Toma tore awake like a drowning man breaking the surface. His body lurched upright with a violent gasp, his lungs dragging in breath so fast it burned. His hands clawed at nothing, and his eyes were wide and unfocused.
"Hey! Oi! OI!"
A voice broke through the haze, followed by the feeling of someone smacking him on the shoulder.
"Would you wake up already?!"
Toma blinked hard once or twice before seeing that the endless checkerboard was… gone. He was no longer beneath blinding lights while bound by tendons digging into his flesh. Instead, damp earth sank beneath his weight, and a low, crackling fire lit up the space. The quiet chorus of cicadas buzzing in the distance filled the silence.
"Huh…?" He asked, his voice coming out in a hoarse and confused tone. Then a hand shoved his shoulder again, less aggressively this time, though not by much.
"Finally!" Kira snapped, leaning back with an annoyed click of her tongue. "You were thrashing around like you were getting butchered or something. And loud, too… a girl needs her sleep, y'know."
Though Toma's breath hadn't caught up just yet. His chest rose and fell unevenly as his eyes scanned the trees, the dark silhouettes of overgrown brush, and the small outline of a broken road that cut through the wilderness. He was no longer on stage in front of a bloodthirsty audience about to be slaughtered.
He was simply in the rural outskirts of Kurasama.
"I… sorry…" Toma whispered, wiping at his face and realizing belatedly that it was damp with sweat… Maybe tears. "I think I was–"
"Dreaming. Yeah, I thought as much." Kira cut him off while crouching by the fire and poking at it with a branch. Sparks fluttered upward, briefly illuminating her sharp eyes and the small scowl etched into her face. "You don't need to give me a full performance review."
Toma stared at her a second longer than necessary to ground himself. She was a short woman with her hair cut short and spiked out unevenly, black with a noticeable white hue streaking through it. She wore a black robe that was buttoned up to the collar with white, circular buttons, and she wore fingerless red gloves.
"Right…" he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. The fire popped and a breeze rolled through the trees, carrying with it the scent of diesel that always lingered in the air of Kurasama's outskirts. The place had once been a part of Aokabe's urban sprawl, but neglect had let it rot into half-reclaimed wilderness.
Perfect territory for Witches and Yamirei.
Kira jabbed the fire once more before tossing it to the dirt. "Are you good now? Or should I worry that you'll scream the moment I look away from you?"
"I wasn't screaming that loud…"
"You didn't hear yourself then." She then closed off the debate with a simple hand wave. "Just try not to scream when we actually find her."
That snapped him fully awake. "Annalise…" he whispered to himself. The Bat Witch. The very reason they were here to begin with.
Toma shifted, pulling his knees in as he glanced past the fire into the dark treeline, feeling like something was watching just beyond where the firelight stopped.
"If we take her down… we'll both get a contract… right?" He asked.
Kira gave him a small nod. "Witch Contract," she corrected. "And provided we survive the negotiation first."
"Right…"
"And maybe then you'll finally stop being dead weight," she continued before glancing at him with a small grin.
"You don't have to say it like that…" He replied with a small frown.
"I do, actually. It's quite accurate."
Toma let out a half-annoyed exhale through his nostrils. She wasn't completely wrong. No contract meant no awakened chakras, and no chakras meant no access to the Exorcist Arts. Which meant that now he was only a normal person wandering into a hunt meant for monsters.
He looked down at his hands, and for a mere moment, he swore he could still feel something there. A phantom sensation. Like something had once pierced straight through. His fingers curled instinctively.
"You're zoning out again," Kira pointed out flatly.
"I'm thinking…" Toma said
"That's not your strong suit…"
Toma gave her a small glare, but it lacked any real bite to it. After a moment, he sighed and leaned back slightly and bathed in the warmth of the fire.
"This dream…" he admitted, quieter now. "Felt real…"
"Dreams normally do," she said eventually, though her tone had lost a bit of its edge. "If it bothers you that much, you shouldn't go back to sleep. You only need to last until we find the Witch, so after that, you can sleep all you want. Assuming she doesn't claw your throat out."
"Aren't you a bundle of hope," Toma remarked sarcastically.
"I'm here allll week," she said, laziness draining out of her limbs as something more alert took its place. She looked towards the treeline, her eyes narrowing slightly.
"We're almost there," she murmured before standing up and brushing dirt off her robe. "Finish waking up, Toma. We've got little time left."
All the irritation she showed from earlier was now replaced with focus. Toma gave her a small nod before standing to his feet with a sigh. "Yeah, yeah, I got it…" he said, but instead of following right away, he walked a few steps past the campfire. His boots crunched lightly over gravel and dry soil until the land dipped to reveal an overlook.
Even from all the way up here, Karasuma carried an uneven beauty. The sect was a cluster of dim lights that flickered like fallen stars across the land, broken only by long stretches of nature that had reclaimed what the city of Aokabe long abandoned. It looked alive.
Toma rested his forearms on a worn wooden guardrail, leaning into it as the cool night air brushed against his face. He exhaled through his nose, his gaze unfocused as it drifted across the distant high-rise towers in the distance.
A dock worker. That's all he'd been from fourteen years old all the way until last year. Life down in the Minazuki Sect, where he grew up, had been simple in the worst way possible. From long hours to the dull ache that never left his bones from all the heavy lifting he did. He had no future… no direction.
Then came Mr. Hosho with the offer. The spirit had shown up with nothing but a clean coat and a presence that made everyone else in the room feel like background noise. A liaison for the Global Maestro Association who, for some reason, had selected Toma.
I still don't understand why… Toma thought, a humorless smile tugging at his lips. Even the word Maestro didn't feel like it belonged to him. His fingers curled slightly against the wood of the railing.
"I didn't even thank him properly…" he whispered to himself.
Everything had moved too fast after that, from training to being thrown headfirst into a world where monsters were real and people like him were expected to hunt them. And now, here he was. Chasing a Witch through the dead outskirts of Karasuma with barely anything to his name except a borrowed weapon and a partner who clearly thought of him as a liability.
"He really pulled me out of a shit life just to throw me into a worse one," he said with a soft scoff.
"You done brooding over there?" Kira asked, her tone edged with impatience. She rotated one arm, then the other, loosening up like preparing to enter a fight. "Or are ya planning to monologue until sunrise?"
Toma let out a soft laugh before pushing himself off the railing, giving one last glance towards Karasuma before turning his back on it completely.
"Coming."