Time ticked by, second after second.
The room was quiet. Only the open manga under the desk lamp rustled occasionally when the night breeze slipped in and stirred its pages, making a faint, dry shuffling sound.
Eriri was curled up on her bed, wrapped tightly in her blanket like a cocoon. Only her golden twin tails and a pair of ice blue eyes that had no intention of sleeping peeked out.
She could not sleep.
Even with Natsume sitting in the corner of her room, even with that unseen barrier giving her a huge sense of psychological security, three days of relentless mental torment had already pushed her to the edge. Her body was exhausted, but her nerves were so taut that the slightest disturbance could snap them.
Again, for what felt like the hundredth time, she sneaked a look toward the corner of the room.
Natsume remained in the same position as before, leaning back in the chair, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed. His breathing was slow and steady, as if he had fallen asleep.
His handsome profile was softened by the blend of moonlight and lamplight, made a little hazy at the edges.
When she looked at him, the frantic pounding in her chest always, somehow, gradually calmed.
She was just beginning to relax, a thin fog of drowsiness finally starting to creep in, when...
Pop.
A faint, but painfully distinct sound echoed in the room.
Not outside the window.
Inside.
Eriri's body locked up. The last traces of sleep vanished completely, replaced by a chill that went straight down to her bones.
At the same time, Natsume opened his eyes in the corner. Those pale blue irises lit up in the dark like the purest gemstones.
Crack.
A small, brittle sound rang out, like a glass pane being scored and split.
The simple barrier Natsume had set up was being corroded, eaten through by a powerful, sinister surge of cursed energy.
"Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop pop pop pop..."
The weird laughter was no longer distant. It had become sharp, shrill, and vicious, packed full of the sick glee of a predator ready to feast. It came from every direction, from all four walls, every corner of the ceiling and floor, as if it would tear her eardrums apart.
Eriri stared, eyes wide with terror, as a patch of inky black shadow spread and rose from the floor at the foot of her bed.
From that shadow, a towering figure slowly "stood up."
It wore a white dress and a wide brimmed hat, its body stretched far beyond normal proportions, limbs twisted at strange angles. Its back was hunched, its head bowed so low the brim of the hat hid its face completely in darkness. Just standing there, it made the very air in the room feel thick and cold, as if the temperature had plummeted several degrees.
It was here.
It had broken through the invisible wall and appeared directly in her room.
"Aaaah!"
The scream she had been holding back for so long finally tore free of her throat.
At that very moment, the boy who had been sitting so quietly moved.
Natsume stood up. His movements were unhurried, as if the horrifying cursed spirit in front of him, which could have driven any ordinary person insane on sight, was nothing more than a stone in his path.
Hachishaku-sama let out a soundless roar. One long, thin arm like a warped willow branch whipped out, cutting through the air with a hiss as it lashed toward Eriri lying on the bed.
Eriri squeezed her eyes shut by instinct, bracing herself for the moment of impact, for blinding pain and darkness.
But the pain never came.
Trembling, she cracked one eye open... and saw a scene she knew she would remember for the rest of her life.
At some point, Natsume had already moved to the side of her bed. The cursed spirit's blow, which should have been powerful enough to crack stone, had stopped in midair just in front of him.
The arm hung there, only a few inches from his body, frozen in place.
It was as if there were an invisible wall between them, intangible yet absolutely impassable.
"Do not be afraid." Natsume did not even turn around. His voice was still calm. "I told you, you would be safe tonight."
He faced the special grade cursed spirit that was still letting out its broken "pop pop pop" laughter.
"This is my technique... Limitless," he said, as if he were explaining a concept to her, or perhaps only talking to himself. "To put it simply, there is 'infinity' around me. Anything that tries to reach me will slow down more and more as it gets closer, and in the end, it can never actually touch me."
The cursed spirit seemed enraged. It flailed its arms wildly, attacking again and again, each strike faster and more desperate than the last. But every single time, without exception, it was stopped by that unseen infinity.
Watching that impossible scene, Eriri felt like her brain had short circuited.
"To put your mind completely at ease..."
A faint curve tugged at the corner of Natsume's lips.
"I will finish this in a way you can understand."
He raised his right hand slowly and extended his index finger.
"Cursed Technique Lapse... Blue."
As the words left his mouth, a point of deep, unfathomable azure light bloomed at his fingertip.
In that instant, it felt as though every other light source in the room had dimmed.
A terrifying, indescribable suction erupted from that tiny blue point.
"Pop?! Pop pop...?"
Hachishaku-sama's towering form began to twist violently, its body warping as if an invisible giant hand had seized it and was dragging it toward that small fingertip. Its cries pitched up into a screech, broken and panicked, but there was no power behind them.
The meaning of distance itself seemed to crumble.
In Eriri's stunned gaze, the massive special grade cursed spirit was forcefully dragged in, squeezed, crushed, and compressed. Piece by piece, it was swallowed by that tiny blue point until there was nothing left.
Not even a trace.
The world fell into silence.
Then, the power compressed to that extreme point unleashed an explosive backlash.
Boom.
An invisible shockwave burst outward from Natsume as the center, slamming into the walls. The window shattered with a deafening crack.
Clatter, crash.
Shards of glass exploded in all directions.
One sharp fragment, the size of a palm, whistled through the air, flying straight toward Eriri's face, who was still frozen in shock.
Just before it could slice into her skin, a figure flashed between her and the incoming shard.
Natsume.
Thk.
With a faint sound, the shard stopped, suspended in front of his left forearm, hanging there as if the world had simply decided it could go no further.
In the cold wash of moonlight, the boy looked almost unreal, like someone completely out of place in the ordinary world.
Time itself seemed to halt.
Natsume smiled faintly. He flicked his arm, sending the glass shard clinking harmlessly to the floor, then turned back to look at Eriri. After confirming that she was unhurt, he said, in that same cool, steady voice,
"See? It is over."
In that moment, something inside Eriri broke completely apart.
The hardened shell she had built around herself for years, the armor called "tsundere" that she used to protect her heart, cracked from the inside and fell away.
Gratitude so intense it hurt, shock, and a strange, bittersweet warmth she had never felt before surged through her chest all at once, like a dam had burst.
Eriri stared blankly into his blue eyes. Heat rushed to her eyes and, before she could stop them, two clear streams of tears slid down her cheeks.