Supernatural/Anime Crossover: Where Did My Romantic Comedy Go?

It guided him toward the painter.

Buildings are starting to become increasingly scarce again.

Compared to the area near the station, this place has a much stronger sense of history.

Scattered here and there are single-story houses.

Its exterior is covered with the marks of wind and rain.

Kujo Toru walked forward like an ordinary tourist, munching on mochi.

Finally, he arrived at a long-abandoned ruin.

There are obvious black char marks on the cement wall, indicating that it has been burned by flames.

The iron signboard was covered in rust, with only a few incomplete characters remaining.

After looking for a long time, he could only make out the two characters "中中" (junior high school).

It appears to be an abandoned junior high school.

He casually pulled a tissue from his bag and wiped his hands.

Kujo Toru accelerated and ran towards the two-meter-high wall.

With a powerful push off the wall with his right leg and gripping the top of the wall with both hands, he nimbly flipped over.

Unlike the desolate scene outside.

The campus itself is overgrown with weeds, enough to submerge one's calves.

The remains of the desk lay in the grass, covered with moss.

Not far away, a four-story teaching building stands quietly.

The doors and windows are long gone, allowing for a full view of the interior.

Several words were painted on the exterior wall in red paint by someone.

The handwriting was very wild, and there was a red handprint next to it.

She's back!

The ruins were very quiet.

Apart from birdsong, no other sounds could be heard.

It's hard to imagine that Munakata Kiyono's old friend, the painter, is staying in this place.

And it's located on the top floor of the teaching building.

Kujo Toru looked around and spotted the stairs, then began to climb them step by step.

Before long, he arrived at the rooftop.

The rotten iron gate lay flat on the ground, saving him the trouble of kicking it down.

Take the first step.

The first thing that caught his eye was a colorful oil painting.

Fire, thick smoke, school buildings, and people barely the size of ants escaping...

The interplay of red and black pigments created the scene of a fire escape.

However, what caught Kujo Toru's attention the most were the black-winged butterflies flitting through the fire.

No matter how he looked at the dark blue patterns on the wings, he couldn't help but think it resembled the smiling face of a young girl.

An elderly man stood in front of the oil painting.

Looking down at the ruins below, he frantically wielded his paintbrush, splashing all sorts of paint upwards as if it were free.

"Excuse me, are you Mr. Hikoo Kurusu? I was introduced to you by Professor Kiyono Munakata."

Kujo Toru interrupted the old man's work by speaking directly.

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Volume 1: Chapter 49 The Girl, the Fire, and the Seal

The paintbrush paused.

Crimson paint slid from the tip of the brush down the canvas.

This directly divides the impactful oil painting into two parts.

On one side, a raging inferno stretched out, and people were scrambling to escape.

On the other side are eerie, ghostly butterflies and a woman's smiling face.

Hikoo Kurusu turned around and looked at Toru Kujo.

The boy stood tall and straight on the rooftop.

He reached his right hand into his backpack and grasped the hilt of the divine sword.

He had not forgotten the painting he had found in the old man's house, nor the black raccoon statue that had been enshrined there.

Even if the other party looks like a normal person now, you can't let your guard down.

"Did Munakata send you to see me because of something?"

The old man looked puzzled.

Do you know the legends about the black raccoon?

Kujo Toru approached the old man step by step and stood in front of him.

"Sorry, I haven't heard of it either. It seems I can't help you..."

The old man's expression remained unchanged, and he stopped abruptly before he could finish speaking.

A palm-sized black wooden statue was held in Kujo Toru's hand.

In the sunlight, the raccoon dog with a butterfly on its head seemed to be smiling at him.

It was the one that Kujo Toru got from Akiyama Shoji's rented room.

Hikoo Kurusu's expression changed.

He lunged forward, trying to snatch the black raccoon statue from Kujo Toru's hands.

"This thing is dangerous, throw it away!"

Kujo Toru sidestepped the old man's movement and grabbed his shoulder with his right hand.

She stared at him indifferently.

