Chapter 5: Oh, Yeah... There Were Monster Hunters, Weren’t There?

It was the day after the conversation in Nihao the China.

Yuichi had come to one of his regular haunts, the sacred forest behind a local shrine. He’d been using this place for training a lot lately, and he treasured it; it was rare to find such a large area where so few people came.

He was concerned about the Divine Vessel War, but there was nothing he could do to get things rolling on his end, so he might as well just keep up his usual routine until the resonance started again.

It was December, so it was already extremely cold, but Yuichi was only wearing a light track suit.

He’d been plunged into extreme conditions by his sister many times before, and maybe thanks to that, he could deal with severe heat and cold. Japanese winters were nothing to him.

Today, Yuichi was by himself, without his sister’s accompaniment.

At the start, she’d had to force him to train, but he’d taken to it well, and now he stuck with it of his own volition. He didn’t necessarily do it every day; it depended on how he was feeling, mentally and physically. Mutsuko herself said that there was no point to training if you just did it out of habit.

He varied the contents of his practice based on how he felt that day, too. Right now he was striking a tree. He would hit the tree with the side of his arm, then add in some footwork, moving around the tree as he hit it high and low. Sometimes he threw in a kick.

Yuichi enjoyed this kind of thing.

At a glance, it might look like he was repeating the same things over and over, but each time he was adjusting his input and angle very slightly, searching for the most efficient moves and methods of unleashing his power.

He was better today than yesterday. He’d be better tomorrow than today. Yuichi gained real fulfillment from that tangible sense of improvement.

Training is fun when I can do it at my own pace, anyway...

When he was with his sister, he had to keep on his toes, always uncertain of what she was going to throw at him next.

She’d pull some strings with some acquaintance of hers, and have him taken somewhere where he’d be ambushed by raging hoodlums, or soldiers dressed in near-futuristic equipment firing at him with shotguns while shouting at him in a language that definitely wasn’t Japanese.

Just the other day, she’d forced him to fight a group of a thousand armed men. Technically, Yoriko had been the cause of that, but he had to wonder if his big sister had somehow planned it all along. She was a true believer in the importance of fighting real opponents, and she was constantly making him do just that.

“Fighting is the best training there is! There’s no training that beats a real fight!” was her philosophy, apparently.

It was true that fighting a tree wouldn’t teach you how to handle yourself in a real fight, but Yuichi still found it beneficial. It made his arms and legs stronger, for one thing, but it also taught him how to manage the recoil from his strikes. Whether you hit a human or an inanimate object, there was always recoil, and every school had its own philosophies about how to deal with that. Hitting anything required a complex series of interactions from numerous parts of your body, so even just fighting a tree could teach you a lot.

As Yuichi focused on his strikes, he could sense somebody approaching. He stopped.

Not many people knew that Yuichi trained here — nobody except his sisters and Natsuki Takeuchi, as far as he knew.

He turned around, wondering who it was, and he saw a girl approaching.

The label above her head read “Anthromorph (Cat).” It was Yuri Konishi.

She was Yuichi’s classmate, who on the first day of class had proudly boasted of her personal wealth. In addition — not that he was eager to drag this up again — she had tried to kill him once before.

As she approached, Yuichi could see that she was wearing a fur-lined white coat, which even someone as fashion-ignorant as he was could tell was extremely expensive. His second thought — that if anything got on that coat it would be extremely visible — was a sign of his middle-class mindset.

Yuri’s golden hair, bound up in a complicated style, was not something any middle class person could imitate, suggesting she had her own personal stylist, and while the object she was holding in her hand looked like an ordinary basket, Yuichi had no doubt that it was a luxury item of some sort.

“Oh, it’s you, Konishi...” Yuichi spoke up as she arrived in front of him.

“Is that any way to greet a person?”

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I just thought maybe it was Takeuchi...”

His sisters would still both be asleep, so Natsuki was the only other person he would have expected to see here. Although lately, for some reason, Natsuki had been acting distant. She wasn’t even showing up for club meetings.

“So, how can I help you?” he prompted.

