RP What Shadows Lie

There was an uncomfortably long moment as the newcomer sat in the lobby, not appearing to notice Rei's entry. This was, of course, most likely because of the game system in her hands. After what seemed like almost a minute, she set the console down with a sigh - then startled upright, knocking the headband-shaped earphones off her head.

"Oh! You're back! Lovely, lovely, lovely! I wasn't waiting super-duper long, that is, I was waiting for a little bit, but not enough to feel like a lot a bit. Probably because I brought something to entertain myself! Gran-gran always says it's a good idea to prepare for the inevitable, yeah?"

The girl grinned, only taking a breath after the deluge of words was over.

"My name's Sugi! Hana Sugi, or Hanashi Sugi, and you can say what whenever you like, yeah? I'm sorry for letting myself in, but your door was open! Really, that's awful security. Anyone could've walked in and stolen your pens. I might've stolen a pen or two. They're really nice pens. I can give them back if you'd like, though, yeah? So really it's just borrowing."

Breath.

"Anyway, I'm here for a job! My gran-gran said I should get work at a shrine, but all the ones I tried were old and boring and stuffy and anyway they said I needed to be a priest and those outfits they have the girls wear are not supah kawaii. You get me? I mean, I'd probably make it work, but I'd need to do a lot of accessorizing. Anyway, I can work Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays all day. The rest of my days are open! But this is my first job, so I kinda wanna take things slow, I'm only doing this because my gran-gran said I needed to work or she'd kick me out! Can you believe that, yeah?"
 
[Volt]

The shadows grew deeper, as though threatening to consume them all, before they pulled back, driven by the light of Chie’s flame and Rei’s sword. Kasumi shook her head, sheepishly taking her foot off of Hibiki’s chest. She shook her head slightly, squeezing her eyes shut as the red color faded back to its standard level. She gave Rei the light she asked for, giving a business card to Hibiki with the name of the therapist they usually sent clients to. At this rate, it probably would be easier if the therapist gave them business cards to hand out, but this worked for now. Kasumi fought to keep an eyebrow from raising as Hibiki offered lunch, or perhaps being a carpenter who helped to repair the leftover damage from such events. People were hard, but Kasumi could see something in him, something that left his gaze when it flicked from Rei to her, and returned when he looked back. Interesting.

They mercifully returned to the shop. Kasumi had had her fill of new people, and she was ready to finish off the day in peace, organizing and studying artifacts and the Noroi they contained. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case, as a girl in a dress sat on their couch, playing some sort of game. It took nearly a minute for her to notice them, and Kasumi nearly collapsed under the tidal wave of words. It took her a moment to process everything she said, and the only question that came to mind slipped out before she could stop it.

“Are you okay?”
 
“Ah,” Rei’s hand paused in its note taking as it dawned on her that Miss Sugi wasn’t looking for help so much as she wanted a job. Which meant, regretfully, that she had been jotting down the wrong pieces of information from the torrent of words, however on a brighter note, Miss Sugi seemed more than happy to share. Rei flipped to a blank page and slid into her seat behind the desk. Rei glanced sidelong at Kisumi as the girl made her comment, though Rei didn’t say anything. It had been a long day for her, and it was sometimes best to just let things slide.

“The pens you don’t need to worry about, I have plenty.” Rei said with a small smile. With a wave of her hand she gestured towards some chairs that Sugi could pull over, before writing her name down. “Please help yourself to a seat Sugi-san, ah Kisumi, if you would like to sit in with us feel free.” Rei said, looking back up. She looked back at the girl again, her way of dressing and speaking were both a little odd, but nothing too strange for this kind of work. Exorcism attracted all kinds.

“So, do you know what sort of work we do here?” Rei asked. The girl didn’t have much experience by the sound of it, though Hana did mention her grandmother recommending that she work at a shrine which gave some hope the girl hadn’t walked into this place by complete mistake. “And, please tell me a little about yourself.”
 
"Oh, thank goodness, because I don't have a lot of nice pens and they are really nice pens."

