The late morning sun was warm, the kind that felt like it soaked straight into your skin before you even noticed. I sat in the car for a second longer than I should have, hands still on the steering wheel, grounding myself in the hum of the engine before shutting it off.
I could already feel Rukia's quiet focus beside me — her presence folding in on itself like silk, subtle, unseen. She didn't even have to try anymore. I envied that.
Taking a slow breath, I followed her example. Focus. Inhale, exhale. Picture it like before — energy reversing, flowing inward instead of out, gathering into a dark center at my core. A void. A hollowed-out space. Not gone, but hidden.
The air in the car seemed to shift as I did it right. Not much, just enough to feel the edges of myself soften.
Rukia glanced over, faintly impressed. "You're getting better at this," she said with that small, satisfied tone she used when she was proud but didn't want me to know it too much.
"Guess I had a good teacher," I murmured, unclipping my seatbelt.
We stepped out into the sunlight, the smell of asphalt and lilacs from the planter boxes mixing oddly in the air. Rukia adjusted the button-up over the tank top she'd borrowed — still Freya's, still something that made my stomach twist if I thought about it too long. Yet adorable all the same.
I locked the car and tried to shake the thought loose before it stuck again.
I was so focused on keeping my energy folded that I almost didn't notice the woman until she nearly collided with me — dark hair, maybe mid-thirties, average height, her coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim of the cup.
"Oh my god, I didn't even see you," she said, startled, stepping back. "Sorry!"
"No worries," I said automatically, though I couldn't help, but notice how long it had taken her to actually notice me.
She smiled awkwardly and kept walking.
Rukia stood there with a barely-suppressed grin, crossing her arms. "That was impressive," she said. "You've managed to erase your presence so well you nearly turned into a traffic hazard."
I smirked. "Not the first time that's happened. Eighth grade, French class. Front row. Sat there the whole period without the teacher realizing I was there. Imagine her surprise when I got up to leave."
Rukia's smile turned sly. "So you were forgettable and invisible."
"Or just really good at being ignored," I countered, holding the door open for her. Years of marriage had taught me how to handle being ignored, but I wasn't going to mention that and sound bitter.
The scent of books hit me first — paper and ink, soft and dry — followed by incense from somewhere near the back of the store. It was a cozy place, not too big but layered with shelves and display tables, every corner offering something new.
Rows of novels and manga lined one wall, graphic novels the next, and to my inner delight — a whole section of tabletop games. Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, even obscure stuff I hadn't seen in years.
"Careful," I whispered to myself. "You don't need more dice."
Rukia raised an eyebrow. "What was that?"
"Nothing."
She didn't believe me, but she let it go.
We drifted between aisles, voices low. Rukia leaned slightly closer, her posture casual to anyone watching. "How do you want to handle this?"
"I'll sneak around and watch from a distance," I said, already mapping the store's layout in my head. "You observe me. That way if I screw up, you can say you were testing me."
She gave a small huff of amusement. "And your experience with stealth comes from…?"
I shrugged. "Ninja movies. Spy flicks. Also… being sneaky in high school for reasons I'd rather not unpack right now."
Her delicate lips curved faintly. "So. An expert."
"Obviously."
We made our way toward the back, pretending to browse while peeking around the corner toward the small reading area — a cluster of chairs and tables set up like a cozy café without the coffee. That's where the meetup was happening.
About a dozen people were gathered — mostly women in their early twenties, the kind who radiated caffeine and college stress, a few men who looked like they might have strong opinions about UFOs and quartz crystals.
And at the center, laughing politely, was a man I could only assume was professor Tanaka.
Short brown hair. A kind of worn dignity. The professor look — blazer, elbow patches, the whole thing.
"Professor Tanaka," Rukia murmured beside me, the words soft but taut. "So that's how he's hiding…"
"The local Soul Reaper?" I whispered.
She nodded once, eyes narrowing. "Hiro Tanaka. Squad Six. I didn't think he'd be hosting spiritual events with impressionable college students."
I glanced between the professor and the small crowd of humans laughing at some story he was telling, pretending he was just another academic discussing myths.
"Guess the dead have tenure now," I muttered.
