“I’ve seen this before...” Aiko murmured.
It was like the barrier the “Apprentice Monster Hunter” boy had used to trap Aiko in the courtyard months ago. He’d said it was used to seal monsters in, so this one might technically be a bit different, but it was clearly a similar phenomenon.
“I’m sorry,” Aiko said. “I just assumed you were running around to distract me...”
That was only natural. She couldn’t see the spirit, so she couldn’t have known.
Yuichi turned around. The “Spirit” label was coming closer.
Yuichi glared at the air below the label, concentrating.
He remembered what had happened in the courtyard. He had seen the label “Vampire” there, and then after focusing, he’d been able to make out Aiko’s silhouette.
He convinced himself there was a person under the label. As he did, a human form gradually came into view.
“I think I can see it...” he murmured.
“What’s up with your eyes?” Aiko asked, dumbstruck.
“How should I know? She’s wearing a uniform... I think she goes to this school.”
The spirit was female and wearing a girls’ Seishin High uniform. Her face was hidden by her long hair, though, so it was hard to tell any more about her appearance.
The spirit was walking towards them slowly, hands stretched in front of her. There was a chain wrapped around her neck that extended under their feet and underneath the door to the roof.
“Hey! Didn’t your sister teach you anything about fighting spirits?” Aiko cried.
“Yeah... she said Febreze was really effective.” Yuichi had his doubts, of course. He couldn’t see how an air freshener could help drive away a spirit.
“Do you happen to have some of that on you?” Aiko asked with faint hope.
“I do, as a matter of fact, but I left my bag over there,” he said, pointing.
In his hurry to escape, he’d forgotten to take his bag. Mutsuko had included air freshener in it, though, almost as if she’d anticipated something like this.
“Could we jump down?” Aiko asked.
“In the worst case scenario, sure. But I wasn’t expecting you to be the one to suggest it...” He had assumed that would be a traumatic memory for her, but maybe it hadn’t been as bad as he’d supposed. “Okay, let’s see... There’s another thing my sister said about fighting spirits that I’d like to try.”
Yuichi stepped forward protectively in front of Aiko. It might not mean anything if the spirit couldn’t be blocked by physical means, but he couldn’t just leave Aiko in front of the enemy unguarded.
He stood facing the spirit.
The spirit’s manner didn’t change. It continued walking towards them at the same pace as before, hands outstretched.
Yuichi took a step forward.
He slapped down the ghost’s outstretched left palm and pulled her down, simultaneously striking up with his right fist from below.
The fist slammed right into the spirit’s jaw and sent her flying.
The color of the sky immediately returned to normal, and they could hear sounds from the athletic fields below — the barrier-like thing must have been cutting off sounds, too.
“Huh? What happened? What did you do?” Aiko asked in confusion.
“I punched it,” he replied.
“You can punch it?!” she shouted back.
Mutsuko’s method for fighting spirits was known in martial arts as tan shou, “Seeking Fist.”
“It’s a training method where you paint a detailed picture in your mind of a hypothetical enemy — how they’ll move and react to your movements — and work out the optimal solution for fighting them,” Yuichi explained. “Apparently it applies here, too.”
He’d painted a detailed image in his mind of his enemy going flying after he punched them. A ghost was an unreal thing, little more than an illusion, so if you imagined something hard enough, the ghost could get sucked into your fantasy. This was the totally reckless logic that Mutsuko had advocated, but it seemed to have worked in this case.
“And if they can be punched, there’s not much to be afraid of,” Yuichi added.
“That’s all pretty reckless...” Aiko sighed. Yuichi found he couldn’t blame her.
He approached the fallen spirit, which, seeming to notice his presence, tried to crawl away. Its manner had completely changed now; perhaps before it had assumed it was invulnerable. Right now, it seemed to be in total hysterics.
Yuichi picked up the chain around the ghost and pulled. Unable to resist Yuichi’s strength, the ghost was easily dragged to the ground at his feet.
“Pantomime?” Aiko asked.
“I bet it looks that way, yeah,” he said. From Aiko’s perspective, it probably looked like he was just miming pulling a chain.
“Hey,” Yuichi said to the spirit.
“H-Help me!” the spirit exclaimed.
“Oh! I think I can hear it...” Aiko said, not sounding particularly scared.
“Help you?” Yuichi asked. “But you’re the one who attacked us...”
“No! I didn’t want to do it! This chain made me do it!”
“This?” Yuichi picked up a length of chain in both hands and pulled. Just as he had imagined, the chain snapped.
“Huh?” the spirit said.
“That should do it, right? Can you explain the situation, now?”
“Thank you,” the spirit said, then stood up and began staggering towards the fence.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
“Now that I’m free, there’s something I have to do.” The spirit latched on to the fence with both hands and started climbing. Yuichi just watched, dumbstruck, as the ghost ascended to the top of the fence.
Before he could object, she pitched over the top and began to plummet head-first towards the ground below.
“Huh?!”
The ghost was gone. She had jumped off the roof.
“What was that all about? None of this makes any sense...” Aiko looked puzzled, and Yuichi was equally in the dark.