Sugi moved forward, plopping down in the chair with a floof of petticoats.

"I am okay, thank you very much! Or, more or less okay. Everyone's a little not okay at all times, yeah? Except when they're really fully okay, and that's okay too!" She leaned forward. "About myself - let's see, let's see. I was born in Shibuya, and I lived there a lot, but then my mom and dad died in a whaling accident. Not that they were whaling! They were in my dad's submarine, and the whaling ship thought they were a whale! But it's okay, because my nan took me in, yeah?"

The girl seemed incredibly chipper despite the subject matter.

"She lives over in Akishima, and it's boring there, and she's boring too. But she taught me a lot of stuff, too! Like - she taught me how to knit, and sew, and clean, and cook - all the homemaker stuff! I think she wanted me to be a good wife, yeah? But boys don't really like me much. But that's okay! It's still useful stuff! I can help you clean up around here, too! Seems like you really need it, yeah?"

She gave a chipper laugh.

"I'm really good at it! Especially when my noroi help. And like - like I said, my nan needed me to find a job, and, like, this is all I'm really good at, so can I please work here? Pretty please?"
 
“I’m sorry to hear about your loss,” Rei said, slotting the words into a brief pause in Sugi’s speech before the girl pressed on, her mood seeming no darker than it had been moments prior. Rei wasn’t one to judge someone over that, people all had their own ways of dealing with grief, or growing through it. Rei did however mark down Sugi’s list of skills as the girl listed them off, her eyebrows raising at the mention of Noroi helping her with her cleaning.

“Are you a weaver then? Have you done any work with exorcisms in the past?” Rei asked, making a second column next to her first. “The schedule would be a little more hectic and you might get a call to come in at odd hours, but I can offer you better pay than doing just part time secretarial and cleaning work.” Rei tapped the end of her pen against her notepad as she looked across the desk at the girl.

“Up to you, of course, if all you’re wanting to do is find a part time position to help with little things around the shop, I won’t say no to that either.” Maybe, at the end of the day, she had a soft heart, but it was fair enough. The shop did need someone to help keep it tidy.
 
[Volt]

Kasumi wanted to take the question back as soon as she’d said it, the weight of the day pressing on her. No that wasn’t fair, she'd hardly done anything. Rei’d taken care of most of it, she’d just yelled at a man and splashed water on hair, which was a really depressing way of looking at it. She didn’t even try to fight against the voice that pressed into her mind.

Just a little more freedom, a little more room to stretch. You get a bit more magic, and become less of a burden on dear Miss Rei.

She caught Rei’s glance, heard her somewhat dismissive comment, the implied ‘you can stay if you want but I don’t really want you to be here’. She simply gave a slight bow of her head, a faintly muttered greeting to the potential new hire, and went into the back room. The incense was lit, a short timer set, and the smoke was inhaled.

Kasumi found herself back in that familiar space, the cramped little kitchen. The table was gone, and it was just herself and Ichi, who flashed a mouthful of sharp teeth at her before spreading her arms wide, chains and locks jangling discordantly. Kasumi looked to find the shortest one, whichever would give her the least amount of additional freedom. They all looked the same, and she eventually gave up. A key appeared in her hand as she grabbed a lock, slotting it in and twisting. The chain slithered to the floor before dissipating into smoke, Ichi’s dark laughter worming its way inside her ear.

[font color="red"]“A deal is a deal, my pupil”[/font]

The kijo didn’t even try to keep her there as the smoke obscured Kasumi’s vision, pulling her back into the real world, her body, whatever it may have been. She tried to ignore the feeling of her nails digging into her thigh, focusing instead on the warmth she felt within her chest that spread into her arms. She could use this. She would use this. Rei didn’t have to fight alone.
 