Rukia shot me a warning look, but there was a glint of amusement behind it.
And for a moment, standing there in the dim, book-scented air — with sunlight slanting through the high windows and the light murmur of ordinary life around us — I forgot the weight of what we were actually doing.
It almost felt normal.
I slipped away from Rukia with a nod, circling one of the central bookshelves until I was near enough to the meetup group that their voices blended with the rustle of pages. Every step I took, I focused on keeping that reiyoku inside me stable — my reiatsu folded in tight, muted, unnoticeable. I wasn't exactly a master at it yet, but I could feel it working. The air around me had that strange, muffled quiet, like I was standing behind glass.
They were close now — two tables pushed together near the back windows, a small crowd gathered around a man in a tweed blazer who carried himself like a man who'd seen centuries of lectures. Professor Tanaka — or, as Rukia had called him, Hiro Tanaka, Soul Reaper.
He was the kind of guy you'd expect to see with chalk dust on his sleeves, explaining the metaphysics of existence to a classroom that half-understood him. But there was something sharper beneath his calm voice — a subtle authority that even the most skeptical listener seemed to feel.
"Human souls," he was saying, "are far more attuned to the unseen world than most realize. They leak reiatsu, emotion, intent… and that reiyoku lingers. You've all felt it — déjà vu, presences, chills. These are remnants, echoes of the living and the dead interacting."
The group listened with rapt attention. I noted quickly that Hiro's eyes drifted, almost exclusively, toward the women in the group — mostly college-age, all nodding or blushing whenever he smiled in their direction. The two guys at the edge looked like the conspiracy theory types — one had a shirt that said Bigfoot is my Spirit Animal, the other wore a dozen crystals strung around his neck. Hiro barely acknowledged them.
I moved into the next aisle, the shelf separating me from them. My hand brushed along the spines of books until I realized I'd stopped without actually grabbing one. If I was going to pretend to browse, I should at least pick something I could talk about in case someone wandered over.
For a second, I hesitated between Astrophysics for Beginners and Greek Mythology: Heroes and Constellations. I picked the mythology book — easier ground. If someone asked, I could talk about Orion the Hunter without sounding like a complete idiot.
I flipped it open, letting the thin pages whisper beneath my thumb.
"…and these connections," Hiro continued, "can be cultivated through awareness and meditation. Many ancient cultures understood this — the Greeks, the Egyptians, even the early Japanese spiritualists. Modern society has merely forgotten what once came naturally."
His voice was calm, persuasive, dangerously smooth.
From my position, I could just make out a few of the girls. They leaned forward eagerly, the kind of entranced posture people took when they wanted to believe something — anything — that made the world feel bigger and more mysterious than it was.
Across the store, Rukia had settled into a chair in the magazine section, her energy tucked away neatly. She'd grabbed a random issue from a stand — something about travel and fashion, though I saw her glance more than once at the horror manga shelf nearby. Before sitting, she'd plucked a cheap pair of oversized sunglasses off a rack and put them on, the disguise almost comically unnecessary.
She caught my eye for half a second across the store — a slight smirk under those dark lenses — and then pretended to flip a page.
I looked back toward the group, feigning interest in the illustration of Heracles fighting the Hydra.
One of the women asked a question — something about "lingering spirits" and communication. Hiro responded with patient warmth, leaning forward slightly, speaking in that gentle, authoritative tone that could've belonged to a priest or a politician.
He smiled often — too often — and every time he did, it felt like his gaze brushed past the men like they weren't even there.
I frowned, pretending to read.
Something about him felt off. Not in the spiritual sense — though, yeah, that too — but socially. His whole act was built for charm, not truth. It was a performance aimed at a specific audience, one that wanted to be guided.
And he was good at it.
Too good.
I turned another page in the mythology book, trying to look casual, but my mind was already spinning through what Rukia might say about him — how she'd analyze his spiritual pressure, his aura, the way he manipulated attention.
Meanwhile, I stayed in character — the quiet guy who just happened to be absorbed in greek myths, trying not to look like he was eavesdropping on something bigger than he understood.
It was working.
No one had noticed me.
