“Huh? You never mentioned this!” Yuichi had assumed Mutsuko would take care of the whole thing.
“Participation is mandatory!” Mutsuko ordered. “Now, snap to it!”
Urged on by his big sister, Yuichi joined in on the ritual. Aiko followed, and the ringing from the pot grew even more violent.
The next thing they knew, all the spirits had vanished from the roof. The pot was ringing with an incredible sound now.
“Okay, Yu, pick up the pot!” Mutsuko declared.
“Huh? You can’t mean...”
“Yep! We’ve gotta take the pot around the school to exorcise all the spirits!”
Just as he’d thought.
In the end, it took until night to purge the whole school of spirits.
Yuichi felt extremely embarrassed walking all around the school carrying the loudly clanging pot, but when Mutsuko told him to do something, he couldn’t go against her. He got quite a few side glances from teachers, but Mutsuko managed to excuse her way around it.
According to Mutsuko, the Narikama ritual was quite a powerful exorcism method. It could completely restore any space to its pristine state. Yuichi tended to think of these kinds of things as scams, but it seemed all lingering signs in the space had been completely washed away. That meant it must work on quite powerful spirits, too.
Yuichi came to school the next day and indeed, he didn’t see any spirits. Thanks to the Narikama ritual, the school was at peace once more, which both eliminated the danger of Yuichi being attacked by spirits, and meant that he wouldn’t have to date Reiko Takasugi.
He went to see Misaki Gokumon at lunch, but she wasn’t acting like anything had changed. She really must not have realized what she had been doing.
That should clear up the whole spirit mess, Yuichi thought. Still, he returned to the roof once more.
As expected, he found Nami there.
“So you didn’t move on, huh?” he said.
“Yeah. After I fall, I think I go somewhere else for a while... then the next thing I know, I’m in the school. I go to the roof and fall off, then do it all again. So I guess I was unaffected by the exorcism in the time I was gone after falling? Well, I guess not having the others around might make things a little easier for me...”
It seemed the pot only had any effect while the ritual was still in progress.
“What about the chains?” Yuichi asked.
“I haven’t seen any yet today,” she said. “But why are you doing here, Sakaki? You don’t have to interact with me anymore.”
“Unlike the others who only moaned, I could actually talk to you,” Yuichi said. “I can’t just leave a sentient being who seems to be suffering on her own.”
“Ah, do I seem to be suffering? Well, I suppose I do have a regret... I can’t stop wondering about how things came to this.”
“Yeah, I heard the circumstances around that were a bit odd,” Yuichi said. “Could you tell me more?”
Two had fallen. One had died, and the other had gone missing. According to the article, the girl who’d died was Nami Eto, and the one who’d gone missing was Chie Amatsu.
“It was an accident,” Nami said. “We did have a fight, but I wasn’t trying to kill her. I don’t think Chie was trying to kill me, either. There’s a fence here now, but at the time it was only a railing, and it broke in the scuffle.”
“So what happened after you fell together? That’s the mystery.”
“Chie was falling a little before me, but she disappeared before my eyes. That’s the last thing I remember. After that, I probably just hit the ground.”
“She disappeared?” Yuichi asked.
“Yeah,” Nami said. “I think that’s what I can’t stop thinking about. I really want to know where Chie went.”
That meant Nami wouldn’t be able to escape her cycle until the mystery was solved.
“I’m going to look into the incident a little more,” Yuichi said. “Maybe if I find other mysterious disappearances, I might learn something.” And if he told his sister about this, she might get some inspiration.
“Really? Well, I’ll wait, though my hopes aren’t high.”
“You’re gonna jump again?” he asked.
“Yeah. But I won’t do it in front of you again.”
It was true that he didn’t want to watch someone jump off a building, so he left Nami behind on the roof.
✽✽✽✽✽
It was automatic.
It existed only to capture the spirits in the surrounding area.