Late morning light leaked through the window blinds, spilling in thin bands across paperwork scattered across a coffee table. It was a hectic mix, invoices rubbing shoulders with photocopies about a yokai with a particularly prominent eye resting on top of a newspaper which loudly declared that a string of grave desecrations had happened on the north side. The light, remorseful as it ever was, cast itself sharply across the body of the woman sleeping on the shop’s couch. Her chest rose and fell with the simple rhythms of light sleep, the air escaping her lips in not-quite-a snore.

Rei was aware, vaguely, of the room around her in the way the mind always was when it lingered between sleep and wakefulness. There was someone banging around, and Rei was fairly certain it was from inside the room rather than from construction outside, but the whirlwind of cleanliness had yet to make it to her side of the shop so Rei felt like she could squeeze a little more sleep out of the day. Or, she would have if not for the light trying to prickle through her eyelids to stab her eyes. Still, maybe that was better than returning to the dream.

Rei sighed, rolling over onto her shoulder as she cracked open a bleary eye. The faint sound of hammering echoed as she blinked dregs of sleep away, and raised an arm in a stretch.

“Too early for this much noise,” Rei said, squinting at a nearby clock which was showing the wrong side of ten o'clock. Ah. Damnit. Rei slid her feet over the edge of the couch as she ran her fingers over her face. This was going to be a long day. She brushed her bangs back out of her eyes, turning her attention to the other shifting sound that wasn’t the hammer but was really trying to challenge its racket. “Should have woken me up sooner.” Rei said to Hana.

“Kasumi brewed coffee yet?” She asked, picking up her cup from last night and giving it an exploratory sniff.
 
You know, it's not too late to turn around and never see these people again.

That was honestly a pretty rational sort of thought. They had been, by all rational accounts, absolute nutters. Some more so than others, sure, but he was pretty much convinced that the entire staff was crazy.

And there was that thought. Just turn around.

Just turn around.

It was... incredible.

He was having thoughts again - rational thoughts. Thoughts that went hey those guys were weird, maybe don't hang out with them. He'd gotten so used to the... other... thoughts.

The ones about him. About her. A month ago, that thought would have been just turn around and walk into traffic, you deserve it. He'd been having those thoughts for so long that he'd forgotten what it was like not to have them, until... well, until the people here had stepped in and done their thing. There had been a weight off his back ever since, or a weight of his mind, or a weight of of somewhere. He'd taken his daughter to the park and pushed her on the swings and hadn't thought about how she'd be better off without him. He'd taken a couple pictures of her, and realized that he hadn't been taking any pictures of her. The ones he had were all from his mother. He'd felt like an outsider in his own life.

And weird as they might be, the people here were responsible for that. He might think they were weird, but at least he was sure those were his thoughts. He could think about the future again, and not just the past. He'd called earlier about lunch and gotten a few requests, then stopped by a little place a couple blocks down the street to pick up the order and bring it down.

Rei would probably be too busy to eat it, but at least he could say he tried.
 
The source of the other sound happened to be a vacuum cleaner.

A vacuum cleaner that, at the end of its handle, had a smiling - no, beaming - Hana attached, pushing the noisy behemoth directly beneath the couch Rei had been sleeping on.

"Morning, Rei-san!" Hana called back. "It really isn't super early. Well, not super super early. I tried being quieter earlier - I've been here since four, yeah? I got your washer in the back to stop knocking, and I did the dishes, and your floorboards were absolutely filthy so I was going to try and polish them but then I saw how dusty they were which made me want to dust and then I decided I needed to vacuum after because there was even more dust on the floor after dusting!"

She gave a happy hop over to the counter, dress bobbing.

"I tried to make coffee - sorry if Kasumi was supposed to do that, I just thought it'd be nice, yeah? But the machine was - like, really complicated so I think it came out a little blacker than it was supposed to. Also, I decorated a bit! I put up some fairy lights around, yeah? I mean, it's only like - four months until Christmas, so might as well get a head start!"

