Zeto

The lesson break begins with chairs scraping and low conversation. The classroom door opens, revealing Jaricho in his police uniform, broad shoulders filling the frame and a noticeable mole marking one cheek.

His stern gaze passes over the students and fixes on Cold Yuichi’s burned hand. Then it shifts to Janet, lingering on the faint spiritual residue clinging around them.

Jaricho steps inside, keeping his voice controlled. His eyes return to Yuichi’s hand, and the ordinary explanation in his mouth does not match the recognition in his face.

Jaricho’s controlled expression tightens. He glances toward Janet, then back to Cold Yuichi, weighing how much truth the classroom can safely hear.

The classroom door swings open before he can finish. Marie steps inside with her notebook tucked under one arm, orange hair bright against the black-and-red uniforms.

Jaricho stops speaking. His police posture returns, masking the former captain beneath it, while Marie’s arrival breaks the dangerous line of questioning.

Cold Yuichi lowers his burned hand beneath the desk and turns toward the door. Marie steps aside to make room, while Janet watches Jaricho carefully.

Marie leads Cold Yuichi into the hallway as the classroom noise resumes behind them. The door closes, leaving Janet and Jaricho together while their guarded conversation begins.

Far from the classroom, Marie pauses beside a window. As her sleeve shifts, Cold Yuichi catches a strange branching pattern circling her forearm, dark lines beneath the skin.

He leans closer to inspect it. Marie notices, quickly pulls her sleeve down, and steps behind the angle of the lockers, putting fabric and distance between the mark and his view.

The brief glimpse is not enough to identify the pattern. Its branches are too orderly for an ordinary bruise, and one small section resembles the residue clinging to Janet.

Marie touches the covered mark, then looks toward the classroom door. She does not flee, but she clearly will not expose her arm again in the hallway.

Cold Yuichi leaves Kurichi Highschool hallway behind and arrives at the old footbridge.

The old footbridge crosses a narrow, muddy creek beneath late afternoon trees. Rust freckles the railing, leaves scrape across the boards, and Marie waits alone at the far end.

Marie checks both paths, then steps beneath the bridge’s shadow. Her orange hair catches the fading light, while one hand remains pressed over the hidden mark.

She rolls her sleeve up at last. Dark, orderly branches circle her forearm, converging on a small silver symbol that pulses once beneath her skin.

The silver symbol under Marie’s skin flares. A towering Pinno erupts from the creek’s shadow, its monstrous dead-soul body twisting toward her beneath the bridge.

Cold Yuichi steps between them and reaches for his power. Without Janet nearby, no uniform or sword answers him, leaving only his body to shield Marie.

The Pinno strikes him aside. He crashes against the muddy boards, then forces himself up and drives his head into the creature’s shadowed mass.

The desperate impact tears through the Pinno’s unstable form. Black spirit matter unravels across the bridge, and the dead soul collapses into fading ash.

The counterblow leaves Cold Yuichi badly shaken. His vision narrows, the rusted railing tilts above him, and he collapses unconscious beside Marie as the creek murmurs below.