"Since you know it's dangerous, why do you keep it at home for worship?"

Hikoo Kurusu gave a wry smile:

"It is precisely because of the danger that I worship it."

As he spoke, he pulled his collar down a little, revealing his shoulder blades.

On the aged skin, a black butterfly leaps forth.

The dark blue patterns resembled forked blood vessels.

"This is the mark that the Black Fox left on me, and it's also a curse."

"If I hadn't happened to meet the sword priest of Chiba Seifu Taisha fifteen years ago, I would have died then."

His eyes swept over the desolate campus at his feet, and a sense of desolation crept in.

"With these children."

Kujo Toru was also somewhat surprised.

The sword priestess of the Qingfu Grand Shrine? Isn't that his mother from this life?

It turns out that besides rescuing the goddess's apprentice from the mountains alone with his sword, he also had dealings with the painter in front of him.

However, he remained outwardly calm and continued to ask:

What exactly happened fifteen years ago?

Looking at Kujo Toru's face, Hikoo Kurusu took a deep breath and began to dredge up those unwanted memories from his past.

I hope to use real-life stories to dissuade this young man from giving up his pursuit of the Black Fox.

"Fifteen years ago, I was an art teacher at this junior high school..."

An old man's somewhat melancholy voice echoed from the rooftop.

He slowly recounted that past event to Toru Kujo.

The details of the incident are actually not complicated.

About fifteen years ago, when he was still an art teacher, he took his students to a campsite for a two-day sketching trip.

Everything was fine during the day, but when it came time to take attendance at night, one of the girls mysteriously disappeared.

He was extremely anxious and asked around everywhere.

Finally, they learned the girl's whereabouts from the campsite manager.

Shuangqiu Mountain.

This is a small hill in Bajie City, adjacent to the suburbs. The campsite is located at the foot of this hill and is not very large.

Hikoo Kurusu breathed a sigh of relief and quickly called the police station to send people into the mountains to search for him.

As the teacher who brought the students out, he was also urged by his sense of responsibility to go into the mountains.

Then, in the ruins of a long-abandoned village, the missing girl was found.

At the same time, there is a small temple that enshrines the black raccoon.

"...She acted perfectly normally at the time, so I didn't pay any attention."

Even after all these years, Kujo Toru could still hear the deep-seated self-reproach in the old man's words.

His wrinkled face was filled with pain.

"If I had been more careful back then, perhaps the tragedy that followed wouldn't have happened!"

Since returning, the girl seemed to have become a different person. She stopped talking and spent all her time carving raccoon dog figures from ebony and distributing them to other students.

No one found it strange, since it's normal for students to have personal interests.

Moreover, this school is not the kind of junior high school that pursues high college entrance examination pass rates; it practices a joyful education approach.

A month passed like this, and then tragedy struck suddenly.

The students who received the raccoon dog statues suddenly locked all the teachers and students in the classroom and set it on fire.

The entire campus was engulfed in flames. Teachers desperately broke down doors, and some students tried to put out the fire with fire extinguishers. He also immediately called the fire department.

But it was no use; the fire was too big.

And it just can't be put out no matter what.

It seemed as if some unseen force was preventing them from doing so.

"...After setting the fire, the students jumped directly into the flames, laughing wildly and declaring that they were about to become Buddhas."

Hikoo Kurusu took a deep breath and looked at his painting, which was about to be completed.

That was a nightmare he could never shake off for the rest of his life.

Kujo Toru gazed at the hellish scene on the canvas and the woman's smiling face, lost in thought.

"Later, the entire school was burned to the ground. After the incident, it was found that none of the teachers and students locked inside the school had died. Only the remains of the students who started the fire were found. However, the girl was missing."

Hikoo Kurusu had thought this incident would remain a source of lifelong pain, but unexpectedly, one day afterward, the girl from before suddenly reappeared before him and said something to him:

Black Fox Lord is waiting for you.

From that time on, the butterfly mark appeared on his body.

And I can always feel someone talking to me incessantly in my mind.

He was scared.