The room was, indeed, full of sparkling lights strung up haphazardly along the walls, which reflected off of the pitch-black coffee pitcher Hana shoved into Rei's hands. The vacuum continued to push back and forth across the floor, this time somewhat jankily, even after Hana's hands left it, now illuminated in a faint green glow. In fact, a few things in the place seemed to be moving on their own - there was a rag sweeping back and forth across one of the windows leaving smears on the glass, this one glowing blue, and a bright yellow sponge that was scrubbing at one of the walls with enough fervor to peel some of the wallpaper.

"Do you like it? You're happy, yeah?"

Hana's smile widened expectantly.
 
“That’s…what.”

Perhaps it was simply her mind lingering in that sluggish state between sleep and wakefulness, but Rei found herself way too impressed by what Hana had managed to pull off in a few short hours to really feel any other emotion. She blinked, uncertain which of the many small disasters she needed to focus on first and which she should simply try to look on the bright side for. The wallpaper was ruined, but the shrine needed new paper anyway, right? In a way the windows weren’t any worse than they had been, which was…. Good? And there was coffee!…

…That really didn’t look right as the pitcher was pushed into her hands.

“What’s with the Christmas lights?” She asked. Okay. Positives, just focus on the positives, sometimes you just needed to adjust to a big change. She was clearly trying to get plenty done, she was just a little scatteted. Releasing a breath, Rei poured some coffee into an empty cup. She blew on the top of the cup to cool it before raising the cup to her lips. After coffee this was all an after coffee problem. “And are there Noroi in those, or…” she trailed off with a tilt of her head towards the scrub that had almost cleaned through to the baseboard as she touched the lip of the cup.

Rei almost spat it back out the moment it hit her tongue. Why did it taste like liquid burnt toast? How did it taste like liquid burnt toast? Rei put the coffee pot down onto the table, but a knock on the door blew the wind out of her sails.

“It’s… a fine start, but we might need to work to better organize your time.” Rei said, diplomatically as she stood.

“One moment!” She called, walking over to the front door and turning the lock. She pulled the door open, a quick smile turning her lips as she looked outside.

“Ah, welcome Habiki, not here for business I hope.” She said, motioning for him to come inside.
 
The place had... certainly changed.

Miss Rei didn't seem any different, at least, and Habiki stepped inside with a sack containing the lunch requests she'd given him. She hadn't said anything, though, about the windows. Or the christmas lights. Or the... the...

He stared for a moment at a scrubbing brush that was going in little circles all by itself, trying to come up with a good word for what that was, and failing utterly.

"Ah, thank you," he said, suddenly remembering his manners and moving to set the bags down on one of the desks. "And no, no business this time. Unless... you needed help, uh... remodeling."

He had learned long ago that people made all sorts of odd choices in the matter of interior decoration, and that wasn't his business to get into. It was why he liked roofing better than interiors - not that he couldn't do them, but there were just a lot less parts that people got strange about. Generally as long as the roof didn't leak, people were happy about it. There wasn't any question of "oh, but could you move that entire wall back two inches so that great-grandma's china hutch fits into the spot?"

Of course, even in the weirdest of those requests, there hadn't been self-motivated cleaning apparatus.

"Are you remodeling?"
 
Kasumi had been up all night studying. This was not an uncommon experience for her, as she frequently stayed at Last Rites until the wee hours of the morning, looking through tomes for various answers. This time, she was looking at how best to use the new abilities the kijo had given her access to. She could just ask, but that would lead to more leaning on her power and thus corrupting her further. Small doses, everything in moderation.

So deep was she in her studies, and potentially pushing away any guilt from her rash deal with Ichi, that she hadn’t noticed anyone enter the store. So as she put away the final text, her spine protesting against her hunched position, the sudden commotion caused her to perk up. She recognized Rei’s tired tone, meaning she’d probably just been woken up, and the high-pitched rapid-fire speech could only be their newest addition.

Kasumi stepped out into the “lobby” of Last Rites and stopped, tired eyes snapping open. What the hell had happened to the place. Things were cleaning by themselves and there were lights strung all over the shop that made it look more like a college dorm than a place where people came to ask for help dealing with spirits. She watched the exchange between Rei and Hana in a stupor, admiring Rei’s audacity in trying the pitch black liquid that could only be confused for coffee if you squinted, closed one eye, tilted your head, dumped it out and made a fresh pot.

