化物狩団

It resumed after school in their brand-new clubroom, which was really just a storage room with an extra table. The two friends sat across from each other, saying nothing.

"We need a name, yeah?" Someone had to get something started and, personally, she was pretty excited.

Raizou didn't move immediately but after a minute he grabbed a spare pen and paper and wrote something down. He shoved the paper towards her wordlessly.

Chihaya moved it towards herself and read it:

'MONSTER HUNTING BRIGADE'

She had to stop herself from laughing. It would seem pretty clever to pretty much anyone else but...Raizou looked pretty displeased at her giggling so she tried to stop. He kept glaring at her.

"Hm, all right, then!" She was filled with new resolve. "Now!" She jumped out of her chair. "What are we doing today?"

He shrugged. "Not much, really. I mean, there was really nothing planned..." His sentence trailed off.

"Well, this won't be fun unless we get some more members."

"Really?"

She frowned at him. "We have to seem like an actual club, at the very least."

"I'll let you do that, then." Raizou stood up and moved towards the door. "Today's club meeting is adjourned for now. I'm going to the library to do some reading."

"Can't you do that at home?" This was met with a glare. "Or, what, will the ghost try to kill you?"

"I'll see you tomorrow all right." With that, Raizou left the room.

Chihaya didn't mind that her friend was being ridiculously paranoid about things that didn't even exist. She was going to find proper members for this club and it would be grand.

She grabbed some of the spare paper and a pen and set to work on making a few fliers to hand out to people.

The next afternoon they met in the same storeroom. Raizou seemed to have decided to fashion himself a fancy armband with 'COMMANDER' written across it and was wearing it while pouring over some book. It took all of Chihaya's power not to relentlessly tease him about it.

"So, Raizo-"

He cleared his throat and pointed at the armband, all without looking up from the book.

She rolled her eyes at this. Fine, whatever. "Okay, Commander, yesterday I went around to some of the other clubs and handed out fliers. We can see if anyone shows up today and I guess if they don't, we can go out tomorrow and bother people."

He nodded. "That seems all right."

Neither of them were really expecting anyone to come, today or ever.

Chihaya leaned over to try and see what he was reading, so she was caught off-guard and almost fell over when someone knocked on the door and came in. It was a tall, serious-looking boy with short hair and glasses. He was holding one of Chihaya's fliers; he must have received it from someone else since she hadn't remembered giving him one.

"Is this the meeting for the, ah," he glanced down at the paper, "'Monster Hunting Brigade'?"

Both of them were really too stunned to say anything immediately.

Raizou got over the shock first and stood up. "Ah, yes, that's us! Are you interested in joining?"

"I am; I heard you research Japanese legends and such? I'm Kintarou Shoukin, a second year." The kid walked into the room and sat down at the table. Chihaya never remembered seeing him; he must be in one of the other classes.

"I'm Raizou Jinrai, the Commander of the group." He also sat back down.

"'Commander'...?"

"Yes, I thought it sou-"

"Actually," she interrupted her friend's probably stupid explanation, "in addition to researching ghosts and stuff, we also hunt them," she said half-joking. She thought it would be pretty neat if this ghost problem Raizou had turned out to be true; she didn't believe in ghosts or anything like that, but he had been pretty serious about it yesterday, and he usually didn't joke about things like that.

Raizou eyed Chihaya funnily.

"Oh? Really?" Kintarou raised his eyebrows and leaned a bit back in his chair.

"Yep." She pointed at Raizou. "Rai- the Commander," she corrected herself. She couldn't help it anymore. She had to remember to call him that from now on, all the time, just to bother him. "The Commander himself has some kind of ghost problem right now."

"I see." Kintarou turned to Raizou, who had returned to reading. "So what did you do to it?"

"Huh?" He looked up from his book. "What do you mean?"

"Usually ghosts are out for some kind of revenge. You must have done something to make it angry."

"I haven't done anything," Raizou answered flatly.

"Are you sure?"

He nodded.

Kintarou shrugged and asked no more questions. Raizou went back to reading.

No one said anything for a few minutes.

Chihaya was fed up with this. "So, we're still looking for some members at the moment. Kintarou, do you know anyone who'd be interested in joining?"

"Not really, but..." he trailed off a bit. He rested his head in his hand. "There's a new transfer student in my class; I think if you're serious about, uh, hunting things, then maybe he might be helpful."

"Oh?"

At this, Raizou slammed his book shut and stood up. "Sorry, but I have to go now. You two can stay as long as you want, though."

"Hmm?" Chihaya frowned. "What do you need to go do that's so important?"

"Homework, and things." With that he walked out of the room.

Wow, what a liar. Whatever, Chihaya would deal with him later. Right now she was interested in hearing about this new kid. She though she saw someone in the hallway that morning that looked sort of new.

"Ignore him. Tell me about this kid."