It did not do so by the will of its master, Misaki Gokumon; it just took control of every spirit within a certain range, and then when she went out of range, it released them. That was all it did.
It had some will of its own, but that will was not connected to Misaki’s. It simply needed it to capture spirits. The chains would wrap around the spirits and make them slaves, but if it just attacked them, they would get away. So it had arrived at this sort of pseudo-consciousness, out of necessity.
It now felt uncertain.
There was no prey.
The usually plentiful spirits were all gone without a trace.
But the instinct to ensnare spirits was almost like a hunger. It wouldn’t give up just because there weren’t any nearby.
It extended its chains throughout the school, but there were no spirits anywhere.
Nevertheless, it searched tenaciously for its prey.
Then at last, it arrived at the roof where it found a single spirit.
The chain reached for the spirit, but before it could catch her, the spirit fell.
The chain followed it from the roof to the ground. The spirit struck the ground and disappeared.
Its hard-fought prey was gone, but undeterred, it resumed searching for others.
That was when it noticed them.
There were spirits nearby — a nest of spirits filled with evil.
If it hadn’t pursued that spirit, it never would have noticed them. If it’d had feelings, it would have rejoiced.
But it did not, and so all it did was extend its chains towards its new prey, and drag them out from the darkness in which they were bound.
✽✽✽✽✽
It was the morning two days after the exorcism. The weather looked bad. Dark gray clouds covered the sky, and it felt like it might rain at any moment.
As usual, Yuichi was walking to school with Aiko. The minute he entered the school, he realized something was strange.
“What is... this?” he asked.
There was a man’s torso crawling along the floor. He had no bottom half, and something like that looked like reddish-black rope trailed out behind his stomach — probably his intestines. There was no sign of pain in his expression, only overwhelming hatred.
There was a woman crawling around on four strangely elongated limbs. She moved like a spider, her head turning around and around as if searching for something.
There was an inhuman thing with legs growing from its head left that blood behind wherever it stepped.
Above each hung the label “Specter.” Indeed, they did seem far more wicked and monstrous than the “Spirits” he had seen before.
Aiko clung to Yuichi.
“Can you see them?” he asked, although Aiko’s eyes were still black.
“Yeah, I asked Akiko and she had some contacts that would hide the red. I’m wearing them right now,” she said.
“Akiko’s pretty incredible, huh?” he commented. Akiko was the maid who worked in Aiko’s house. Yuichi was impressed by the idea, but then realized it might have just been a traditional way for vampires to disguise their eyes.
“But does this mean the exorcism didn’t work?” he asked.
The “Specter”s weren’t wearing any chains, which may have been why they weren’t attacking Yuichi directly. But while they were just wandering around for now, it was hard to believe they should just be left at large.
Even so, Yuichi and Aiko couldn’t afford to be late to class, so they hea
ded for their classroom.
Another specter arrived in the middle of class, a pale, tall, slender women that slipped in through the hallway-side window. She had no eyes, only blank eye sockets that served as the one dark spot on her pale body.
The lack of eyes didn’t seem to matter to her, though, as she bent over as if to peer into a student’s face with great concentration.
“Not you.” She then moved to the next student, and leaned in again. “Not you.”
She came up to Yuichi.
“Not—”
Yuichi formed a spear hand and plunged it through the woman’s neck. She spat up blood and then fell onto the ground, writhing and rolling. Of course, hardly anyone in the class noticed.
This isn’t good... he thought. The specters seemed to be growing more active.
During lunch break, Yuichi decided to check the 1-B classroom, but Misaki Gokumon wasn’t there. It seemed she was absent that day, which suggested she wasn’t connected to the specters’ appearance.
Yuichi waited until after class to head up to the roof with Aiko.
They had contacted Mutsuko in advance, so she was already there before them. She had her miko garb on and had already started the Narikama ritual. She added the rice and began the chant, but unlike before, it didn’t begin ringing.
