Chapter Text
The Tenshouin home is luxuriously large. Most people looking at it would see wealth, extravagance, and opulence. They’d look first and see vaulted ceilings, exquisitely trimmed gardens, a sprawling terrace. They’d see dozens of servants, a high-class exterior, and a family who enjoys the finer, quieter things in life.
That isn’t what Hasumi Keito sees.
He breathes an ancient word and taps his glasses, and the enchanted lenses swirl, revealing a thousand thousand wards, staving off creature and spell alike, until the Tenshouin home looks more like a fortress than a mansion, everything locked tightly into place by tight steel bonds.
Keito walks the perimeter three times, checking each and every barrier ward, then nods to himself and steps across. They prickle over his skin, searching for something supernatural, then waft past him, confused, sensing magic, but no creature of darkness, acknowledging his touch to their spells.
Eichi’s parents aren’t home--they rarely are--and the servants know him, waving him up the multiple flights of stairs on his way to Eichi’s room. Keito starts up, then pauses, backtracking to the front door. There’s a slight gap, something most people wouldn’t notice, but it’s Keito’s task to notice everything, even something as small as two unlinked spells in the midst of thousands. Sternly, he brings his hand up to his face, ignoring the servants scurrying away from his chanting, or the way they hurry to hide behind the stone sekibutsu and dosojin placed at most doorways. They’re intelligent enough not to show their fear, but too intelligent to simply ignore what’s happening.
A steel link, invisible to a human except through enchanted lenses like the ones Keito wears, shimmers into existence, joining the two shifting, restless links. Keito gives it a glare, then a satisfied nod, turning to ascend the stairs to Eichi’s room, rapping swiftly on the door. “Eichi. I need to report. It’s fine if you aren’t dressed.” It’s better if you aren’t dressed.
He might be a Watcher, but he’s still eighteen and human, after all.
“Keito, you’re so forward.”
Eichi, uncaring and uninterested in formalities with his childhood friend, swings open the door with a smile. He’s ‘dressed’, as much as an undone button-down and boxers can suffice as dressed, and he cocks his head, taking in Keito’s expression. “I’m up and about and all you want to do is report?” Teasing Keito is an ideal pasttime, and one that he will never tire of, no matter how Keito always looks so nervous, like he’s watching a million and one things around him all the damned time. One of these days, taking that stick out of his ass might happen.
Keito’s eyes flick to the side frequently in the Tenshouin home, constantly distracted by the skittering spells. Some of them are quite shy. Besides, if he weren’t tracking them, he would be staring at Eichi’s legs. He clears his throat, and pushes up his glasses. “Unfortunately, yes. You look quite well, though. But we don’t have time for that. Something has happened.”
“Boring. If it were something interesting, you would have stormed in much more aggressively.” Eichi covers his mouth as he yawns and turns away, plodding his way back to his bed. “Go on, then, let’s hear it, Watcher-san.”
“My apprentice found it, actually. Hold on, he sent it to me on the cell phone.” Keito takes out his flip phone, frowning at it, trying to scroll back to the relevant photograph. “Damn. How do you...”
“Why do you suck so much?” Eichi complains, turning back around to snatch the phone from Keito’s grasp. He pauses, eyebrows raising as he flips through some of Keito’s texts. “Huh. That’s raunchy. Are you sexting your apprenti—“
“I said look through the photos!”
“Sexting is way more interesting. Upgrade your phone already,” he adds, rolling his eyes at the shitty flip phone as he finds the photos in question.
Huh.
“Is that the school gate?” Eichi asks with a tilt of his head. “And…lots of weird, old black kanji?” Or some kind of a summoning circle, or a banishing circle—either way, it’s something magical and something entirely not human left it there. It’s also hard to ignore the stamp of the demon world when it’s right in his face in the form of their personal mon. “I hope this has already all been cleaned up, so that the rest of the student body isn’t alarmed.”
“Of course. I had it taken care of.” Souma and Kuro might be muscleheads, but Keito isn’t above putting that to work in his advantage whenever he needs to, and they’re both reasonably good at following directions. He taps the screen, brow furrowed. “This isn’t just a symbol. This is a statement of intent, Eichi. They’re going to do something, something involving the school. The Watchers are ready. I assume that as our liaison to the human world, your forces are equally prepared, should war break out again.”
“They haven’t attempted to contact me beyond what you’ve shown me right now.” Which is…annoying, to say the least. Eichi sighs, dropping back onto the edge of his bed. “I’ll send feelers out, of course. If they haven’t contacted me, however, it makes me wonder what they’re planning. Perhaps they’re finally furious with us, and I can destroy a few of them for a good reason for a change…”
Keito rubs his temples. “We’re not looking for a reason to go to war, Eichi. A lot of our fellow students will die if that happens. You haven’t seen what it looks like. Besides, we’re forgetting the most important thing.”
“I’ve been wanting to see how guns work against supernatural beings for a long while now, though,” Eichi brightly says, unfazed by Keito being a real downer, as per usual. “But go on, keep telling me about what the most important thing is.”
Keito’s smile is grim. “Who they’re declaring war against.”