“What are you looking at?” the girl demanded, perhaps thinking he was getting ready to make a break for it.
The girl was the daughter of the shrine’s head priest. Her name was Furu Shinomiya. She was beautiful, with long, striking black hair, but Yuichi’s attention was elsewhere at the moment.
“Hey, do you have a big family?” he questioned.
“It’s just me and my parents. Why do you ask?” Furu asked in confusion.
He was detecting some sort of strange presence here. There seemed to be more people inside than the building’s size might suggest. Despite that, though, it was very quiet. He could sense the presence of others, but there didn’t actually seem to be anyone there.
“Um, no reason.” It wasn’t good to dismiss one’s intuition, but he didn’t sense any particular danger at the moment, so Yuichi decided to pretend it was nothing. Besides, this wasn’t exactly a good time for him to start nitpicking the girl’s house.
Yuichi was brought to the living room and made to kneel on the carpet. This sort of thing was par for the course for Yuichi, but seeing Yuri take her own place next to Furu on the sofa stuck in his craw.
“Write your contact information here,” Furu ordered. “Your school, too, please. If things go very poorly, we may need to get in touch with them, too.”
Furu placed the paper and pen on the table in front of him. Yuichi obediently wrote down his personal information.
“‘Yuichi Sakaki,’” the girl read. “‘Age 16. Seishin High School 1-C’... isn’t that the class next to mine? To think that the culprit was so close...”
“Could you please not treat me as a criminal?”
“If it had just been a little picnic in our shrine forest, I’d look the other way. But there’s more to this, isn’t there? I’d bet you’re the one who’s been killing our trees. And given how many have died, you must have been at it for a while, right?”
She hadn’t actually seen it happen, so it would be possible for him to lie. But he was hesitant to do that.
“Yes, that’s right. I’ve been punching trees in that forest for a while now.”
“Destruction of property. You really are a criminal.” Yuri said, glaring down her nose at Yuichi.
“Seriously, whose side are you o—”
The girl’s own glare cowed Yuichi into silence, which then reigned over the room for some time.
Yuichi squirmed under their gazes before at last taking another look at Furu.
I feel like I’ve met her before...
He was looking up at her now, but seeing her from front on had stirred some kind of memory.
“Where are you looking? Pervert! Criminal!”
“Oh, um, I just realized... there’s something familiar about you...”
“Who recognizes someone by their chest? You really are a pervert!” Furu, who was wearing a sweater, folded her arms to cover her ample chest.
Yuichi knew that it was rude to stare at a girl’s chest, but at the same time, he really did think it looked familiar. The monster hunters he’d met at the abandoned hospital before... One of them had been a woman dressed in a cloak and wearing a mask. Maybe it was too early to judge just from the Monster Hunter label and the similar body type, but they really were close.
“I’m starting to wonder if you really would an acceptable companion to me at all,” Yuri piled on, looking at Yuichi disdainfully.
“Look, do you actually have a crush on me? Because it’s really not sounding like it...”
“My body is forced to desire you, despite my mind’s rebellion,” she sniffed.
“That’s a really, really horrible way to put it! You make it sound like I did something to you!”
“But you did do something to me. Something incredible,” she informed him.
Anthromorphs had a tendency to be attracted to the strong, and Yuichi had destroyed the god they worshiped. It had, annoyingly, caused this anthromorph woman to develop an irresistible attraction to him.
“Wh-What were you two doing out there?!” the girl cried.
“Nothi— um, nothing, miss.” Yuichi restrained himself from arguing more fervently. He was the one being censured right now, after all.
“I wouldn’t mind if we had, of course,” Yuri said casually. “It is the middle of our mating season, after all.”
“Konishi! Stop talking! You’re just making things worse!” Yuichi shouted. He had at one time been curious about how anthromorphs reproduced, but at the moment, it was the furthest thing from his mind.
“Your immoral relationship aside, may I continue?” the girl asked.
“Yes, please do,” Yuichi agreed gratefully.