The bewilderment continued as there was a knock on the door, which Rei opened revealing the carpenter they’d helped a while ago, the one who certainly didn’t like her. But Kasumi was still dazed by just about everything that had gone on since she emerged, so she did the only thing she could think of.

“Hello Habiki.” Kasumi said tiredly. She looked pretty much the same as when he’d seen her last, perhaps a bit more tired. Her hair seemed a bit more disheveled too, with a couple parts sticking up near the front. Although they looked a little large to be pieces of hair, and a bit darker too. Hair could have curling texture like that, right?
 
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“At this point, might as well. Could always do with a larger storeroom.” Rei sighed. No point in getting worked up over things like this, with the quirks of everyone you meet in this line of work you’d have a stroke by thirty-two. Probably best not to get too deep into dreams of a larger storeroom either, the one the shrine had now worked which made it something that was best left alone until it stopped doing that. Not a good system, but a functional one at the very least.

“Morning Kasumi, you’re just in time for lunch.” Rei called to the girl, who looked about as tired as she felt, while she cleared off the table to set lunch out on. She had gathered up most of the loose sheets of paper when a thought struck her. Did she look that rough around the edges also? She had gotten a fair amount of sleep, but she had also done that on her shop’s couch. Feeling a touch self conscious, Rei placed the papers aside before she pulled her hair back into a quick bun.

“Thanks for bringing lunch, Habiki.” Rai said with a smile. Hell, her clothes were wrinkled too weren’t they? Why didn’t she just go back to her apartment last night like a regular person—

“Excuse me, is this a bad time?” A voice from the front door pulled Rei from a collection of nagging thoughts that she would have found irrelevant any other time. A girl, late teens with long chestnut brown hair poked her head through the door. The girl’s brown eyes bounced around the room, though she didn’t seem to know which oddity she should ask about first. After a long moment of watching the broom push some dust bunnies in a slow circle, they finally settled on the table. “If you’re having lunch, I can come back later. She added, with a tone that said she would really rather not have to come back later. Rei looked down at the food, and sighed again.

“No, it’s fine, come on in.” She said, sitting down on the couch. She turned her attention to Hana, “Could you grab the plates from the breakroom? Should be in the shelf over the sink.”
 
"Yes ma'am!" Hana replied cheerfully as the sponge moved to empty itself in the sink - dribbling water across the floor all the while as it floated over. "I found them myself! They were pretty spooky, but I think they look a lot better now. Everybody deserves to look cute, yeah?"

The messy-looking girl from last night - now looking a good bit messier - entered into the shop, and Hana gave her an energetic wave, bouncing between the heels and balls of her feet.

"Hi, Kasumi-sama! I made coffee!" Hana beamed. "Rei-sama told me to throw it out, though, so it was probably pretty bad! Maybe you could show me how to do it next time? Oh, that'd be fun, we can make it a whole thing, with doilies and coffee cakes and whipped cream!"

Another new person entered, this one she didn't recognize, but she gave him a wave and an affable smile all the same. Him, Kasumi, and Rei all seemed to know each other, which was really nice to see. Friends were wonderful things to have, after all! The third and final newcomer, though, definitely wasn't a familiar face to anyone - no, she seemed more like a customer.

"Yes ma'am!" Hana shouted at the request for plates, saluting sharply before scuttling off to grab them.
 
Miss Rei didn't say they were remodeling. She also didn't say they weren't. The reason for this became clear soon enough, when the exceptionally chipper new employee started talking about... everything, really.

It seemed she was undoubtedly the source for all of this chaos - but no one was going to say anything about it. It would have been like kicking a puppy. It just wouldn't have been right at all. Habiki gave Miss Rei a good luck sort of look and went to put lunch on the table.