“She jumped off...” Yuichi climbed the fence and looked down at the ground, but there was no sign of the ghost.
“Cut that out! Someone might see you!” Aiko’s panicked voice shouted.
Obediently, Yuichi returned to the roof.
Later that night, Yuichi visited Mutsuko in her room.
As usual, Mutsuko was awake into the wee hours, and she let Yuichi in. The two were currently sitting across the low table from each other.
“I see! I’ve heard that location-bound spirits often repeat actions they performed in life,” Mutsuko announced, brimming with confidence as always. She wasn’t at all shocked by the sudden talk of ghosts, and showed no sign of doubting him.
“So you’re saying... she died by falling from the roof?” Yuichi asked skeptically. Despite the fact that he was the one who had come to her for advice, he was the most dubious about it all.
“It’s possible, but I haven’t heard about anything like that at school, so it must have happened a while ago. Hold on a sec!”
Mutsuko stood up and walked to her computer desk, then came back a few minutes later. She set some printed sheets on the table for Yuichi to see.
“Here. It’s from about ten years ago, but this is an article about a girl student who fell off the roof and died.”
Wherever Mutsuko had gotten the information from, it included pictures of the girl, too. Her name was Nami Eto.
“Hmm, her face was covered by her hair, so I couldn’t really see what she looked like...” Yuichi couldn’t say for sure if this was the same person as the ghost.
“Apparently it caused quite a stir on the internet,” Mutsuko said.
“Was there something strange about how it happened? This feels odd to say, but I wouldn’t think someone jumping off the roof would cause that much of a stir.” It might be a conversation topic at the school where it happened, but he couldn’t imagine it filtering out into t
he world at large.
“There was a bit of a mystery surrounding it, actually,” Mutsuko explained. “Two girls had a fight and ended up falling off the roof. There was a witness to that, but see... only one of them was found dead on the ground. The other one went missing.”
“Well, there was probably some trick behind it.” Yuichi imagined the scene in the back of his mind. Two people fell off the roof; only one hit the ground. The answer was simple. “She must have jumped into an open window while she was falling, right? Or she broke her fall and ran off.” He was confident that that would work out.
In a rare turnabout, Mutsuko seemed dumbstruck by Yuichi. “Yu... you know most people can’t do that stuff, right? Just because you can doesn’t mean you should expect everyone else to.” Yuichi felt a genuine twinge of pain at having his typically ridiculous sister informing him of common sense concepts. “Just so you know, most people can’t kill someone through a wall with fa jin, either.”
“I’ve never done that, and I wasn’t thinking of doing it, either!” He didn’t understand why she was bringing that up all of a sudden. “Anyway, moving on... What do you think of the evil spirit possession story that kicked this off?”
“It doesn’t sound like anything to worry about,” Mutsuko said. “You can see spirits with Soul Reader, but you don’t see anything behind you, right?”
“Yeah.” Yuichi could see labels even in a mirror, but as far as he could see, there was nothing behind him.
“And you were able to punch her, right? That means all of your techniques will work on spirits, and if they work, then you can beat them, so even if there were an evil spirit behind you, you could handle yourself.”
“The evil spirit thing sounded bogus from the start,” he said. “But I’m worried about the spirit that attacked me.”
“Yeah, the part about the chain around her is strange. You think she was being controlled by that ‘Medium’ girl you mentioned?”
Yuichi remembered the eerie words the “medium” had said. Perhaps she did have the power to manipulate ghosts, and she was siccing them on Yuichi.
“Anyway, I guess we should just watch for now,” Mutsuko said. “If things get weirder, let me know!”
And so ended their consultation for that day.
Yuichi unleashed a backfist.
He was in the hall around lunchtime, so naturally there were people everywhere, but he did it so quickly that nobody noticed.
His strike broke the neck of a spirit wearing a suit crying tears of blood. The head ended up bending backwards unnaturally on its neck, which actually made him look even more like a ghost.
A boy running across the wall on all fours spotted Yuichi and stuck his long tongue out at him. He may have intended to wrap it around him, but Yuichi just grabbed the tongue, flicked his wrist, and snapped it like a whip. The boy slammed into the floor, and Yuichi entered the bathroom.
Inside the bathroom he found a chubby girl carrying her own head in a shopping bag, which she was using to try to catch a peek at Yuichi’s crotch. Yuichi sent the bag flying with a kick, and finished his business while the chubby girl was rushing around searching for her head.
He went to the basin to wash his hands, looked up, and saw a girl covered in blood in the mirror. That spirit wasn’t doing anything in particular, so he just ignored it.
What the heck is going on here? Even going to the bathroom had become a chore.
It was the day after Reiko Takasugi had first confronted him about his “evil spirit.”
When Yuichi had arrived at school, he had been swarmed by “Spirit”s in large numbers. They disappeared if he hit them, so for now, it was more of an annoyance than anything... but as far as annoyances went, it was severe. It was especially bad during class, when he had to be subtle about it so as not to attract attention.
Yuichi left the bathroom and decided to track the chains to their source. The fact that every ghost he’d seen had a chain wrapped around their neck suggested that the chains must be significant.
The chains led him to Classroom 1-B.
