Chapter Text
There is raw crackling power in the air and Seiji can feel it flickering over his skin like water. The youkai is getting to be a problem.
“It is worrying,” his advisors tell him. “It is growing in a way that we have never seen before. And it is stealing power. You might want to look into… alternative options.” Seiji can feel the theft too, the unrelenting drag trying to drain him, like needles stinging against his skin. It is a concern.
It started out slow at first. The air suddenly started to become heavy, weaker youkai started to leave the forest in panic. Then the pricking started. Seiji has a couple of times come a bit too close to Onibi, little ghost lights who tries to suck out your soul if you are near them. And that was the feeling he started to get, milder, but relentless, a constant hum against his skin. At first he simply went out to gather information. He took some shiki servants and set out towards the point of origin. They couldn’t even come close. Seiji could feel himself draining. The pinpricks turning into a trickling stream of power being slithered away quicker and quicker, and he realized that usual methods would be useless here. They have sent out shiki servants to gather information but the other youkai are unhelpful.
“He has no face,” they apparently keep saying, “so he takes yours. And now he is awakening.”
Whatever the youkai is, it is growing too powerful which makes stopping it an utmost priority, but the closer you get to it, the less power you have. Even when it is this far away there is this constant low level feed of power leaving him and it is building an unease inside him which is hard to fight. The worst thing you can be in life is powerless.
But no Matoba could be clan head if they were afraid of monsters and Seiji is first and foremost a pragmatist. The youkai needs to be stopped, not only for the sake if the immediate danger it presents, but because there is another threat looming, a threat that will always be present for the head of the Matoba clan, and Seiji knows that a power loss like this can be lethal. He will need some sort of power consolidation, a way to hold enough force to exorcise the youkai, because right now he is not strong enough on his own. And for an exorcist there is of course a way to do that. It is unquestionably not in any way ideal, but Seiji has long ago learned that nothing is. To be an exorcist is an endless road of pragmatism and unfortunate decisions. In a way he appreciates the simplicity of it. He discusses it with his clan members for a very long time.
“But is it safe enough?” they ask him. “Remember, the vulnerability goes both ways.” The simple truth, however, is that the situation is desperate enough to make it inevitable and Seiji knows he will be the one with the advantage. If he can use the situation to gain more power and insight than killing the youkai requires, then he is satisfied. Natsume Takashi is a sad and kind boy. Seiji knows enough of people who see spirits to know that the kindness will fade but the sadness never will. Right now, however, he is a boy who protects his friends but who is too naïve to really protect himself. And he has power that could be infinitely useful to the Matoba clan. Seiji can pity him for that, but it will not change that he will try to take advantage of it.
What Seiji is not expecting, though maybe he should have, is for Natori Shuuichi to show up on his doorstep.
Seiji hasn’t actually talked to Natori for longer than a few sentences in years. Their paths cross sometime and there might be an exchange about some youkai, but almost all their communication is made by proxy. For Natori to actually show up here means that Seiji has gotten him genuinely upset. And he wasn’t even trying. It is a shock to see him in this environment again. Not as the beautiful prickly boy but as a cynical man. But the beautiful still holds true. It always has after all.
It is hardly a mystery what this is about and Seiji can feel the aura of menace under the polished sparkly surface. It is not really worth beating around the bush about it.
“I commend you on your quick working spy network.”
Natori shows his teeth in something that is supposed to resemble a polite smile. They are always infinitely polite around each other at least on the surface, though Seiji has always been better at keeping face. He takes pride in it. Now he carefully watches Natori’s face, looking for tells of what he is thinking. And taking some pleasure in it, because it a very rare opportunity to actually look at Natori unhindered.
“Well,” Natori says. “I heard that you were about to go marry a teenage boy and I had to come and give my congratulations. Obviously.”
Seiji very masterfully hides a wince and also smiles politely, though he is infinitely more successful at it.
“That is a very overdramatic way of putting it,” he says mildly. “It is a power merging ceremony, not a wedding. And not one I have even brought up with him yet. But you know as well as I what youkai is lurking in the woods and you feel what it is doing. Do you honestly think you could come within 100 feet of it without any sort of reinforcement to your spiritual power?”
“So the mightily Matoba clan runs to a child?”
Seiji shrugs. There isn’t much room in his life for decency and mercy in the fight against youkai and he has no interest pretending there is.
“I need someone with enough spiritual power to be of use. And it is hardly one sided. His so called friends are in danger too and all his favorite peaceful youkai are dying. It is a mutual solution to a mutual problem.”
He can see Natori’s jaw tighten.
“I’m not going to let you break him.”
Seiji has to smile at that.
“You think I am a threat to his virtue?”
Natori laughs quietly and when he speaks he makes no attempt to hide the bitterness.
“Oh, no. I’m not worried about his virtue. I am worried about your access to his spiritual power. You are right, I do know you. As in all areas of life you always take far more than you ever give.”
One time a long time ago, when Natori was Shuuichi, he and Seiji spent so much time together. Looking back Seiji realizes that he was indulging himself in things that only a child would indulge in, before he quite grasped what it meant to be the head of the Matoba clan. He had been so sure he was being pragmatic. It was true that long ago he went to that road to “find something he could use”, so sure he had the upper hand in the situation, and that friendliness would cost him nothing. It of course ended in ruins.
What is left is an icy civility and a pin prick of insults that has been going on for years. It sometimes amazes Seiji that those insult still can pierce him, and he can never quite understand how bits of the boy he once was still can be present, like a ghost that he cannot exorcise. On the other hand there is a certain comfort in the familiarity of it. Natori is terribly predictable after all.
“Hard words from the head of the Natori clan,” he responds calmly, accepting Natori’s bitterness without even a raised eye-brow. “But then I hope you have another solution to the problem? The Matoba clan is the only one with the secrets of the ceremony, and the youkai is growing stronger.”
He leans back smiling a little sadly.
“We both know I am the one person with enough power to have to be involved and if I don’t “break” Natsume Takashi, who do you suggest I break?”
Natori’s eyes are gold with challenge, as serious as if he is in a life or death fight.
“Oh, that isn’t an issue,” he says, and his voice is like honey. “I’ll preform the ceremony with you. You have been rather unsuccessful at breaking me after all.”
Seiji freezes. For a moment he feels like he is lacking air and his head goes blank a then it starts up again and he is filled with a combination of dread and anger.
“You do realize,” he says very coldly, “that that is very different. Natsume is just a boy without consequence. We could simply preform the ceremony and have it over with. You on the other hand is the head of the rivaling clan,” he wants to press his nails down in the pants of his legs, but forces himself not to. “We couldn’t just preform a power merging ceremony without any repercussions. It wouldn’t be enough to just sign a contract. Considering the relations between our clans right now we would have to get married.”
Natori’s smile is ice but his eyes doesn’t change.
“Well, then I guess I need to get a better kimono.”