Chapter 13: Kaguya Shinomiya Needs Someone to Sleep With Her
The diary answered back in a way Kaguya Shinomiya had never expected.
[Consume 5 Reading Points to activate Junior Yin-Yang Eyes (can be manually closed). Currently: Reading Points insufficient. Please continue the good habit of reading daily.]
Her fingers hovered above the page. The diary had acquired a new function — five Reading Points would grant the ability to perceive specters at a junior level. The implication seared through her: malevolent spirits might be real.
If the mysterious writer had indeed glimpsed Yotsuya Miko on the road earlier that day, and if that was why this entry existed, then perhaps following that thread could lead to the diary's author. The thought excited and chilled Kaguya at once.
She exhaled slowly. No. Even if she had a hundred Reading Points, she would not trade her nights for a pair of ghost-seeing eyes. She had no appetite for spirits, exorcisms, or the sort of existential dread that made meals taste like ash. Her priorities were simple: keep her life, her reputation, and her peace of mind intact.
Still, questions kept multiplying in her head. If she asked the diary outright whether any malevolent spirits lurked around her house, the response had been ambiguous — she could try activating the Yin-Yang Eyes on herself. The ambiguity was worse than a flat refusal; it felt like a lever she could not press without consequence.
It was late. Ten o'clock — a ridiculous hour to be wide awake for someone who prided herself on control. Yet Kaguya could not sleep. She hesitated only a moment before picking up her phone to call Ai Hayasaka.
"Hayasaka," she said when the maid arrived, trying to keep her voice even. "Could you… come in for a bit? I can't sleep."
Ai looked up from her work with the practiced calm of someone who had raised Kaguya into adulthood. She was competent, reserved, and — over the years — one of the few people Kaguya trusted implicitly. When summoned, Hayasaka set aside her tasks and crossed to Kaguya's room without a question.
They always talked before bed. It had become a small ritual: one trivial, intimate evening conversation to close the day. But in recent nights Kaguya had been secretive, asking Hayasaka to do things without explanation, handing over lists and odd requests that made no sense unless one assumed Kaguya had new, private contacts. Hayasaka had complied, spending her own money and unasked hours to research people whose names Kaguya had dropped: a second-daughter from Chiba, a detective called Sleeping Kogoro, a struggling underground idol, an ordinary high school girl with an extraordinary problem. Hayasaka sensed there were layers she had not been told.
Kaguya wanted to tell her everything — the diary, the Reading Points, the ripple of otherworldly facts — and yet the rules that governed the diary forbade any overt revelation. Slip even a hint, and the diary's protections might sever whatever fragile privacy still surrounded Kaguya. So she did the next best thing: she let Hayasaka be near.
"Sit," she said softly, patting the bed. Hayasaka, puzzled but obedient, sat on the edge. They talked of small things at first: household arrangements, the Four Palaces' schedules, a minor social engagement. Hayasaka listened and, as always, provided practical counsel. But Kaguya steered the conversation, deliberately gentle, allowing the other woman to relax.
When Hayasaka's posture softened, when the rhythm of her breathing slowed, Kaguya let the plan she'd rehearsed in private take shape. Gingerly, she placed her hand on Hayasaka's forearm and focused. Ripple Breathing had felt clinical the first time she practiced it — an odd, steady cadence that pulled life into bright threads along the skin. Tonight Kaguya tried something different: a cautious, tender application meant not to energize but to lull.
Warmth spread under her palm; a tiny, regulated pulse. Hayasaka's shoulders dropped. Her eyelids fluttered; then, with a remarkable ease that surprised Kaguya, she drifted off to sleep.
Kaguya froze for a second, startled by how quickly the plan had worked. She had only meant to calm Hayasaka for an hour or two — enough to have her close, to watch over the room until Kaguya felt steadier. But the maid slept as if unburdened by a single worry. Kaguya found herself staring at a face she had known since childhood, and for the first time in years she felt the luxury of vulnerability: the kind that comes when someone you trust lies beside you and lets you be small.
She turned out the lamp and tucked Hayasaka gently under the covers. "Good night," she whispered, as if the sound might make the world kinder.
Across the city, other diary holders reacted in their own ways.
Kasumigaoka Utaha, unable to sleep with her thoughts racing, poured the fear into fiction: she started writing a ghost story, intending to post it on her blog under her main account and test the diary's reach.
Yukino Yukinoshita, practical as ever, spent the night with experiments. She practiced Ripple breathing until her shoulders ached, then, in a half-serious attempt at superstition, wondered whether persuading her mother to adopt a black cat might be a defensible hedge against the uncanny.
Rikka Takanashi, the self-styled wielder of the "Evil King's True Eye," listened intently and declared victory at the diary's stratifications. "So that explains it!" she told herself, delighted at the supposed logic. She practiced Ripple with one dramatic flourish and vowed that her chuunibyou destiny would grow stronger, though she drew a hard line at ever wanting to face the grotesque spirits the diary implied.
And Yotsuya Miko, who really did see those things, handled the diary differently. The first time the object had appeared by her bed and said, with paper-thin malice, "I am sealed here," she had closed the book and refused to open it again. Let it lie; ignore a baited thing and perhaps it could not force itself inside her life. She had learned to pretend — to look past the corners of rooms, to swallow the small panic, to sleep when she could. The presence of the diary worried her more than any single spirit. If it was a clever artifact or a sealed entity dressed as a book, how could she tell which?
So she slid the diary under the bed where she hoped it would be out of sight and out of mind. Then she shut off her lamp and tried, as she always did, to sleep before the night brought an uninvited visitor.
Kaguya lay awake a little longer, watching the faint rise and fall of Hayasaka's breathing. She felt the old armor — the Four Palaces, the expectations, the choreography of public life — loosen for a single careful moment. It was not bravery that made her invite the maid to stay; it was a pragmatic softness, the kind that kept her human. Tomorrow she would ask the diary for more information about Reading Points and the Yin-Yang Eyes. For tonight, she allowed herself to be small and to be looked after.
Outside, Tokyo went on. The diary kept its own counsel. Somewhere in the web of stories and lives, the strands Renji had touched trembled. The world was slightly less certain than it had been that morning — and, for better or worse, people were beginning to look at their nights.