"Good morning, Miss Kasumi." This wasn't the sort of thing that Habiki had envisioned himself saying, but she'd said hello and he'd been on autopilot. Also, she looked terrible, or worse than usual, or - well, maybe this was usual? Also, she didn't look as bad as she had before when she'd been all...

He still wasn't sure he was remembering that correctly, but he definitely remembered it when he wasn't trying to convince himself he was wrong. A young woman had showed up at the door, and he wondered if she was rethinking her decisions in the same way that he had been. Miss Rei greeted her and sent the new employee off to grab plates, which probably meant she was more concerned about her than Kasumi, which said a number of things.

Habiki decided, with some wisdom, to stay out of it - and with less wisdom, to continue what was apparently a conversation with Kasumi. "Has work been-" Good was really not the right term here, was it? Bad was not either. He debated half a moment before resolving, cautiously, with: "-Ah... steady?"
 
Kasumi blinked slowly in Hana's general direction, taking an extra handful of seconds to process the rapid-fire jumble of words that had been thrown at her. Doilies? Coffee cake? The bedraggled girl simply nodded slightly, not fully aware of what she was committing too but realizing that it was simply easier to go along with whatever was happening. And as quick as she appeared, Hana was gone, whisking past Kasumi and into the back room, small clattering sounds in her wake. Kasumi stepped into the lobby, standing off to the side, praying not to hear crashes emit from the other room.

Habiki responded to her greeting, which was more than she had expected. He had been on the receiving end of one of her little outbursts and had taken it surprisingly well. Kasumi had yet to apologize for it because, well, frankly she didn't like apologizing for it, and his somewhat skeptical perspective of what they did would most likely make the "apologies for the demon trying to take over my body" pill just a tad harder to swallow. Then a new figure entered the shop, which seemed to be just brimming with activity. A teen girl, clearly uncertain of herself, stepped inside. Kasumi groaned internally, teen girls with spirit issues usually got messy quite quickly. But still, she should at least try to be professional. At least for Rei.

"Welcome to Last Rites." Kasumi said. "How can we help you?"
 
“Busy enough to keep the lights on, so I can’t complain.” Rei said, turning back to Hibiki. An amused smile crossed her lips at his moment of hesitation, so she could only assume he had intended to ask if work had been good or something to that effect, which it was good to help people wasn’t it? The things we all have to tell ourselves sometimes.

“Thank you for seeing me,” With permission granted the girl stepped into the shop, pushing the door closed behind her as she did. She wore a white button up with a plaid skirt with a ribbon tied around her neck. Judging by the school crest embroidered over her left breast pocket, Rei guessed it was the girl’s summer uniform. She hovered near the door, though she offered a quick smile to Kasumi. “Yes, I uh… I’m Yagani Seika…” The girl paused as she caught Kasumi’s eye, a tight frown bowing her lips. Not hard to guess what that was about.

“Come have a seat Miss Yagani. Ah, Hana!” Rei called after the new assistant. “Bring an extra plate for our guest.”

“Huh? No that’s fine really.” Seika said, walking over to the table. She chose a seat across from Rei, and Rei felt a familiar twinge in her wrist. She busied herself with helping to set out the food containers to ignore the feeling.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s his treat anyway.” Rei said, with a nod of her head in Hibiki’s direction. Hopefully he wouldn’t mind the invitation. Either way she motioned for Hibiki and Kasumi to join them around the table before she returned her attention to Seika. “While we get set up, why don’t you tell us what you need?”

“Right.” The girl said. “I uh, I work part time at my uncle’s temple and a few days ago a group of boys came looking to get cleansed after they ’saw something’ during a test of courage, and I think after the ritual whatever was attached to them moved to me.”
 
The girl was here for help, it seemed. Habiki had a moment where he envied her - not because she needed it, but because she knew what she needed and where to look for it. What would his life had been like, if he'd come here earlier? If he'd known to come here at all, rather than just assuming that what was going on in his head was normal? He'd taken care of his daughter, but how many of those little smiles had he really appreciated? How much had he really done for his mother, who was doing so much for him?