Except… maybe him?
For a heartbeat, Hiro's voice paused, just slightly — his eyes flicked toward my aisle, not at me, but past me, as though sensing the faintest ripple in the air. Then, with a smile, he returned to his explanation about resonance and soul mates, as if nothing had happened.
I swallowed, pretending to read about Zeus, and reminded myself to breathe.
I leaned against the bookshelf, the mythology book still open in one hand, but my eyes flicked toward the reflection in the glass display at the end of the aisle. Hiro leaned in closer to one of the girls—a brunette with soft features and the kind of nervous posture that screamed she didn't know how to say no without apologizing for it.
His hand brushed her wrist. Too deliberate to be accidental, too light to be defensible.
"You have a gift," Hiro murmured, his tone smooth and low enough that the rest of the group had to lean in to hear. "But it needs proper cultivation… private instruction."
Something about the way he said private crawled under my skin. His smile didn't reach his eyes—it was the same one I'd seen from salesmen, cult leaders, and sleazy bar guys who believed charm was a form of consent.
My gut twisted.
I shifted my weight, walking around to the next row, keeping him in view through the thin gap between books. The sunlight from the windows turned the dust in the air into gold flecks, making everything feel too still, too fragile.
"Is he trying to pick up women?" I muttered under my breath. My eyes traced the edge of a book spine just so I wouldn't look suspicious staring at the group.
Rukia's reflection appeared faintly in the glass near me, her posture relaxed, but her energy sharp. She was pretending to read something—some self-help magazine or lifestyle guide—but her attention was entirely on Hiro.
"Not just picking up women," she whispered, not turning toward me. Her tone was even, practiced, calm. "Recruiting. Look at his hand placement—he's testing her spiritual pressure while he speaks."
Her words sank like stones in my chest.
Recruiting.
I glanced again through the reflection. The girl looked uneasy now, her free hand fidgeting with her sleeve, but she didn't pull away. Hiro spoke softly, encouragingly, like he was offering salvation rather than corruption. His thumb brushed her pulse point—the same place Rukia had touched my wrist during training when she was teaching me to feel spiritual flow, though I never gave it so much as a thought until now.
He was probing. Measuring.
The air around him shimmered faintly to me—like heat waves. Not visible energy, not exactly, but presence. Even with my own senses dulled by the concealment trick, I could feel it. Controlled. Refined. Intentional.
And yet, despite his control, I noticed it—his body stiffened every so often. Not much, just a twitch of tension in his shoulders, a pause between sentences. It was subtle, but it repeated.
He felt it too.
He couldn't sense me or Rukia directly… but something about the absence made him uneasy. Like standing in a room with a draft you can't find the source of.
That void inside me—the trick Rukia taught me to suppress my pressure—made me invisible, but it also made me something wrong to sense. A spiritual black hole.
My method to the technique may actually be a problem here, though I didn't fully realize it yet.
I swallowed, trying not to think about it, flipping to a random page in my book like I actually cared about the labors of Heracles. My hands were steady, but my heartbeat wasn't.
Rukia shifted positions again, drifting closer to the horror manga shelf under the guise of browsing. She was tracking him too.
I'll have to note any manga that catches her interest if I get the chance.
The girl laughed nervously at something Hiro said, the sound thin and uncertain. The men in the group seemed oblivious, still debating among themselves about ghosts or auras.
He leaned in closer. His fingers brushed up her wrist now, tracing lightly toward her elbow as if guiding her chi flow. I'd seen enough.
My jaw clenched.
Rukia's voice barely reached me, a whisper that threaded through the shelves like smoke. "Stay calm. Don't break cover. He's fishing. The moment he finds something, we'll know how deep his net goes."
I nodded faintly, keeping my eyes on the text, pretending to read while every instinct screamed to intervene. Being a father to three girls really has made me more protective than I used to be.
Each page turn became a deliberate act of control. Each breath, an effort not to draw attention.
But under it all, the tension grew — quiet and coiling — as Hiro Tanaka smiled and spoke softly to his next potential student.
And somewhere behind that professor's smile, I swore I felt something watching back.