“What’s wrong?” Yuichi asked. Knowing Mutsuko, it was unlikely that she had made a mistake in the execution.
“It’s no use. It won’t ring out in a place that’s too impure.” Mutsuko furrowed her brow.
Which meant they’d need to find a new way of purging the spirits.
“What’s going on here, anyway?” Yuichi asked.
Black clouds had covered the sky. It was hard to believe the presence of specters would even affect the weather, but there was still something deeply ominous about it.
“Hmm, I guess the purging of all the spirits created a spiritual vacuum here, so other spirits came to take their place! Naturally!” Mutsuko said.
“Naturally?! Why did we do the exorcism at all then?”
Nami approached them, the pot seeming to have no power over her when it wasn’t ringing. “You mentioned other spirits, but... I saw someone who looked like Chie earlier. She seemed strange... like there was a shadow over her face...”
“Were you able to talk to her?” Yuichi asked.
“Actually... she seemed really dangerous... so I ran away...”
“Well, I guess I’ve gotta go around beating them all...” he sighed. Maybe that would just end up summoning new specters, but it was the only thing Yuichi could think of.
Yuichi was just about to go out and start punching specters when Chiharu appeared.
“I have completed my errand!” Chiharu declared. “As you surmised, Sage Mutsuko, I detected an unusual presence on a second floor classroom! It is packed full of evil creatures with power levels ranging from minus 2,000 to minus 30,000!” She was spouting seemingly random numbers as usual. There was an enormous compound bow in her hand, which she was probably using to attack the specters and protect herself.
“Ah-ha! Thanks, Dannoura!” Mutsuko exclaimed.
“What’s she talking about?” Yuichi asked. He didn’t understand at all. They must have been plotting something before Yuichi arrived.
“I thought back on the story up till now and realized there must be something strange going on in this school, so I had Dannoura watch Eto’s fall from the athletic fields,” Mutsuko explained.
“But the specters can’t really be in the classroom like she said, right?” he asked. It was had to believe they could have all been there and never hurt anyone before.
“Actually, I think you have to go in through the window to get there,” Mutsuko said. “In other words, it’s all a matter of direction. Maybe it’s a type of katatagae, lucky and unlucky directions. Just the smallest slip-up can take you to another dimension!”
Katatagae was a ritual where you avoided traveling directly in certain directions, based on an old idea that traveling in certain directions would put you in contact with evil gods and get you cursed. Yuichi had a feeling it had nothing to do with katatagae directly, but more that you needed a certain process to get there.
“That means, Yu, you have to enter the second floor classroom by jumping off the roof!” Mutsuko declared. “Then you can find the nest of evil spirits and beat them all at once!”
“I wonder if there’s a high school student out there who’s jumped off more roofs than me...” Yuichi whispered.
Of course, he couldn’t defy Mutsuko.
Yuichi stood facing the fence as the evening sunlight streamed over the roof.
He was jumping from the side facing the athletic fields, so there was a good chance he might be seen. He had to plan the timing just right.
“You can go now!” Mutsuko called.
Mutsuko must have been making her decision based on watching the athletic field. Yuichi heard her voice through the glasses he was wearing.
The glasses were the same wearable computer that he had worn during the incident involving Aiko’s big brother Kyoya. They contained a transmitter that let Mutsuko see and hear whatever Yuichi did. He wasn’t sure if she had brought them for this purpose, but she’d had them in her bag.
Yuichi jumped straight up, grabbed the top of the fence, and jumped over. Then he plunged down at top speed.
He could see Chiharu on the athletic field, bow at the ready. He could hear the string sounding out just as he jumped. It was her Azusa Yumi support fire driving away the specters near the entrance.
He reached the second floor window in an instant, grabbed the upper frame, and changed his trajectory to leap into the classroom.
He rolled over once to slow his momentum, then stood up immediately. He didn’t have time to lie around — he was probably in the middle of an enemy hive.
Despite the evening sun shining outside, it was very dark in the classroom. It was like the outside light couldn’t make it in.
