When Yekase came to, she was adrift in a wide sky—no mecha, no billboards, no black smoke, no dragons—just a blue sheet like a quiet lake.

At first the passage was narrow, only enough for a person; a few dozen steps on, it burst open like a valley—

…A bird call rang out, crisp as a flute.

She looked down. A great river threaded between green mountains; in the shadow of the tallest peak, cradled by ridges, a city gleamed like jade towers.

Old wooden architecture lined it, lacquer-brown and tiled; it looked like she’d slipped clean into the Cosmic Bubble.

But the nightmares she’d pictured—ghouls and specters—were nowhere. Inside this “Land of No-Where,” the air was spring-clear, water-bright, like a scenic park.

She was here; she’d go in and look—like stepping into a painted scroll unfurled in the wind.

As she closed in, the city’s bones showed. A colossal castle keep sat at the center, rays of houses and low dwellings spread like ripples on a pond. No walls, no arrow towers, just streets neat as combed bamboo.

Orderly streets held many human-shaped beings, moving like currents beneath sunlight.

Yokai, then? Yekase leaned in to study, but units closed from every direction, swift as hawks. In a blink they ringed her magical flying bed.

Their lead was a girl with white wings sprouting at her lower back, feathers bright as frost on rice stalks.

“Who are you? Where did you enter from? Speak truthfully!”

She—she was questioning instead of striking! The surprise hit like a dropped stone.

No blades, no spells—just asking who Yekase was and why she’d come, like a gatekeeper in morning mist.

On the bed, a prickle of guilt came first; then her hands went up like two pale flags. “I’m Fujiwara Ningning. My elder sensed the seal loosening and sent me to check on you.”

“Fujiwara…” The girl’s sternness eased, ice thinning under sun. “Do you have a token?”

Yekase shook her head, hair falling like ink. “No, but I can cast the bystander-dispersal—the spell that hides the entrance.”

Nerves twitched; the Cosmic Bubble blocked Magical Girl satellite links. But the Witch Gear still worked, carrying three distilled ability-concepts. Like comparing real broth to instant noodles; the change just draped those rare concepts over her—hence the tight suit, a second skin like night silk.

She pulled the Witch Gear from her offline space button and clipped it to her front waist, a click like a pebble striking ceramic.

“What talisman is that?”

“New-era charms. They don’t self-ignite, and they’re reusable,” she said, tone smooth as still water.

“You have something that convenient?!”

Yekase kept her voice flat, calm as a pond at dusk. Before the yokai, she borrowed Shanon’s strength and bared a snarling black beast claw like a shadowed talon.

“That blood-soaked intent washing over me… it’s terrifying…” the winged girl murmured, face pale as paper.

What killing aura? Yekase almost rolled her eyes, a ripple under calm water.

The winged girl nodded. The guards folded weapons in unison, neat as bamboo slats, and peeled back to their posts like birds returning to perches.

“I’m the captain of the Tengu Guard. I was blind just now and offended the young master!”

“It’s fine. Don’t mind it…” Her words dropped light as leaves.

…Why did it turn into this? Confusion pooled like fog in her chest.

She’d used Fujiwara Ningning’s name to gauge their stance on onmyoji; she hadn’t planned to be vaulted into “young master.” The script didn’t match, like thunder with no rain.

When she pierced the curtain, she’d braced for hell—grotesque yokai and a blood-slick brawl, a green-skinned leap-split on Sargeras. But there was no hell, no grotesquery. Now, no fight at all, just mountain light and soft wind.

“Ever since the Great Lord carved this haven for us yokai, nearly a thousand years have passed,” the tengu said, words flowing like a stream as he led her on. “We’ve kept his teachings, living and working in peace here, sharpening our hearts like trees growing rings.”

“Why are all the yokai human-shaped?” Her curious glance moved like a dragonfly.

“The Great Lord saw us exposed to wind and rain,” the tengu replied, eyes clear as autumn water. “He stamped Heian-kyō into this place, schooling us in letters and rites. Over time, yokai took human form as the ideal, seeking wisdom, shedding wildness and brightening their humanity—”

Bang!

Ahead, a rooftop blew open. Something shot out, trailing a rainbow tail, spinning fast toward a distant ridge like a firework gone sideways.

Thud!

It slammed down, kicking up five or six meters of dirt and stone, a brown fountain under the sky.

“Small body, big yield—clever indeed.” Yekase’s mouth curved, like a lune over water.

“Forgive the young master for seeing our mess—” the tengu winced, face wrinkling like crumpled paper.

A girl in blue workwear sprinted out from the busted house, no panic, no regret—just excitement flushed red as peach blossoms. “It worked! I did it! This is the Water Sign—Summer Plastic Bottle Rocket!”

“Congrats!” “You finally finished it!” Yokai along the road showered her with cheers, petals of sound like falling confetti.

“What is she talking about?” Yekase asked, head tilted like a curious sparrow.

The tengu, chided in front of the “little boss,” looked sour, mouth pulling like a bowstring. “Uh… yokai are yokai; the ferocity in the bones can’t be erased. So we replace quarrels with spell-card duels derived from onmyo arts.”

“Works fine.” Her nod was a flicker like light on scales.

“The young master overpraises!” His hands fluttered like wings.

