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There was a distinct nip in the air with winter still in full swing. Moru, thankfully, didn’t have to suffer through the chilly weather like his sisters did though. Instead, he found himself firmly inside the walls of Kintoko High School, seated at the end of a long rectangular table, flipping idly through a book. Across the room, squabbling among themselves, were three of his five clubmates – the only three who had bothered to show up at all this afternoon, with the other two saying that they had other commitments. That was typically the way of things in the Kintoko Occult Club though. Without any real official business to go over, there was little reason for most of them to be here, especially if they had other things to do, or other people to hang out with. It wasn’t as if most of them were especially close.

Moru turned a page in his book, only glancing up at the others for a moment as one of the girls – Yamamoto Touko – practically tackled the only other boy currently in the room from behind. She had forced him up against the table, and was currently reaching around in an attempt to snatch his phone from him, an attempt that seemed doomed to failure due in no small part to the male student’s longer reach and valiant effort to keep her back.

“Delete it! Deleeeete iiiiit!” The blonde girl demanded, still stretching out as she reached for the phone, drawing the attention of the other girl in the room and causing Moru to arch an eyebrow. He had to admit, he was curious what it was he’d missed that got Touko all riled up all of a sudden. He seemed about ready to stand up and try to help calm the situation down, but paused as he caught a glimpse of pink from just outside the club room door.

Moru’s attention was drawn away from the unfolding chaos easily, as he turned to look back at the door just as Mana’s head popped in. Her attention seemed to be immediately drawn to the squabbling students toward the back of the room, none of which seemed to take any interest in the outsider who’d poked her head in. She cast Moru a questioning look, but the dark haired teenager shrugged helplessly, closing his book and glancing at the clock. It wasn’t time for clubs to get out – but it wasn’t like there was anything important going on here, so he didn’t feel so bad about ducking out and heading home with Mana.

Ignoring the continued struggles of his clubmates, Moru stood to his feet, casually stating, “I’m going home. Make sure you clean up your mess.” and moved quickly toward the door, without the rest of his clubmates taking note of his retreat from the suddenly very noisy club room. Once out in the hall, he closed the door behind him and heaved a heavy sigh, before turning to face Mana. “You got out early, huh?”

Mana began to nod and respond, but a keening screech from inside the room drew her attention back to the door, causing her to hesitate, but only for a moment. “Um… yeah.” She paused for a beat, before gesturing to the door, “What’s going on in there?”

Moru shrugged, “I don’t know. I think Iida-san took a picture, but I didn’t see of what. I didn’t really want to get involved. We should go before someone else notices though, or else we’ll just get dragged into whatever they’re doing.” Moru quickly took several steps away from the door, turning his body so he continued to face Mana as he passed her by, eventually ending up walking backwards down the hall, until the pink-haired girl caught up to him. He turned around once she fell into step beside him.

“Are you sure you can just leave like that?” Mana asked, stretching her arms over her head. Moru found the movement just a tad bit distracting as it drew her shirt just a bit tighter around her chest. He wisely decided not to stare though, instead turning to look away.

“It’s fine. We didn’t really have much to go over today anyway.” Moru raised a hand and started counting off on his fingers, going over the stories and rumors mentioned at the beginning of the club hour, “Supposedly there’s a kappa in Yojinshi Park. Someone saw something tiny and green by the water there, and it ran away when it noticed them.” He gently bent his index finger back, as if to count the event before moving on to the next, “Some other students have started a rumor that one of the first year girls is actually a vampire – I don’t think we’re going to look into that one. That just sounds like a bunch of people making up stories.” He bent a second finger back, “And Sazama-san mentioned that she saw someone pick up a black card on the way to school, and she swore it had a weird glowing aura.” He finally bent a third finger back, then released all three.

“And that was it. Nothing really compelling though. I figure we might look into the kappa. I think it’s probably just a frog.” The pair stepped out of the club building and out into the chilly evening air. They chatted amiably on their way through the school gates, passing a couple of other students who had decided to hang out next to the gates, who Moru assumed were there waiting for someone before heading home themselves.