“I’d been trying to investigate what was behind the rash of dead trees popping up in our forest of late. It took me a while to find you because I was convinced it was happening during the night. I never thought it could be happening after sunrise.”
She was a monster hunter, so perhaps she’d thought it was the work of a yokai or some other supernatural creature. Of course, there are plenty of yokai that operate during the day... he thought.
“Now, would you mind telling me why you are destroying our trees?” the girl demanded.
“It’s, um... martial arts training...” Yuichi muttered. He felt a little embarrassed now that he was saying it out loud.
“You did all that to those trees just with martial arts?”
“Sorry. Guess I got a little carried away...” He hadn’t been just hitting them; he’d often been striking them with penetrating punches, which could cause their insides to burst without leaving a single external trace. A single tree never lasted for long, so after one tree died, he’d just move on to another.
“I can’t believe this,” the girl said coldly. “The forest around a shrine is that god’s territory. Not only were you intruding on god’s territory without permission, you were actively desecrating it! How do you intend to make amends for this?”
“Um, first, can I ask something I’ve been wondering?”
“What is it?” Furu’s eyes narrowed, perhaps feeling like he had ignored her lecture.
“Is there really no one else from your family here? Like, no adults who usually come home at this time?” Though that was not, precisely, Yuichi’s actual question. The presence he had felt in the hallway earlier was starting to get stronger, and he was getting concerned.
“I am the only one at home at present,” said Furu. “And that’s lucky for you; my father would have called the police right away.”
“I see. Then, I guess it must be—” As it appeared suddenly beside him, Yuichi struck it with a backfist.
“Bwugh!”
The being, which should have had no substance, went crashing into the living room wall.
Yuichi turned to see a girl dressed in a Seishin High School uniform lying in a heap on the floor.
Above her head was the label “Specter.”
It was Chie Amatsu, a girl Yuichi knew well.
“Hey! Why’d you hit me like that? You almost killed me again!” Chie sat up, sulking as she held a hand to her cheek.
“Yeah? And what are you doing here?” Yuichi demanded. “I thought you were bound to the school!”
Chie’s fellow spirit, Nami Eto, had been condemned to fall from the same place over and over again. Mutsuko had called her a bounded spirit — a ghost tied to the place of her death — and Yuichi had assumed Chie was the same way.
“Huh? Oh, see, since I almost managed to ascend, I can go wherever I want now.”
“Yuichi Sakaki... who are you talking to?” Yuri looked at Yuichi, eyes full of pity.
“Oh, well, see...” Yuichi looked over at Furu, flustered. From the outside, it must have looked like he had had a seizure and then started muttering to himself, but he couldn’t collect his thoughts enough to explain himself properly.
Furu’s reaction, though, was contrary to Yuichi’s expectations.
“How... how did you get inside my barrier?” she aske
d, looking at Chie in fear.
“Barrier? I don’t remember a barrier... was that the tingly thing I felt on my way in here?” she asked.
“Why didn’t I notice the presence of an evil spirit nearby?” Furu asked.
Yuichi didn’t understand all the differences. But since Chie was a Specter, that might make her more powerful than an ordinary Spirit.
“I wasn’t just ‘nearby,’ honey,” said Chie. “Me and my friends have been playing around in this house for a while. I dunno if you’re supposed to be a miko, but if you are, I guess you’re not much of one.”
As if called by Chie’s words, more “Spirit”-labeled beings appeared in the room. They were dressed in a wide variety of school uniforms, but they all seemed close in age to Chie.
“Run! I’ll hold them off!” Furu said desperately, rocketing to her feet.
“Uh? Oh, I see. I get it... In that case... BWAHAHAHA! I WILL SLAUGHTER YOU ALL!”
The sky outside the window went dark and the whole house began to shake. Chie’s eyes turned into empty sockets crying tears of blood.
Furu’s face was stricken with despair. But as if to try to fight it anyway, her trembling lips began reciting a spell.
