The night had long deepened by the time Kirin set out.
Walking along the dimly-lit road, Kirin took out his phone when he heard a beeping sound from his pocket.
[Hey, man! Heard what happened to you back in class. Sad to hear that but SEE! Told ya that guy is shady as hell and look what happens next! Anyways, sorry for not waiting you off school and,,, I don't think I'll be available for the next few days. You know, family stuff…]
It was a hell long block of text from his good friend, Haruto. In short, the guy would be taking a few days off from school and told Kirin to hang on and not miss him bla bla bla…
Not that it ever mattered though.
Kirin merely skimmed the rest with a flat face. Though for him, the existence of Ichijou Haruto was like that one annoying fly buzzing around him all day and night, unable to be chased away nor silenced, he somehow hoped for his presence at the moment.
The feeling was especially intense when his eyes fell on the tall shadow tailing persistently behind him.
"..."
After the incident, Shion regained his composure rather quickly. Kirin was first relieved of this, but soon came to regret his decision as the guy became even more determined to associate himself with Kirin.
Wherever he went, the guy would stubbornly follow. Even as Kirin took his bag and made his way back home, Shion didn't give up on his pursuit.
"Expert? Expert! I have some questions! Can you please enlighten me?"
"Who is that demon? What had exactly happened back then?"
"H-How did you do it?"
His questions were endless and unrelenting. Kirin didn't care to answer them at first, but letting Shion trail behind him any further wasn't a solution either.
As they neared the Blue Star Dormitory, Kirin finally stopped his footsteps and turned around to face the innocent-acting Shion with an incredibly unhappy face.
Though reluctant, he figured that telling some things and knocking some sense to this ignorant exorcist wannabe wouldn't be a bad thing either, lest the guy repeated the same mistake of being a busybody and biting more than he could chew.
"First of all, you talk too much." Kirin started out, taking a step closer to confront him head on as well as to give him the oppression, "Second of all, as a supposedly Greatest Exorcist of All Time wannabe, how can you not even know how Yin and Yang work?"
"Some materials in this world are capable of attracting and absorbing Yin and Yang energy on their own. Mirrors were one such thing. As for what happened as a result, most of the time, vessels with rich Yin energy would generate a dimension of their own and gradually expand following the growth of its density."
"Like crashing a vase to expel the water within it, completely breaking the vessel storing the energy was the easiest way to cut off and destroy the dimension within it. And naturally, as the dimension ceases to exist, all existence within will be expelled out."
Kirin patiently explained, his annoyance diminishing a bit when he saw how earnestly the other guy was listening.
"What about the Demon in the mirror? Won't it be a problem in the future to let her go just like that? Don't you plan on holding it accountable for what she has done?"
As he asked this, Shion sported an exasperated expression as if he had been wronged. It was obvious that the incident had taken quite a toll on his mental health.
On the other hand, Kirin was irked by the questions suddenly imposed on him. In fact, it sounded more like a forceful demand and he certainly didn't like that.
"First of all, she is at most a low-level spirit with little intelligence. Second of all, that spirit didn't hold any malicious intentions towards you. To be exact, she was merely playing with you and meant no harm. Moreover, I'm almost sure that you're the one who has initiated the first step of entering that other dimension to confront her head on. Quite the busybody despite being so weak, huh."
"Third and lastly, you seem to have mistaken something. I'm just an ordinary student struggling to keep my grades up. Even if anyone were to hold that spirit accountable, that person will certainly not be me. You're asking the wrong person, Idiot."
"Did you just call me an Idiot?"
Shion was putting his focus on the wrong thing and Kirin, exasperated, couldn't help but snap at him.
"You heard me. Now off you go, any step further and you're overstepping my boundaries."
Kirin no longer cared if Shion would heed to his words or not.
He turned his back against the other guy, making a mental note to call the police if the guy were to harass him any further. However, his footsteps halted once more when he looked above him.
At the moment, the entire sky was covered in pitch-black darkness, the dense amount of dark clouds smoking the moon and stars hidden.
No matter how he looked at it, the night would definitely end up being a restless one.
'A warning should've been issued by now'
He was nearly sure that the dorm had long been left empty by this time, the rest of the others heading out to wait on standby in their respective posts.
"Things might get slightly dangerous even."
Kirin muttered with his head tipping slightly downward. With a thought, his perception reached out for as far as 50 metres in radius, noticing the rise of Yin in the vicinity that was slowly climbing higher and higher, nearly reaching new heights.
Demons, Ghosts, Spirits, Ghouls, and Monsters.
In this world, these Yin creatures coexist alongside humans, most existing in a separate dimension parallel to Earth. This 'other' dimension was usually referred to as The Astral Realm.
In most cases, these creatures wouldn't cause much chaos to the human world due to their limited growth and lack of motivation. However, when needed, specially-trained exorcists would be dispatched to deal with these creatures and keep everything under wraps.
The Blue Star Dormitory was one such place who raised and trained their own league of exorcists from a very young age.
At this moment, a natural yet exceedingly dangerous phenomenon was gradually taking place.
The surrounding Yin energy was on the rise, causing the dead to experience a boost in their strength.
And once the energy level reached a certain height that neared a similar level to the Astral Dimension, the invisible barrier distancing the two dimensions would grow thin, allowing the two dimensions, in a way, exist in the same time and space.
That's when things started getting dangerous. When the conditions are met, the natural opening of rifts would take place in certain locations, acting as a bridge for creatures from each side to traverse into the other realm.
These natural openings wouldn't cause much trouble, since each potential location had been marked and supervised under many watchful eyes for countless years.
What's worrisome was the powerful dark creatures waiting to pounce on the opportunity. If a natural rift was possible, forcefully tearing another one wasn't out of the question either.
And these kinds of demons, backed with dangerous motives, often attack in large groups – not because they're a solid team but because they took joy in using each other and had the mindset of inducing maximum chaos wherever they go, something that would be easier done in large numbers.
To anticipate this kind of incident and prevent them from spreading more chaos, the nearby supernatural bureaus and agencies had long dispatched their elites to patrol around and seal any rifts in sight as quickly as possible.
One thing to note was, unlike in the Astral Realm, mostly Tier-1 Jakureis and Tier-2 Inreis dominate the human world, with the Tier-3 Shoreis and Tier-4 Reiohs estimated to need at least hundreds or even thousands of years to breed one.
As for Tier-5 Tenmas… They were simply out of the question for any one appearance of them would be enough to wipe out a city in one night.
Kirin was obviously unbothered by the Tier-1 and Tier-2 malevolent spirits lingering within the vicinity. A Tier-2 Apprentice Exorcist would be more than enough to deal with them.
His heart had only started to pound erratically when he noticed a familiar fluctuation in the air, or to be exact, on the other side of the road just 40 metres away from his position.