“What kind of a question is that? Aren’t you the one who said you needed to get to know me better? Why have you been avoiding me?” Yuri scowled unhappily.

She had asked him out once before and he had turned her down. At the time, he had told her that he wouldn’t go out with her because he didn’t know her well, so Yuri had declared she’d try again after he got to know her.

“Part of it is that it’s awkward, but I was also never very social to start with,” Yuichi said.

“I’m well aware of that. I can see that you rarely interact with anyone outside of a small group in class. So I’ve decided to take initiative in coming to you in this place at this time of day, specifically!”

The fact that Soul Reader let Yuichi see things he didn’t want to see had led to him studiously avoiding interaction with others. He had never exactly been a social butterfly, but ever since entering high school, he had probably started coming off like a total misanthrope.

“I don’t mind you coming to visit, but did you even consider my own situation?” he asked. “I’m in the middle of training right now... but okay, fine. I’ll hear you out, at least.”

“Yuichi Sakaki... will your insolence towards me never cease?”

He wanted to resume training, but it would be hard for him to hear her out if he was moving. Instead, he spread his legs to shoulder width, then dropped his hips, thrust his fists in front of him, and lowered his elbows.

“What is that ridiculous posture?” she demanded.

“I told you, it’s training. Chinese martial arts. It’s called zhan zhuang. You’re basically sitting in an invisible chair. It’s good for strengthening legs and glutes.” In truth, it was more complicated than that. But to someone who wasn’t interested in martial arts, that explanation was probably good enough.

“I cannot believe I’m wasting my time with someone like this...”

“Seriously?” Yuichi furrowed his brow. It was Yuri who had proposed spending time together.

“How do you expect to eat breakfast in that position?” she demanded. Yuri showed the basket in her hand to Yuichi. It apparently contained breakfast.

“What, you brought food? I was planning to eat after I got home, but...”

Despite his grumbling, Yuichi broke his stance and returned to normal standing posture. If she’d gone to the trouble to bring food, it would be rude to refuse.

As he looked around for a place to sit, Yuri pressed the basket into his hands. “There’s a plastic sheet inside. Why don’t you lay it out for us?”

“You want me to do it?” Yuichi thought she should really be the one to do it, but he did as he was told, spreading out the sheet.

Once they were both sitting, she produced drinks and sandwiches from the basket.

The sandwiches were varied, with a lot of different things inside them. He took a bite of one sandwich, impressed by the amount of time she must have put into them.

It was good.

This one was a katsu sandwich, and the crispiness of the fried pork was definitely professional level, suggesting an expert’s hand had gone into making it.

“They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, after all,” Yuri said loftily.

“I wouldn’t say you’ve grabbed my heart, but it really is good. Is cooking a specialty of yours, Konishi?”

“Why are you asking about my cooking skill?”

“Huh? Didn’t you make these?”

“Of course not. I had my chef make them, naturally!”

“Which means it’s your chef I should be appreciating...”

Yuri’s attempts at earning his affection certainly seemed half-baked. Even if it had turned out badly, she really should have done the cooking for herself, Yuichi thought.

“So, is breakfast the only item on the agenda?” he asked.

“That was merely the icebreaker, naturally. As I told you before, my real objective is to let you get to know me.”

“Okay. Regardless of who made it, you still brought me good food, so I’ll hear you out, at least.”

“Good. My name is Yuri Konishi.” Yuri straightened up, giving an unnecessary introduction.

“That’s where you’re starting?” Yuichi asked in disbelief. “I know your freaking name!”

“My first name aside, what do you think of my last name? It seems a rather mundane name for someone so wealthy, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve never really thought about it...” He wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking him. It certainly was a common enough surname, but he couldn’t imagine how that was supposed to tie in with a person’s income level.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I don’t particularly care for it myself. My surname comes from my adoptive family. My real parents have another last name.”

“Your adoptive family? Wait, you’re adopted? Are you sure you want to tell me something so personal?”

“Yes. My goal is to have you know me better, after all.”

This was all far from what he was expecting. She had been put up for adoption, or she had ended up adopted... Either way, it all sounded very complicated, and it left Yuichi at a loss for how to respond.