I let the spine of the book bend just slightly as I turn the page, the soft rustle disguising my whisper.
"He's identifying candidates with above average spiritual sensitivity," I murmur, keeping my tone low enough to be mistaken for idle thought. Rukia moved beside me, her petite frame angled slightly away from the main aisle—subtle, calculating. From anyone else's perspective, she was just a quiet girl browsing magazines and manga.
I followed her gaze through the reflection of a display case. Hiro was smiling, leaning just a little too close to a young woman by the manga shelf. His posture screamed confidence, but his spiritual pressure told another story—thin and trembling like a snare wire ready to snap.
Rukia's eyes met mine in the reflection for a brief second, violet and steady.
"Keep tracking him," she said softly. "See who else he approaches. I'll monitor the girl."
I nodded and drifted away, pretending to admire dice sets in the TTRPG section. The familiar weight of the hobby shelves made it easy to blend in. "People see what they expect to see," I reminded myself, letting the quote loop in my head as I pretended to study a set of amethyst D20s.
It never ceased to amaze me how a fictional grizzled ranger like Halt in one of my favorite book series had actually prepared me for something like this.
From the corner of my eye, I could still see her. She looked like she belonged there—head tilted as she read a spine, lips parted in quiet thought, but every line of her body was coiled awareness.
When I brushed near Rukia again, she whispered just loud enough for me to catch it.
"His tactics are consistent. Three women so far—all above in spiritual pressure, all isolated from the main group."
I gave a faint nod and moved toward the front. Swiping a volume of Death Note and the first volume of Berserk. The clerk greeted me, friendly and oblivious.
"Hey there—find everything okay?"
"Yeah," I said, flipping open my wallet. "How're your Friday night campaigns going? Still doing those Call of Cthulhu one-shots?"
"Always," the clerk laughed. "We've got a couple regulars who love the jump-scare setups."
I smiled and let the conversation flow naturally. The act came easy. Part of me enjoyed it—the normalcy of it all. Meanwhile, Rukia was still watching, her spiritual awareness stretched thin across the store like an invisible net.
When I glanced her way again, she was pretending to flip through a slim poetry collection, but I caught the shift in her posture. Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"He's on the move," she mouthed under her breath.
Hiro had stepped away from the girl. His smile was gone now, and his gaze swept the room in quick, suspicious darts. He felt something—just not what.
I turned back to the clerk, keeping my tone light. "Well, maybe I'll swing by next week. Always need a good dice roll to start the weekend right."
"By the way, what do you know about the spirit bro in the blazer over there?" I ask innocently
"Well, he's not actually affiliated with any local college that I know of," the clerk confided, her voice dropping to a cautious whisper. "Everyone just calls him 'Professor' because of how he talks—how he carries himself. He runs some kind of… private spiritual study group."
Rukia's reflection caught my eye in the glass of a nearby display. She was pretending to browse, fingers idly tracing the spine of a poetry anthology. But I saw the shift in her eyes—sharp, focused, violet irises tightening just slightly. She edged closer, pretending to examine another shelf.
"Between us," the clerk went on, glancing toward the back of the store, "a few girls stopped coming to meetings after joining his 'private sessions.' One came back once, but she looked… off. Drained, like she hadn't slept in days."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rukia's fingers tighten on the book she was holding. Just a fraction. Her expression didn't change much, but I could sense when she was quietly furious.
I leaned in, lowering my voice with a conspiratorial tone. "You don't think he's a vampire, do you?"
That got a small, nervous laugh out of her. I grinned to keep things light. "If it were me, I'd stock up on garlic and silver just in case." I said with a chuckle.
The tension eased just enough for her to roll her eyes with a chuckle. "You're ridiculous," she said, but her shoulders relaxed.
"Anyway, thanks for the info," I said, sliding a few bills across the counter to pay for everything. "Have a good one."
I waved on my way out, the bell above the door jingling as sunlight poured back over me.
Rukia joined me a few minutes later in a quiet alley beside the bookstore, stepping out of the shade like she'd materialized from thin air.
"Nice work," she said softly, her tone warm but measured. "You kept your concealment perfectly. Hiro never sensed you."