Walking home was pretty much the standard for Moru. The high school wasn't all that far from his house, thanks to a relatively centralized location. The route he and Mana took to get home even brought him close enough to the middle school soccer fields to catch sight of his younger sisters in the distance, though both seemed to be embroiled in their soccer practice, and didn't notice him or the slightly shorter pink-haired girl at his side.

Mana stopped chatting with Moru for a moment, turning to watch the soccer practice. "Hey, look! It's Kana and Kaede." She pointed in the direction of the twins as they maneuvered their way down the field, then went silent for a minute and shook her head in exasperation as the argument broke out between one of the twins – she wasn't sure which one – and a taller blonde girl with an obvious chip on her shoulder. "Looks like they're having fun… sort of." She commented, with a small smile back at Moru, before continuing their trip back home. Moru finally dropped Mana off at her house a few minutes later. They said their goodbyes, Moru lingering for just a moment outside of her house, before turning on his heel and continuing his trip back home.

The sound of Moru’s phone ringing caught his attention a few blocks away from his own house, and slowly came to a stop, stepping to the side so he wasn’t in the way of anyone else trying to use the sidewalk to head home. He checked his phone screen, eyes scanning over the various notifications, looking for something that he either cared about, or that seemed particularly out of place. His eyes stopped as he noticed a small white rectangle icon in the top left of his screen. “What’s that?” he muttered to himself, sure nobody was around to hear him talking to himself, but conscious enough of the bad habit to try to keep himself quiet so anyone who overheard him didn’t think he was talking to them.

Tapping the icon brought up… nothing. A blank, black window on his screen. Moru’s brow furrowed as he tapped the screen a couple more times, trying to get the phone to do something. Anything. “Is it frozen?” He tried to turn off the screen, but the switch didn’t seem to work. With a huff, Moru finally decided, as a last resort, to just take the nuclear option. He’d just remove the battery and then turn the phone back on.

Turning the phone over in his hands, he worked the nail of his index finger between the plastic shell of the phone case, popping the back off as if he’d done it dozens of times before, to get at the battery inside. Modern phones usually had the batteries firmly integrated into the hardware, making them all but impossible to take out, but Moru’s phone was an older model, so he knew he’d be able to take the battery out just as he planned. When he got the case off and looked into the back of the phone though, he paused, “Eh?”

Just inside the back of the case, sitting in front of his battery, was a single black card. It was about the size of a typical playing card, all glossy cardstock with a fancy golden border… but it was blank. Utterly devoid of anything inside the border. To make it even weirder, the entire card, despite being opaque and dark as night, seemed to emit a strange, glowing aura.

“Is this the kind of thing Sazama-san was talking about earlier?” he asked himself curiously, reaching into the back of his phone to pick up the card and take a closer look at it. What was it? Where did it come from?

BEEP!

As if to answer his unspoken questions, his phone emitted a loud chime, prompting him to turn the phone back over in his hand to look back at the black window he’d pulled up earlier. The window was still there, but instead of a plain black background, it displayed text.



Moru read through the message once. Twice. Over and over, trying to piece together enough information from what he’d been given to tell him exactly what it was he was looking at. Game? Summons? He wasn’t sure he had enough to go off of, but apparently whatever it was had something to do with the black card he’d found in his phone. Something was definitely off about all of this, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to figure out what it was here. This seemed like the sort of thing that would excite the Occult club though! They’d definitely want to look into this.

Moru quickly took the time to take a screenshot of the black window, then closed out of it. He looked back down at the black card in his hand, before finally sliding it back into his phone and snapping the shell back together. He’d investigate more when he got home. This wasn’t the kind of thing he should be trying to figure out in the middle of the street where anyone could be watching, right?

With a little more excitement to be had, Moru took off down the road at a sprint, trying to rush the rest of the way home so he could try to look into the black cards, and the app on his phone that apparently had something to do with it.