“I ask, with utmost humility and submission, that the great gods of purification — given form at the time of the great and wise Izanagi-no-Mikoto’s purification at Tsukushi-no-Himuka-no-Tachibana-no-Odo-no-Agihara — might purify and cleanse me of my failings, sins, and fi—”
“IS THAT SUPPOSED TO DO SOMETHING?” Chie asked, mockingly, as Furu’s chant seemed to fail to have any effect.
“Don’t get cocky!” Yuichi walked up to Chie, grabbed her face, and squeezed.
“Ow! Ow! That hurts! Cut it out! I’m sorry, okay?” Immediately, the shaking stopped, and the sunlight poured in through the windows once more.
Furu collapsed back down on the sofa, staring glassy-eyed at Chie and Yuichi.
Yuichi released Chie, who fell back onto the floor, cradling her face in her hands. “Ugh... Yuichi, you’re too rough. Is this domestic violence? Are you an abusive husband?”
“I don’t recall us ever getting married.”
“At the same time, it’s pretty cool... I can see why people get attracted to the really manly type.”
“Um, Sakaki, what on earth...” Furu seemed to be recovering some of her presence of mind, and with it, she was beginning to harbor some questions about what was going on.
“By the way, could I have some tea? I’m absolutely parched,” Yuri threw in abruptly as Yuichi was racking his brain trying to think of how to explain the situation.
Yuichi said, “How can you be so calm in this situation? You’re kind of impressive, Konishi...”
Yuri didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by all of Furu and Yuichi’s rushing around and shouting. She had just been a tag-along to start with, and had spent the entire time acting like a disinterested spectator.
✽✽✽✽✽
As thanks for stopping Chie, perhaps, Yuichi was now allowed to sit on a sofa. He was given tea, as well, and all in all, his treatment seemed to have improved.
Furu and Yuri were sitting on the sofa across from him, while Chie and the other spirits floated above.
“There was nothing to do at the school, so I just wandered around the city until I found others like me,” said Chie. “They were all as bored as I was, so we decided to start having a little fun.”
“Yeah, we were totally bored!” another spirit agreed.
“Chie’s strong, too! Hanging out with her meant we didn’t have to fall in with those seedy-looking types, so we really owe her.”
The spirits were all high school girls. It was the height of annoyance.
“So why did you decide to come to a shrine?” Yuichi asked.
Chie said, “It was like a test of courage, I guess. But then it was, like, totally anticlimactic. All we had to do was restrain our power a little, and they didn’t notice us at all.”
Chie’s words seemed intended to get a rise out of Furu, but Furu just let out a groan in response. “Jiangui is supposed to be my specialty, too...”
It was hard to tell if it was because Chie was so powerful, or Furu was the opposite. It seemed anything he said would just make it worse, so Yuichi decided not to touch on the incident.
Jiangui was the ability to see ghosts — in other words, spiritual sight. “Gui” was written the same as the Japanese word “oni,” and the name came from China’s tendency to refer to the spirits of the dead in this way.
“Sakaki, has that specter possessed you?” Furu asked.
“I’d possess him if I could...” Chie grinned.
“No, but... do you remember that recent evil spirit invasion at our school?” Yuichi asked.
“Yes, I really thought it was a sign of the end... but the next thing I knew, it just stopped,” Furu said.
“I gained the ability to see spirits at that time, and I got to know her then, too. Well, I don’t think she’ll do anything too bad now...” Yuichi had decided to handwave a lot of the story away. Explaining it all would be annoying, and difficult, and could take a long time.
“Spirits? A likely story,” Yuri scoffed.
“You’re one to talk...” Yuichi was far more skeptical about the existence of anthromorphs than the existence of spirits. At least spirits could be put down to tricks of the eyes; the ability to instantly transform into a beast like her was far more unrealistic.
“If you can see them, I may want to ask for your help with something... but...” Furu cast a glance at Yuri, suggesting that she wanted to say something to Yuichi, but was hesitant about doing so in front of her.
“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m like this, you see?” Yuri said, putting her hands in front of her.