Her eyes—those sharp, vibrant eyes—held something between pride and calculation.
"But this 'Professor' title bothers me," she continued, voice lowering. "He's recruiting spiritually sensitive people under false pretenses. That's more than manipulation, it's hunting."
"Recruiting humans is supposed to be a no-go?" I muttered, crossing my arms. "It's half the reason we're doing this in the first place. What's his game? You think he's stealing spiritual energy? Like some kinda psychic vampire?"
Rukia's gaze flicked upward briefly, scanning the rooftops as if the city itself might be leaking spiritual signatures, then back to me. "You're closer to the truth than you realize," she said quietly, her voice low and measured. "In the Soul Society, we call them Reishi Parasites. They burrow into souls because they can't generate enough of their own energy, so they drain it from others—slowly, deliberately. It doesn't kill their hosts right away, but it hollows them out piece by piece. Corrupting the soul and taking it over. Typically they begin feeding on others as the host becomes less sustainable. Eventually—"
The way she said hollows made the hairs on my neck stand up. My stomach turned a little. The thought of someone—or something—feeding on people was the kind of thing that would make most people freeze. But to imagine such a horrible fate for a soul — Unsettling didn't begin to cover it.
The image of the pale college girl the clerk had described flashed through my head, followed by the memory of how Hiro's hand lingered on that girl's wrist, like a snake testing for warmth.
She leaned back against the brick wall, her expression thoughtful, the faintest furrow of her brow making her look… impossibly small, but intense at the same time. "The symptoms match: fatigue, disorientation, spiritual depletion. If he's hosting one of those things, it might be acting through him, manipulating his actions. But…" Her violet eyes darkened. "The parasite feeds on reiryoku, and if he's already hunting so many… it'll last much longer than it should because he's a soul reaper.."
I opened my mouth to say something—anything to break the tension—and caught sight of the small sketchpad she'd pulled from her bag. She was doodling quietly on the edge of the page, pencil moving with exaggerated focus. I leaned down a little to see, curious despite myself.
I expected a tactical diagram, but what I got looked more like a cartoonish slug with fangs and… possibly wings?
"This," she said, stabbing at it with the pencil, "is roughly what a Reishi Parasite would look like."
I leaned down, trying to smother the grin tugging at my mouth. "Roughly, huh?"
She glared up at me. "Don't start."
"I'm not starting," I said, chuckling. "It's cute. I mean that. Has… personality."
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You're teasing."
"I'm really not." I admitted. "Honestly. I used to draw a lot when I was younger. Never any good. All skill and no talent. But there's something about the way you capture the idea—even if the limbs are a little wonky—that's… charming."
That earned me a faint pink blush that she tried to hide by turning back to her sketchbook. "Nonsensical fool," she muttered, though the edge had softened.
"Maybe a little," I said, smiling. "But seriously, it's good in a cute toon kinda way."
For a moment, the tension in the alley eased. The quiet between us felt almost warm.
Then, before I could say another word, she stood on tiptoe and kissed me — quick, soft, gone before I could react. Her hand lingered against my chest just long enough to leave the impression of her warmth through the fabric.
"That's… really the first time someone's ever said that about my drawings," she whispered, clearly startled by her own happiness.
"Well," I said, brushing my fingers along the side of my face, "you deserved it. Even if it is a little scary in subject matter."
She laughed, a soft, relieved sound that carried some of the tension out of the alley. Somehow, even with the parasite, the looming threat, and Hiro's strange behavior, her bad stick-figure monster had made the world feel… a little safer.
And for a moment, I was grateful just to see her that way—happy, mischievous, and completely herself.
"Well—"
I exhaled slowly. "So much for saving Professor Hiro," I muttered, lifting my hands in a half-hearted shrug. "But hey, no plan survives first contact with the opposition, right?"
That earned me the faintest smile. "True enough," she said, pushing off the wall, her hair catching the sunlight in pale streaks.
"Well," I sighed, glancing down the street where Hiro had vanished earlier. "Let's track him. Figure out the whole picture before its next meal."
Rukia nodded once, sharp and decisive. "Lets move then."
The word hung between us—less a plan, more a promise.