Things were different now, and he was glad for it, but he couldn't help but wonder what they would have been like if they'd been different earlier.

He certainly had some feelings about that, but since he didn't really know what to do about them, he turned away and busied himself with getting things set up on the table, focusing on the little tasks that needed to be done rather than what was going on in the back of his mind. He'd certainly perfected that skill over the last several months; he might as well put it to use when there wasn't a demon gnawing at his soul.

Rei had invited the girl to join them, which she seemed to hesitate over. Strange how she could walk in and say Hi, I think I have something stuck on my soul after a ritual without a second thought, but an invitation to lunch was a lot to handle. Teen girls were... a mystery.

Somewhat belatedly, he realized that in a little more than twelve years, he was going to have one. Twelve years was in no way enough time to figure that out - and he'd better get started now if he wanted to have any hope of it. "Rei knows what she's doing," he offered, in what he hoped was a supportive manner. Both about the noroi and about the lunch invitations, he supposed. Maybe he could ask her for advice about teenage girls. She must have been one once.

Of course, so had Kasumi, and... well.. Kasumi.

That wasn't very nice, though. It probably wasn't her fault - or maybe it was her fault, but really, did anyone deserve that? That was like saying he deserved everything that had happened to him after his girlfriend had died. And... that was something that he struggled with. For a long time, it had been what he'd believed. The noroi had made him believe it. Now it was gone, and he didn't know what to believe.

He took a seat at the table, next to Kasumi's, because someone had to, and the girl was weirded out by her already. And... maybe Kasumi didn't have a lot of people willing to sit next to her, so maybe that was important as well.
 
Several loud crashing sounds came from the kitchen portion of the shop, followed by a very frazzled-looking but still smiling Hana stepping back out to the gathered group. A few plates were tucked under one arm, a few bowls tucked under the other.

"Hello hello! We don't have enough plates for everyone - well, we did, but we prolly need some new plates now. Not prolly. Definitely. Unless ne of you is really good with hot glue, yeah? Or can put stuff together with spooky magic plate powers?"

She set the plates and bowls down on the table - almost dropping the bowls in the process - and moved to the side.

"Hello! Welcome to - Last Rites, yeah? - they're really good at stuff. At the stuff they do. I think they're good, at least, from what I've seen, which isn't a lot, but they're better than all the shrines I haven't seen in-my-opinion which means they're better than every other shrine in the world! They'll fix whatever issue you have right up!"
 
“Probably needed new plates anyway.” Rei said, kneading her temple with a knuckle as Hana entered the room. The teen looked a bit awed as she watched Hana approach with the sort of reverence one might have while watching the work of a particularly zealous tornado. That was probably fine, right? She seemed a little less on edge anyway. While the girl was distracted Rei offered Hibiki a small nod of thanks as he took the seat between Kisumi and Seika, it was good to have someone keeping an eye out for the little details.

“Thank you” Seika said, accepting one of the surviving plates. Rei pushed the fried rice in her direction, and motioned for her to pass it around the table in the way that would end with Hana getting her hands on it last. The girl took a modest spoonful and passed it along.

“Right, so there was a ritual?” Rei asked, cracking a pair of disposable chopsticks and plucking up a dumpling.

“Yes, right.” The girl straightened, swallowing a nibble of rice before she tugged at the ribbon she had tied around her neck. “My uncle had decided it would be best to do a ritual to cut the ties of the spirit that had attached itself to the boys and we think after those were cut it attached itself to me instead.” She fidgeted a grain of rice around with her fork.

“And the temple wasn’t able to remove it once it moved to you?” Rei asked, with a frown.

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “It just… got tighter.” She hesitated a moment before she reached up and pulled the ribbon down. A band of purple, bruised, skin made a ring around her neck, twisted like the bite of a rope. Rei bit her chopsticks between her teeth as she flipped through a stack of papers until she found one she could write on.

“Do you know where the boys picked up the spirit?” Rei asked, checking her pockets for a pen.
 
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