Her nails elongated. They had always been long, but here, they were actually visibly growing. At the same time, cat ears sprouted from her head. This was the form she had taken when she had attacked Yuichi during his summer vacation.
“Are you... an anthromorph?” Furu asked.
“Yes. And you’re a monster hunter, correct? We have a mutual noninterference pact with your organization. I won’t say anything about the spirits here, either.”
On their way here, Yuichi had told Yuri that Furu was a monster hunter. He’d thought it might cause trouble for them to be in the same room together, but apparently they were fine.
“Are you too, by chance?” Furu looked at him dubiously.
“I’m just a human who’s Konishi’s classmate,” Yuichi said. “I know she’s an anthromorph, but I’m not involved with them at all. So I’d appreciate it if you’d treat me as a novice to all this.”
Furu seemed about to explain some sort of supernatural situation, and Yuichi didn’t want her thinking of him as an expert. All Yuichi could do was see and touch spirits.
“Understood,” she said. “Well then, Sakaki. I’m going to make a proposition. If you cooperate, I’ll let this incident go without complaint. I’ll even let you continue training here as you have in the past. Of course, I’d ask you to stop destroying our trees...”
She was leaving Yuichi little choice in the matter, of course. He’d have to take part to get his crime smoothed over.
“Fine. I’d like to cooperate, but I can’t agree until I know what the job is.” No matter how bad a situation he was in, he couldn’t just accept any proposal unconditionally.
“I’ll lay it out very simply. Magical creatures have been running rampant in our city for a while now. A certain vampire is the cause.”
“A vampire?” A number of faces rose up in Yuichi’s mind; he knew quite a few vampires.
“Yes. If anthromorphs exist, it’s natural that vampires would too, isn’t it? The princess of the vampires has been in the city since summer. She’s the root of it all.”
The Vampire Princess, then. His list of candidates narrowed to Aiko.
“You’re not gonna slay the vampire or anything, are you?” he asked. He’d
be happy to cooperate to help make up for what he’d done, but if they were going after Aiko, he had to refuse.
“Certainly not,” said Furu. “She’s one of the more powerful beings in the magical realm. There’s no way a few local peacekeeping monster hunters can stop her. And as your friend mentioned before, we have an agreement. We can’t attack a vampire that hasn’t done anything actively wrong.”
That’s true. Noro hasn’t actually done anything wrong...
“But even if she’s done nothing wrong, she’s still calling magical beings to her. And some sort of tremendously evil being with great power arrived in the city a while back.”
“‘Some sort of evil being’... you mean you haven’t seen it?” Yuichi asked.
“I haven’t,” said Furu. “But I sometimes experience revelations. As monster hunters go, I’m particularly sensitive to evil presences.”
Despite that, it seemed she hadn’t noticed Chie, who had been right next to her. Yuichi decided not to say that out loud, though, to avoid stirring up the hornet’s nest. “Can your local peacekeeping monster hunters handle the situation?”
“We cannot. But we also cannot merely ignore it. That’s why I was hoping to gather more information. I’ve been searching all around the town, but then I thought, ‘It’s always darkest around the lighthouse,’ and that’s when I noticed our forest being ruined...” Furu cast him another cold glance.
“What will you do with the information once you get it?” Yuichi asked, trying to steer her off that subject.
“We monster hunters are like a franchise, with a central organization of sorts. We basically petition them, and they send someone who can deal with it. But we can’t do that until we know more about what’s going on. That’s why we want to get your help in searching for information.”
“I see. And you think I can help you with my spirit-sight?”
“I don’t know.”
Yuichi blinked. “Huh? So what’s the point?”
“I think it’s likely that the evil presence is repressing its aura. That’s why I was hoping to use your jiangui. That perhaps you would be able to see something that I couldn’t, or...” Furu seemed to be aware she was grasping at straws. If she was willing to ask Yuichi, a man she’d only just met, she must really be at the end of her rope.
Humanity's Extinction Actually Happens This Time With the Evil God's Revival?! Page 11
