Episode 18 · Mao

Mao

Nanoka was just a kid when the accident happened, the one that split her life into before and after. Eight years later the weird stuff starts again. She finds a gap in the world and steps through it, straight into the Taisho era, where a yokai with too many teeth is about to make a meal of her. A surly young exorcist named Mao pulls her out. He doesn't want company. He doesn't want thanks. He just wants her gone. Back home, something is wrong with her. She can do things now, things no ordinary person should be able to do. So she goes back through the portal for answers, and instead lands in the middle of Mao's case: a string of murders so ugly they can't be human work. Mao carries a curse, a cat demon called Byoki riding on him, and the same curse sleeps in his sword. Anyone else who tries to lift that blade is finished. Then Mao is about to die, and Nanoka grabs the sword and swings. Now she needs to know what she really is, and why the thing that destroyed her family years ago keeps circling back to her. What did that accident actually take from her?