.
At the same instant, Mai bit down on her fear and pulled the trigger again.
"I'm not losing either!"
This time, she aimed low. If she could not kill him, then she would at least cripple his movement and create an opening for Miwa.
Blade from the front. Bullet from behind.
For any ordinary Grade 1 sorcerer, that timing alone would have been troublesome.
Yami only let out a soft sigh.
"Too slow."
His voice was light, almost gentle, yet it still reached both girls with terrifying clarity.
The next moment, the scorching pressure radiating from his body vanished.
In its place came something different.
Cool. Fluid. Quiet.
The violent heat that had dominated the battlefield dissolved into a presence as gentle as flowing water. Yami's silhouette blurred, not because he had become faster in any explosive sense, but because the rhythm of his movement had changed so completely that the eye could no longer pin him down.
He did not block.
He did not retreat.
He simply moved with the attack.
Water Breathing, Third Form: Flowing Dance.
Miwa felt her vision blur.
Her sure kill slash passed through empty space.
The full force of her draw carried her forward, and the absence of impact nearly tore her balance away. Her body lurched ahead uncontrollably, her mind going blank.
"Eh...?"
She opened her eyes in confusion.
Where is he?
Then a breeze brushed against her ear. It was the faint wind stirred by the hem of Yami's uniform.
While slipping past Miwa's blade, his body turned like a current gliding around stone. In the same smooth rotation, he let Mai's bullet pass just behind him, the shot missing by a margin so small it was almost mocking.
There was no clash, no sparks, no explosion.
Only a figure weaving between two attacks as naturally as mist drifting over a river.
By the time Miwa fully realized what had happened, Yami was already behind her.
"Be careful. You'll fall."
His voice came gently at her ear.
Then came a light tap.
Thwack.
The scabbard in his hand struck the back of her neck with perfect precision. The force was controlled so delicately that it did not truly hurt, but it cut off her body's resistance in an instant.
"Ugh..."
Miwa's vision went black. Her knees gave out, and her body slumped.
Yet before she could hit the ground, a steady hand caught her shoulder and lowered her carefully onto the grass.
After placing her down, Yami did not pause for even half a breath.
His toes brushed the earth, and his body moved again, rippling outward like a wave across a still lake.
This time, his target was Mai.
"Stay away from me!"
Mai's heart nearly stopped when she saw him appear in front of her as if he had stepped out of a blind spot in the world itself. She tried to raise her revolver and fire again, but before her finger could tense around the trigger, a slender hand had already pressed the barrel down.
That hand was warm.
Not warm with killing intent, not warm with fury.
Just warm.
There was even a faint scent of clean soap on him, absurdly ordinary in the middle of a battlefield.
"Girls shouldn't play with dangerous things like this."
Yami looked at her and smiled with quiet helplessness, as though he were scolding a reckless younger sister rather than disarming an enemy.
His red eyes were clear and calm, and for one dizzy second Mai saw her own reflection inside them.
Her breath caught.
Not because of fear.
But because everything about him at that distance was overwhelming in a different way entirely. Power without cruelty. Calm without indifference. Gentleness wrapped around an authority that could not be resisted.
Then the scabbard moved again.
Thwack.
Just like Miwa, Mai's body instantly went limp.
Her revolver slipped from her fingers. Yami caught it casually, spun it once, then flicked it up onto a nearby tree branch where it hung uselessly out of reach.
From the moment Miwa charged to the instant both girls were down, fewer than three seconds had passed.
Yami had not drawn his blade.
Had not struck to injure.
Had not even breathed hard.
He had taken down two of Kyoto Jujutsu High's core members with nothing but footwork, timing, and the scabbard at his waist.
"Miwa! Mai!"
High above, Momo Nishimiya's eyes turned red.
For all their arguments and all their petty bickering, they were still her teammates. Seeing them collapse one after another made the fear in her chest twist straight into anger.
"You bastard!"
"Give them back!"
She drove her broom down from the sky, pouring cursed energy into it until the air around her shrieked. Wind exploded outward, and countless blades of compressed air gathered into a massive spiraling storm.
It was the strongest attack she could manage.
"Die!"
Yami tilted his head back and looked at her.
Against that enormous tornado, his expression remained as placid as still water.
"You think being in the air makes you safe?"
He murmured the words almost to himself.
Then he vanished.
Not blurred.
Vanished.
Even Kamo Noritoshi, who had been staring at him without daring to blink, failed to catch the movement. All he saw was the ground beneath Yami's feet exploding into a circular shockwave, as if something had launched straight through the air at absurd speed.
"Where...?!"
Momo's heart lurched violently. A cold, primal warning tore through her mind.
She whipped her head left.
Nothing.
Right.
Nothing.
Below.
Nothing.
Then, as realization struck, she looked up.
And froze.
Above her, higher than her broom had climbed, Yami hung in the air as if gravity itself had forgotten him. The sun shone behind him, turning him into a dark silhouette rimmed with light. The glare made his features hard to see, but it illuminated those hanafuda earrings fluttering in the wind and the outline of his uniform swaying against the sky.
He looked less like a person than a god peering down from above the clouds.
"Up here."
His voice drifted down with the faintest trace of a smile.
Momo Nishimiya's blood ran cold.
.....
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