Kei: ……Senba…… Udzuki-san?
Senba: And you are of the Hazama—— Hatou Kei-san.
Kei: Come on… please don’t scare me like that!
Senba: I apologize for scaring you. I had sensed the presence of an oni—— something inhuman, in this direction.
Kei: Oni……
Sakuya: Oh well, I hate to be the one to say it, but in an emergency, you can at least count on her as a guard dog……
Could it be that Senba-san… is a person who banishes oni with that tachi she’s holding?
With three points: her words, what she’s holding, and Sakuya-san’s witness as a basis; is it still too hasty to come to that conclusion?
Kei: Senba-san, are you a person who banishes oni?
Before I know it, that inference passes my lips unchanged. If the inference itself isn’t hasty, then asking it certainly is.
Senba: I am an Onikiri-Yaku of the Onikiribe. Just as you say, slaying oni is what I do for a living, however……
Senba: Have you heard this already from Sakuya-san?
Kei: No, it was just a guess, really.
Senba: Normally, any time I drop the word “oni,” people are unlikely to take me seriously, you see.
Kei: Ahaha……
As the person who thought off the bat that she was an oni banisher, I’m not quite sure how to respond to that.
Senba: So then, Hatou-san, exactly what is it that brings you to a place like this, this late at night?
Kei: Ah, I was at the river bank over there, lighting——