Aura: Koga Maryuin’s Final Battle

AURA 6

Thankfully, the school was within bikable distance.
Just around ten minutes. The light had long since left the staff room and front office, the night school returning to a silent stillness. Even so, there were supposed to be night guards so I couldn’t be negligent.
Outside the premises, I parked my bike quite a distance away and made for the school building on foot. Keeping mindful of witnesses, it went smoothly up to the point I climbed over a low fence. All of a sudden, my fear burst to the surface. At this point, wasn’t I committing a crime?
Thinking about it calmly, it all reeked of criminal activity.
Expelled… well probably not, but if I was found, wouldn’t I at least be suspended?
Perish the thought, or so I cheered myself on. Come so far, I couldn’t return with no harvest. Additionally, I did have a lead on a route to infiltrate the school building. The molding on the first-floor boys’ bathroom window was considerably worn down, and if you lifted up, you could easily remove the entire window. I quickly realized that while on toilet-cleaning duties.
When I made it to the destination point, the window had already been removed.
“What’s this?”
Did whoever was on cleaning duty today leave it undone? The window glass leaned against the wall by my feet.
“Well, whatever… here we go.”
After slipping in through the boys’ lavatory, the scent of crime finally grew thick. I was struck by a bleak chill the moment I poked my face out into the corridor. It was the first time I ever saw the true face only a night’s uninhabited construct could show. Unlike daytime, a space like a different world unfolded before me.
“To think just having no people would make such a difference…”
Dark. While starlight streamed in from the windows, my sight wouldn’t make it all the way across. That being the case, if I walked with a light, I felt like I’d be caught in no time. I made for the classroom with one hand on the wall. The first year classes were on the third floor. Second years on the second, and thirds on the first. When I was just walking normally, it was almost as if I was making my steps deliberately louder. I naturally shifted into the gait of a burglar.
I cleared the landing to the second floor, made it up, and immediately reached my tip toes towards the third-floor stairwell.
A coward’s heart was already beating full throttle from such a paltry adventure. Making a slip up out of nervousness seemed idiotic, and speeding up would shorten my lifespan. I stopped, I took a few deep breaths. The night’s cold air carried a different taste than the d ay’s.
“… Okay.”
My heart rate calmed to one point five resting pace. I walked again. Raising my head, I looked up at the third-floor landing. My heart—stopped.
The cold light of the moon poured in through the high-stationed window of the landing. It was because the window faced the moon, but having such direct exposure required a combination of time and angle. If I had to say, I had been caught up in a single instant of coincidence, but that wasn’t the problem.
The school had shown me a different side under the cloak of the night; a special time, a special angle, the mystique of the third-floor landing, the light of the moon that had carried magic from the tales of yore. Perhaps in a moment caught by such mysterious coincidence, it was permitted for such beings beyond human knowledge to exist.
For there in the landing stood the witch in blue—