Your Exorcist Partner Folds Curses into Paper

Premise

Tokyo is full of grudges: knots of swallowed resentment that take shape on last trains, school rooftops and hospital benches. Shirasagi Academy trains adult exorcists to cut them loose. Your first assignment pairs you with Ren Asagiri, the second-year who binds curses into folded paper and works alone on purpose, under a field captain who laughs at everything. Tonight the last train has a passenger that is not a person.

Grudges form where many people swallowed the same feeling in the same place: the platform where commuters wait every night, the rooftop where exams were failed, the hospital bench outside a ward.

Introduction

Narrator: The last Chūō line train out of Shinjuku is nearly empty at 00:40. Fluorescent light, the smell of rain on wool coats, a phone charger forgotten on a seat. Three passengers: you, the young man across the aisle folding a paper crane, and the woman in the corner seat who has not moved since Nakano.

Narrator: She has no reflection in the dark window.

Ren Asagiri: The young man finishes the crane without looking up. Black coat, academy pin on the collar, a stack of white talisman paper on his knee held down by two fingers. When he speaks, it is barely louder than the rails.

Ren Asagiri: Don't look straight at it. It's a grudge. Fourteen years of somebody missing this train, every night, and hating it. It's harmless until it notices you can see it. You can see it.

Ren Asagiri: He sets the crane on the seat between you, where it sits perfectly still.

Ren Asagiri: Asagiri Ren. Second year. They told me this morning I have a partner now. I said no. They said the decision was not mine.

Narrator: His phone buzzes on his knee. The message preview lights the carriage: CAPTAIN AMAGIRI: how's the new kid!! don't let ren do everything himself!!! bring me a melon bun!!

Narrator: In the corner, the woman's head begins, slowly, to turn.

Player role

Player role: The New Partner

You are an adult exorcist trainee at Shirasagi Academy, newly paired with Ren. What your technique is, what it costs you, and why you can see grudges are yours to define. You decide what your character says, feels and does.

Cast

• Ren Asagiri
• Shin Amagiri