The interior of the classroom was different from what Yuichi knew. Like the old school building, it was made of wood. It had also been badly weathered by time: most of the chairs and desks had half rotted away. It felt like a place that had been abandoned for decades.
There was a thick layer of dust on the floor, like ash, and a quick look around revealed notable traces of old burn marks in the classroom.
Is this another dimension, then? Yuichi wondered. This place looked nothing like the Seishin High School he was used to.
The place was swarming with pallid human figures. They didn’t move right away, as if uncertain as to how to respond. Maybe they hadn’t expected anyone to come in here that hadn’t been dragged.
“Specter.” Yuichi saw the labels above the heads of all the figures at once. They were identifiable as human, but just barely — they were all twisted in some way. Some had no limbs, some were bleeding from their eyes. Some were giant; some were tiny; some were mostly intact aside from huge swollen portions.
Yuichi looked around the classroom.
He’d come in here to destroy them all, but he’d been asked for one more thing: Chie Amatsu.
If Chie had been pulled into this world, then she might be here somewhere. Nami had wanted him to save her if possible.
Of course, I doubt she’s still alive... he thought. Nami likely knew that, too.
The only label he saw around him was “Specter,” which meant Chie might be a specter already. If she was, then unfortunately, he’d be forced to take her out.
“Chie Amatsu! Are you in here?” Yuichi called out.
“Gruuuuuh!” In response, the specters let out a choir of moans. Then they began to shuffle towards Yuichi.
“I wasn’t asking for you guys!” he shouted.
A nearby specter attacked, attempting to grab him. Yuichi launched a fist at the part that looked most like a face. He felt it impact, and the specter went flying.
“You’re not scary if I can punch you!” he added.
&
nbsp; He mowed down the specters with kicks. He grabbed heads and plunged knees into faces. He snatched hands, broke elbows, twisted bodies, and tossed them against the floor.
And as he drove away the attacking specters, all the while he looked for Chie.
✽✽✽✽✽
“What on earth? This is crazy...” Aiko said in disbelief.
She was used to seeing Yuichi in brawls, but watching him pound the hell out of those specter things with his bare fists had still spurred her to comment.
They were watching the battle on the screen of Mutsuko’s tablet on one corner of the roof.
“Yeah! It’s a shame I can’t see it. I can see the weird ruined parallel world, but not the specters!” Mutsuko cried in chagrin.
Aiko’s eyes could see the specters, though, even through the display, so she explained to Mutsuko what she was seeing.
“The key is imagination,” Mutsuko said. “In other words, you picture your opponent in your mind and imagine punching them and twisting them and sending them flying! If you can do this, you can even fight spirits, no problem. And generally speaking, living beings will be stronger than incorporeal ones.”
“So it’s all about the mindset?” Aiko asked.
“Yes! It’s a battle of wills, and Yu can never lose a battle of wills! He might look flighty, but he hates to lose, and he’s overconfident, and cocky, too! The thought of losing never enters his mind!”
It was a horrible thing for his own sister to say, but Aiko sympathized a bit.
“Um, I understand why he can punch them, but why do the ghosts’ attacks just pass through him in return?” Aiko wondered. She could see that Yuichi’s attacks were effective, but not why the specters’ attacks weren’t.
“That’s an imagination thing, too,” explained Mutsuko. “In other words, you’ve gotta think, ‘These attacks won’t hurt me! There’s no such thing as ghosts!’ Then they won’t hurt you.”
“Um, am I the only one who thinks that’s... kind of cheating?” Aiko said.
In other words, in the instant Yuichi hit them, he was imagining that the ghost existed, but when the ghost attacked him, he negated the attack by denying its existence.
“Well, it’s usually the other way around!” Mutsuko declared. “I think it’s good for the ghosts to get a taste of their own medicine!”
The Strongest Little Brother’s Commonplace Encounters with the Bizarre?! Page 16
