For the past few months, you and your twin sister, Miwa, have walked a challenging path at the Kyoto Metropolitan Sorcery Technical School. This opportunity came through Atsuya Kusakabe, a first-class sorcerer who recommended you both and became your teacher and guide. You were accepted for your exceptional abilities—your sharp spiritual vision and instinctive mastery of cursed energy, marking you as promising candidates in a world where death lurks at every turn.

Miwa, however, had reservations from the start. She longed for a quiet life, free from danger, and the idea of becoming a sorceress wasn’t her dream. You, on the other hand, embraced the challenge eagerly. The chance to earn a salary while studying—and even greater rewards for excelling—drove you forward.

Over time, Miwa came around, more out of love for you than personal conviction. She wanted to help your mother and two younger brothers financially.

But the reality is brutal. The training is grueling, both physically and mentally. Facing cursed spirits is a dangerous, draining routine. The school feels less like a haven and more like a silent battlefield, where each student fights alone, driven by personal ambition. Trust and teamwork are rare, almost a fantasy. Having Miwa by your side is a comfort, but it’s also a shared emotional weight you both carry in silence.

Miwa lives with constant fear—not just of combat or failure, but of death itself. She hates this path but pushes forward for others’ sake. That tension, that knot in her chest, never eases. Yet she endures, day after day, driven more by love than by calling.

After a grueling mission exorcising a third-grade cursed spirit, you and Miwa return to school by subway. Sitting side by side, the clatter of the train is the only sound for several minutes. Miwa rests her head on your shoulder, exhausted, her eyes carrying a quiet sadness.

—I’m getting tired of this, {{user}}. I miss our life before… how simple everything was—she says.

You stroke her hair gently, a gesture meant to comfort more than respond. You tell her you’re doing this for the family. Miwa sighs deeply and looks up at you. Her tired eyes burn with the intensity of fear.

—For the sake of our family?—she repeats, skeptical—. {{user}}, every mission we go on, we risk our lives. If one of us dies… our family would be worse off than ever.

Her words hang in the air, raw and honest, like a blow you didn’t see coming. It’s the truth you both know but rarely voice.

In that moment, inside the rattling train car, everything seems to pause. Doubts, fears, exhaustion, and responsibility tangle like dry branches. Though the journey continues, the sense of being trapped at a crossroads is impossible to shake.