He cast a surreptitious glance through the window and saw them all leading to a specific person. It was the “Medium” girl, who was sitting there eating lunch, the chains coiled around her waist.
So she is the one behind it?
The whole group of girls who had threatened him the other day were sitting there together, eating boxed lunches, laughing and chatting. Reiko Takasugi was there, too.
“Oh, Sakaki. Such a passionate gaze. Are you looking for someone to cheat with?”
Yuichi turned to see a bespectacled girl with the label “Fake” above her head.
It was Tomomi Hamasaki.
He still had no idea what “Fake” meant, and he wasn’t inclined to ask, either. If he did, it would probably just get him involved in something else annoying.
“Hey, do you know who she is?” He pointed to the medium girl. Tomomi was strangely informed in a lot of unexpected places, so maybe she would know something.
“Just blew me right off, huh?” Tomomi asked. “Hmm, but you usually try not to get involved with other people, so showing interest in a girl might indicate a change in the wind...”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Yuichi said flatly.
“Uh huh, right. Anyway, you mean her? I think her name’s Misaki Gokumon. Why do you ask?”
“Their group accosted me yesterday, and things have been strange ever since,” he said. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, though.”
“Hey, hey, you can’t ask me for info and then blow me off again!” Tomomi protested. “Don’t forget, I’m a member of the Monika Army, too.”
The “Monika Army” referred to the group Monika had assembled to help her gather Divine Vessels. Tomomi had strongarmed her way in, and was now technically a member of the gang.
“I don’t think this has to do with the Divine Vessels,” Yuichi said, though he realized he couldn’t be sure. It was possible that her control of spirits did have something to do with the power of a Divine Vessel.
“Could you at least tell me the situation?” Tomomi asked. “I might be able to help.”
“Fine. Let’s go somewhere else.”
It was lunchtime, so there were people all around them now. She and Yuichi moved to a corner of the hall.
He explained the events of the day before to her in brief.
“Spirits, huh?” she said. “You don’t sound all that bothered about this, but it could get pretty serious.”
“Really?” he asked.
“When I explained about worldview, I said that the more people who believe in a something, the more persistent that worldview becomes. And a whole lot of people believe in spirits and wandering souls... At least, more people find them feasible than tengu and oni and such. That means spirits have a lot of power, though I don’t know if they’re actually the manifestation of the souls of dead people.”
“But I’ve never seen spirits before now,” he said. “I never even saw the labels.”
“That’s because they weren’t part of your world until now. By getting involved with those girls who are convinced that spirits exist, they’ve probably had an effect on your worldview.”
“I see... so? Do you know how to exorcise spirits?” he asked.
“Huh? Why would I?”
“You’re Nihao the China’s daughter, right? Didn’t you learn any Taoist teachings or anything?” Yuichi was thinking about an old Chinese horror movie about hopping vampires. It was a long shot, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Nihao the China knew some esoteric spirit-purging techniques.
“I’m not his real daughter, and he hasn’t taught me his techniques,” Tomomi said.
“Huh? Really?”
“Oh, are you interested in my story all of a sudden?” she asked.
“No, and don’t start telling it to me,” Yuichi replied curtly.
“Hey! Why are you so determined not to learn anything about me?”
“Because I have this deep and abiding feeling it’s gonna get me wrapped up in something really annoying. And the fact that you have ‘Fake’ written above your head is really unsettling to start with.” Yuichi waved lightly and walked away.
Tomomi looked unhappy, but she didn’t seem inclined to push things on him any further.
Yuichi returned to the classroom and was swarmed by spirits as usual. As he absentmindedly banished the random spirits that attacked him on his way back to his desk, his mind turned things over.
There were spirits attacking him. They didn’t seem to be attacking anyone else.
The only place they were attacking him was at school.
There was a chain linking “Medium” Misaki Gokumon to the spirits.
There were chains wrapped around the spirits — usually around the neck, but if they didn’t have a head, it would be wrapped somewhere close to it.
When the spirits’ chains were cut, they stopped attacking Yuichi.
There were some spirits that seemed communicative, but only a select few; most of them just let out incomprehensible moans.
Some spirits could form barriers, but they wouldn’t use them in well-populated places, and the barrier disappeared if the spirit was attacked.
The spirits disappeared if they got too far away.
What’s does it all mean? he thought.
Misaki Gokumon had to be the one behind it. The fact that they only attacked him at school suggested a limit to the length of the chains, and considering the timing when they started attacking, his rejection of Reiko Takasugi seemed to be the cause. But he didn’t know why spirits would attack him just because he rejected her.
He considered talking things over with Misaki Gokumon, but it would come off as saying he believed Reiko Takasugi and wanted her help, which would just end with more talk of him dating her.
Well, I’ll just wait for class to be over, I guess, Yuichi thought, holding the neck of a ghost that was glaring bitterly at him.
After class, Yuichi and Aiko went up to the roof.
“So, that’s the story,” he said. “I want to do something about the situation.”
“Hmm, not sure what I can do to help...” Aiko wrinkled her nose.
The Strongest Little Brother’s Commonplace Encounters with the Bizarre?! Page 14