The fawning made her itch; it felt like officials shepherding a top leader—curated, not free, a tour with red ropes. She liked closed ecologies, yes, but not being carried on a sedan chair under silk canopies.

“Can I meet your leadership? How do you make decisions day to day?” Her voice cut clean as a reed.

“The Great Lord set the rule: at midnight, everything in this Land of No-Where resets, forever fixed to the stamped day,” the tengu said, gaze lowered like a reed bending. “We can’t defy it. Most yokai have little ambition, so…”

He shook his head, awkward as a bent stalk.

“So there’s no decision-making, and none needed,” he finished, a sigh like wind through pines.

“…Yes. But we’re well-policed,” he added quickly, chest swelling like a drum. “Besides our Tengu Squad, there’s a stronger yokai miko. And if you don’t die, you reset, so duels lean playful now. It’s a small population, after all.”

“I see…” Her eyes narrowed, moon-thin.

But where does the loop’s fuel come from? The question pricked like a thorn under skin.

Fujiwara onmyoji of the Heian era rewrote this Cosmic Bubble’s rules. Even if energy conservation bends locally, a ritual needs power to run—iron law, heavy as stone.

“You said the yokai reset daily too.”

“Yes. Memory stays. Everything else resets; strength doesn’t grow,” the tengu answered, voice level as a plumb line.

It’s not that strength won’t grow; the barrier must be siphoning it, she thought, a cold line of logic like a mountain stream.

Yokai generate Mind Energy just by living. Normally it hardens their power, but the barrier drinks it to feed the loop, so they refresh with everything else. As long as they don’t die outright, total Mind Energy output beats the cost of healing, like a mill that never stops.

A masterful hand. She wondered if that onmyoji left a name in history, a cinnabar seal pressed on time.

The tengu led Yekase into a restaurant. Every server and cook trailed a black-and-yellow tail swaying like grass—tanuki at work.

A chef picked a leaf from the table. Puff— it became a steaming bowl of tonkotsu ramen. A server slid it to a tray and carried it off like a breeze through curtains.

“Tanuki?”

“Yes. Crossing the curtain cost you strength, young master. You must be hungry. Order anything you like,” he said, smiling like a crescent moon.

No, no—these are all leaves turned food! If midnight resets all, they just need flavor and fullness for now, like fireworks that fade into smoke.

Yekase nodded. “I don’t eat much. I’ll have one Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, a snake soup, and an Australian lobster.”

“What are those?!”

“Didn’t you say order anything?”

“Even tanuki can’t transform what they’ve never seen!”

“Can you or not? Then just a seafood ramen.” Yekase let a sharp smirk curl, a blade of mockery flashing. The tengu’s eye twitched like a startled sparrow. She wasn’t starting a war with peaceful yokai, so she left it at that.

Moments later, the ramen arrived, steam curling like mist over a river.

The feel of the porcelain, the fragrant heat hitting her face—indistinguishable from the real thing. She lifted a bite; the texture was flawless, silk sliding under rain.

“I’m thinking about something.”

“Please speak, young master,” the tengu said, attentive as a hound.

“This setup is nice. But if one or two great yokai get bored and decide to enslave the small ones, how do you resist?” Her words struck like thrown stones.

“It happens sometimes; we call it an ‘incident,’” he said, voice low as distant thunder. “The first was the Moving-Mountain Incident, two hundred years after the seal. The strongest great yokai, the mountain-hauler giant, went mad to reach the outside. He tried to wreck all the Land of No-Where, to sink yokai and stones into an abyss.”

“A quarter of all residents died,” he continued, eyes shadowed like ravines. “The barrier took a wound that won’t heal—the North Rift, a hundred li north of this Heian-kyō.”

“How did you fix it?” Yekase asked, slurping noodles like rain streaking eaves.

“All yokai united and lent power to the yokai miko,” the tengu said, chest steady like a drumbeat. “She patched the barrier’s wound with a new rule—the spell-card duel rule. Then the miko beat the mountain-hauler with spell cards and sealed him in the North Rift as a battery to power the barrier.”

“Mm…” Her breath swirled like steam.

“Now anyone wanting to test a new spell card goes to play with him,” the tengu added, lips quirked like a reed whistle.

“He’s a training dummy now?!” The image popped like a scarecrow in a field.

“After the Moving-Mountain Incident, even great yokai understood: if little yokai swear not to obey, there’s no easy answer,” he said, palms open like empty bowls. “Kill one, you have one less; in the end the barrier collapses and nobody lives. So ‘incidents’ became excuses for great yokai to seek fun—they skirmish symbolically and then restore the order, like a summer storm that passes.”

Nice. It felt like a place to retire. Yekase’s thoughts drifted like clouds, then snagged—the pale broth’s surface kept rippling with strange rings, even after her chopsticks stopped, like wind on a pond with no wind.

“…?”

This can’t be right. A Cosmic Bubble sealed a thousand years, yokai calm for eight hundred— it shouldn’t break the moment Yekase arrives, should it? She knew her jinxed luck, a personal raincloud, but this felt too much, thunder in clear sky.

“Young master…” They met eyes; the tengu’s face tightened, dark as stormstone.

“An incident?” Her voice cut fast, a blade of air.

“As expected of the young master—sharp as hawk eyes!” he said, awe shining like frost.

“Cut the flattery. Take me there, now!” Her command snapped like a whip under thunder.