“My father’s surname is Sumeragi,” said Yuri. “The Sumeragi family ruled Japan in the past and in the present, and shall continue to do so in the future. The information about my mother is not public, but as you may surmise from my hair, she is most likely a foreigner.”

“Um... is this a behind-the-scenes thing?”

Yuri had said they’d controlled Japan, but Yuichi had never heard the name before. The name suggested a connection to the emperor, but it was hard to believe Yuri could be related to the royal family.

“You may think of it that way if you like, but ever since ancient times, Japan has been ruled by anthromorphs,” Yuri said grandly.

“This is a little hard to buy...”

“Anthromorphs have heightened combat abilities, so we used to lead commoners into battle. You can safely assume that all of the powerful clans throughout history, both noble and warrior, consisted mainly of anthromorphs. Even now, the leadership of the country’s largest corporations still do.”

It was at this point that Yuichi realized that she was really talking about the worldview to which she belonged. It was the story of a world he wasn’t a part of, which he would never have known about if not for Soul Reader.

“At the moment, I am a nobody — merely one candidate to inherit the Sumeragi name.”

Yuichi was getting a bad feeling about this. All this talk of heirs and candidates smelled like a sort of trouble that he wanted no part of.

“Have you never wondered why a person of my stature should be attending a school as ordinary as Seishin High?” Yuri asked archly.

“I figured it was like Noro’s situation; they wanted it to be a part of your education or something.”

“The answer is simple,” Yuri said. “It’s because my adoptive father is an ordinary office drone. He doesn’t have the money to send me to a private school.”

“Uh? But you said you were rich, didn’t you? Didn’t you spend the first day bragging about your family’s money?” Her story was completely opaque.

She had said it, and she had that air about her. She even had a chef. It was clear she had a lot of money, so he didn’t know how to react to being told that she didn’t.

“To be more precise, it’s my real family that’s rich,” explained Yuri. “As long as I’m a potential heir, my care will be paid for, and I’m given an individual allowance and servants. However, my adoptive mother and father are not particularly wealthy, and it’s the parents’ job to pay for their child’s school expenses. So no matter how much money I have, to pay for my own schooling would be overstepping my authority.”

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me...” Yuichi couldn’t see how it mattered who paid, as long as they had the money, but perhaps she felt differently about it.

“I am but one of my father’s one hundred children. Said children all come from different mothers, and have been adopted out to branch families.”

“Hold it!” Yuichi finally put a stop to Yuri’s lecture.

“What?”

“Look... I really don’t need to hear about all this.”

“Why not? You’re the one who refused to date me because you didn’t know me!”

“I meant more like... I don’t know a lot about your personality, your hobbies, your interests. I’m not interested in your whole family background...” As a matter of fact, hearing about it made him extremely uncomfortable.

“But part of the reason I tried to kill Noro was because of the Sumeragi family inheri—”

Just as Yuri seemed about to embark on another litany of things he didn’t want to hear, Yuichi heard someone scolding them from behind.

“You two! What are you doing here?”

He turned to see a girl with dark hair, dressed in a camel-colored duffel coat, looking at them angrily. “Monster Hunter” was the label above the girl’s head. He felt like he’d seen it somewhere before.

“Um... who are you?” Yuichi asked with trepidation.

“I’m the daughter of the owner of this shrine you’re trespassing on,” she announced.

“Ah...” Yuichi froze up beneath the girl’s glare. He’d never thought anyone would approach him about that, but now that she mentioned it, of course they would.

“What is all this? Didn’t you have permission to train here?” Yuri asked, looking at him in confusion.

“Well, it is a shrine, and there’s a fairly out-of-the-way forest behind it, so I thought anyone could enter without permission...” Yuichi averted his eyes awkwardly.

“It is true that we’re a shrine, and the gate is wide open! But that’s for pilgrims only! We can’t just have people coming here for reasons other than the shrine’s intended use!”

“It doesn’t exactly qualify as trespassing, but I certainly can’t approve of using the premises here without the owner’s permission,” Yuri agreed.

