Convergence

Part 2 : Chapter 4

Little reminder of the characters at the bottom :)

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February 2005

Utahime: "Have you heard from Kashimo?"

Mei Mei: "No. Nothing."

Utahime: "It's been more than two weeks since I last heard from him!"

Mei Mei: "Maybe he went on vacation."

Utahime: "That's strange... school starts again in a few days."

Mei Mei: "He might have gone somewhere with his girlfriend."

........

Utahime couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

They were about to enter their third and final year of high school, and yet Kashimo—her teammate—had completely disappeared. No one had heard from him: not Utahime, not Mei Mei, not even the teachers.

She had tried calling him several times during the winter break, but his phone rang endlessly into silence.

Their last mission together, back in January, had ended badly—and since then, Kashimo had vanished.

During that mission, they had failed to save a young boy in an orphanage.

The child had eventually succumbed to his injuries. A curse that had taken hold of his mind had driven him to repeatedly stab himself in the neck with a fork.

It wasn't the first time they had witnessed death during a mission.

Utahime, Mei Mei, and Kashimo had seen far too many horrors.

Utahime had lost count of how many times she had thrown up after returning from a mission.

The sight of torn, mutilated, or dismembered bodies haunted her for days afterward. More than once, she had wondered whether she should continue down this path at all.

Since the end of their first year, the number of students had steadily declined.

Several classmates had abandoned their training to return to a "normal" life. Aïko was among them—and, truth be told, Utahime thought it was a reasonable decision.

You had to be either mad or suicidal to continue.

Risking your life day after day to save people who didn't even know you existed—who would never acknowledge your sacrifices—felt almost absurd.

In Utahime's class, however—mostly composed of heirs from prestigious exorcist clans—dropouts were rare.

Still, some students had ended up in hospital after failed missions.

Naoya was one of them.

He had been seriously injured and had not returned to school for three months. Utahime couldn't deny that she was relieved not to have to endure his mockery anymore.

Even Ryō—who was exceptionally strong—had spent weeks with his arm in a cast, his body marked with scars.

Utahime sometimes wondered which lucky star was watching over her, because she had never been seriously injured.

She knew she owed that, in part, to Mei Mei and Kashimo, who had always protected her.

During missions, Utahime relied mainly on her Siren Technique, manipulating the minds of curses through her voice. When that failed, she used her Amplification Technique to enhance her teammates' occult energy—especially Kashimo's.