They’re kidding. They had to be. No one would be so nonchalant about being eaten by a demon.

Would they?

No. Yōkai were one thing. Demons were another. This was some kind of initiation. A test. They were just having fun with him.

Why did I come here?

Oh yeah—he’d had no choice.

What if they weren’t kidding?

He didn’t like that inner, ominous voice. Because if they weren’t, then his old school didn’t seem so bad. At least no one had tried to intentionally feed him to demons. They’d only acted like them.

Please let this be a joke.

With a tired sigh, he pulled himself into his saddle and chased after the others. Too bad he had no idea where they were going, or what they were really supposed to do.

Other than not get eaten by demons. Like anyone would really need to be told that. It wasn’t exactly on anyone’s to-do list.

Get up.

Get dressed.

Find a demon.

Offer yourself as lunch.

Yeah, that had never been something he’d aspired to. Not even on his worst days.

Well, maybe on his worst days only.

Ryuichi nudged his horse closer to Masa, wanting a real answer. “What exactly is the point of this?”

Masa smirked at Taka. “Not to die,” he repeated, as if that was their unofficial motto.

“Or get lost,” Shigeru added.

Masa snorted, then laughed. “Of course, everyone gets lost. It’s why we’re all here.”

Ichiro nodded. “True.” He jerked his head in the direction of Taka. “He’s the longest-surviving member of the Kai-dan.”

“Which is how long?” Ryuichi asked.

Ichiro shrugged. “He won’t say, but it’s longer than any of the rest of us.”

That was interesting. But it wasn’t what Ryuichi wanted to know. “How many students make it back to—” He didn’t get to finish his sentence before the others broke into laughter.

Except Taka.

Toru turned around in his saddle to give Ryuichi a sad, withering glare. “No one returns from the Kai-dan. You either die or go missing. Those are your only two options now.”

“I’m not staying,” he said resolutely. “I’ll be the first to go back.”

Koichi raised his bottle of sake in a toast. “Good to have dreams, Ryota! Aspirations are always important. Pretty sure I had some once. But I seem to have lost them.”

Along with his mind. Maybe it was taking up residence with Ryuichi’s, wherever it had gone.

What am I doing here? It was redundant, he knew, but he just kept circling back to that one haunting question.

While he’d always felt as if he didn’t belong, he definitely didn’t belong with this group. Nor did he want to.

And that was a first.