“Wait, are you criticizing me too, Konishi? I thought you were on my side!”

“Why should I defend a man I’m not even dating?” she demanded.

Yuri didn’t seem to understand the concept of scoring points with someone.

“Anyway! I’d like to go somewhere we can discuss this more easily,” the unfamiliar girl said.

It would have been possible for Yuichi to run away, but he knew he really was at fault, so he did as he was told and went along with her.

✽✽✽✽✽

Yuichi and Yuri were taken not to the shrine’s main hall, but to a standalone building a short distance away.

It was a two-story, four-bedroom house, likely where the head priest lived.

Yuichi and Yuri followed the girl to the front door. She opened it, stepped inside, and urged them to follow, but Yuichi remained rooted to the spot just outside the door.

“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 asked, 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.

“Well, even if you don’t know anything, Yuichi might be able to do it right away, right?” Chie said.

Furu might not have much real faith in him, but like Chie had said, any faith Furu had in him wasn’t actually misplaced. Yuichi had Soul Reader. In other words, if there was an evil presence out there, he stood a good chance of being able to identify it from its label.

And there’s a chance it might be connected to the Outers and the Divine Vessels...

“I get it,” he said. “I just have to look around, right? What’s the search range?”

“I’m not sure. ‘Within Seishin City’ is about all I know, really,” Furu admitted.

“That’s pretty wide...”

Seishin City was a big place with both mountains and ocean nearby. Searching indiscriminately wouldn’t get him anywhere. He needed some other form of direction. “Okay. I guess I’ll start searching now, then. Let’s see... I guess I should go somewhere with a lot of people, first.”

Yuichi decided to head for the station area; it was the most populous location he could think of.

“Want me to search, too?” Chie asked.

“Sure, if you want,” he said. “You really should get out of here, anyway.”

“I know that,” she said. “It’s not as if there’s anything keeping us at this shrine anyway.”

“Covering the same ground won’t do us any good, so you should go searching somewhere else,” he told her.

There were probably places that would be easier for spirits to search in. Maybe she could be of use to him somehow that way.

Furu said with conviction, “I’m sorry it’s all so ambiguous... I just feel like some evil plot is unveiling itself in this city, and we have to stop it at any cost!”

Yuichi decided to head home and get changed before heading out again.

✽✽✽✽✽

Meanwhile, just after Yuichi had made it home, but before he set out to the station...

The evil presence that Furu had spoken of was sitting across from Hiromichi Rokuhara, elegantly sipping a cup of coffee.

They were in a cafe near the station area, sitting by the window. The cafe had a modern atmosphere and must have been quite popular, because nearly all the seats had been filled, despite the early hour.

“Now, shall I attempt to explain the situation?” the evil presence asked.

“I was starting to think you weren’t ever gonna,” Hiromichi responded, though his tone wasn’t critical. This young man had taught Hiromichi how to use his power, and Hiromichi had no intention of looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The man had appeared abruptly in front of him recently, and then, without any proper explanation, had taken him around the city and gotten him involved in various fights.

“I thought that showing you how things worked might be more efficient,” said the man. “If I’d launched into the explanation first thing, you wouldn’t have believed me, now would you?”

Hiromichi could see auras, and he knew that superhuman creatures existed, but it was true that that didn’t necessarily mean he’d believe every single thing he was told. There were still lots of things out there he had to see to believe.

“So, let’s start with the broad strokes.” The young man launched into an explanation about Evil Gods and Divine Vessels, but none of it really registered with Hiromichi.

“What does that have to do with me?” he asked finally.

“A great deal. You already have a Divine Vessel, the Evil God’s heart. That means you’re already involved in the war over the Divine Vessels.”

“The heart... is that where my power comes from?” Hiromichi asked.

“That’s right.”

Hiromichi’s power had awakened in him over spring vacation. He’d abruptly begun to see auras around people. He had been convinced that this signified the presence of evil beings, but apparently, it actually signified the effective range of Skill Eater. If he touched someone’s aura, he could steal their ability.

