The Class Rep's Secret

Believing Okarun to be a vampire after glimpsing his transformation and his earlier scuffle with a classmate, Rin confronts him. He asks her how long she has noticed that shape, and she traces the visions back to the day she came across his kintama. The news rattles him, and he presses her about its location, but she mistakes his urgency for a hungry vampire and blurts out lurid guesses about what he intends, which he flatly rejects. Rin then admits she surrendered the ball to the police and wonders aloud what ties him to it. When he describes it as a sphere of spiritual energy, he assumes she will scoff, yet she insists she trusts in the supernatural, recalling how an odd heaviness took root on her back from the moment she handled the kintama and first saw his fanged form. Learning that she kept silent for fear of seeming odd, Okarun proposes they be open with each other going forward, which puts her at ease.

The pair head to the police box where she dropped it off, only to be told by the officer on duty that someone has already retrieved the ball and that privacy rules bar him from naming the person. Outside, both find it strange that anyone could claim it without proof of ownership, and the clerk struck them as shifty. Suspecting the kintama lingers nearby, Okarun floats the idea of letting Momo read its aura. Just then he notices a strange figure looming behind Rin, dragging her toward the pavement, and understands it is the burden she mentioned. His strike sails harmlessly through it, leaving him puzzled.

Over at the Ayase home, Momo still seethes about the school incident, which Seiko, Bamora, and Turbo Granny all notice. Needled by the spirit, she retreats upstairs and daydreams of Okarun declaring his feelings, until Seiko summons her because he has turned up. Her confusion only grows when he bursts in cradling Rin and frantic with worry.

Rin explains that catching sight of Okarun as a vampire began after a golden orb came into her possession, and that an unseen load has pressed on her ever more heavily each day. The police box where she left the family jewel turns up empty, since another party already retrieved it. When a spirit assaults her and Okarun's strikes pass through without effect, he carries her off to the Ayase home.

This installment runs nineteen pages and appeared on October 3, 2023. It sits in Volume 15 under the Onbusuman Arc and the Kintama Hunt Saga, falling between Chapter 122 and Chapter 124.