“Why do I have the heart?” Hiromichi asked. The man’s explanation suggested it had merged with his own heart, but he had no memory of acquiring the creepy thing.

“I don’t know, either,” the man said. “The Divine Vessel chooses its own host, though it appears some have ended up trying to twist that. Regardless, you acquired the heart and awakened its power.”

“Just who are you?” Hiromichi asked. “You seem to know a lot about all this.”

“Put simply, I am the Evil God in question.”

“I thought you couldn’t revive unless the Divine Vessels were collected.”

“That only refers to my main body. I myself am, you might say, a dependent. An optional part.”

A tremble went through Hiromichi. The man’s power was overwhelming. If this was only a sub-body, how much power must the “main” one have?

But another question rose up in his mind. “If you’re so strong, why don’t you collect the Divine Vessels yourself?”

“Good question. It would be simple enough just to collect them. I know where they all are, and I’m likely stronger than any of their hosts. but collecting them isn’t enough. The Evil God’s revival requires karma.”

Hiromichi stared at him. “What?”

“Put simply, it’s energy. Put a little less simply, it’s the power to sway destiny. Think of it as something that builds up in response to dramatic developments. The war between the Divine Vessels creates drama, which builds up more of the energy I need. In other words, boringly one-sided battles won’t do.”

“So at the park yesterday, you were testing that guy to see if he could provide interesting enough battles?”

“You’re a sharp one. That’s correct. If he’d turned out to be boring, I’d have had to arrange to find someone else.”

“In that’s the criteria, I must be the worst person out there,” Hiromichi said. “Why did you bother taking me around?”

He didn’t know what sort of fights the man was after, but Hiromichi had a feeling he’d be unacceptable no matter what. He was fully convinced he was a boring person.

“Don’t worry,” the man said. “I don’t need you to be able to have an interesting battle.”

“What do you mean by that?” Hiromichi wasn’t sure how to react to the declaration, which seemed to overturn everything else he’d been saying.

“Congratulations. You win.”

“Huh?”

“The person who holds the heart wins the game. That’s been decided from the very start. After all, the Evil God’s soul is in the heart. In the end, all the Divine Vessels will find their way to you.”

“But that means it’s all just a farce...” Hiromichi said slowly. The man had said all that about the Evil God and the Divine Vessel War, when in fact, the winner was already set in stone. Hiromichi was completely dumbstruck by the news.

“Indeed, it’s a farce. A fixed race. A put-up job. All of that.”

“Does that mean I get a wish granted?” Hiromichi asked.

This was all very unexpected. He wasn’t sure how much he could trust it, but whether he did or not wouldn’t change things much. At the end of the day, he had no choice but to do what this man said.

“Yes,” said the man. “But remember, you only get one, so you should start thinking it over now. That’s about all I had to say. I think you should spend the rest of the day going around on your own.”

“Huh? Wait a minute! I can’t handle this by myself!”

“You’ll be fine. As you said before, your power is like a cheat code. You can nullify the abilities of others, and steal them, too. How could you possibly lose?”

“But...”

“You can also just sit tight until I come back, if you want,” said the man. “But remember, you have a very special power. You’d do well to strengthen it as much as possible while you can.” The man’s demeanor was utterly laid-back, yet it left no room for argument. They would be parting ways here, and that was that.

“Fine, I’ll do it,” Hiromichi said. “But what are you going to do?”

“Remember two days ago, when we went to see the girl with the right arm? Do you remember the girl who was with her? The one who ran away?”

“Did that happen?” He couldn’t remember. He was pretty sure that girl had been alone from the start... if there had been someone with her, it had only been for a moment.

“She’s my servant,” the man said. “I’ve been worried, since I haven’t been able to get in touch with her lately. Then sadly, she ran away, so I sent some of my other servants to search for her.”

This must have meant that one of the other servants had found her... not that Hiromichi cared about any of that.

“Well, whatever. By the way, what should I call you?” He wasn’t sure how much they’d be seeing of each other, but it was inconvenient not to have a name to call the man by.

The man thought for a moment, then responded. “Good question... I’ve been called many names in the past, but for now, how about Nergal?”