site 03: Aria Kurenaino

Thursday, February 11th

In the quiet room, each time I moved my hands, I heard the sound of rustling silk.

Whenever I was waiting for a customer, I always spent my time sewing dolls. They were actually stuffed animals, but that’s what I called them.

I cut out the fabric according to the pattern, and sewed it together. There were already almost a hundred of these homemade dolls scattered around my house. It was possible I spent more time sewing here in the shop than doing anything else. I was lucky, after all, if I got a single customer in a day.

This was my shop.

It was tiny, less than three meters on a side, and the shelves and table took up most of the space. It could fit three adults at the absolute maximum.

The ceiling was low, too. I wasn’t a tall person myself, but I felt cramped when I stood up.

The windows were sealed shut and covered with black cloth.

The only light in the room was a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Even though the sun was high in the sky, it was still dark and gloomy.

I poured myself a cup of herbal tea from my teapot, and took a sip. The warmth from the tea soaked into my chest. I sighed a little as I wrapped my freezing hands around the cup to warm them.

The building wasn’t particularly well built, so of course, it was drafty. This room didn’t have any kind of heater, so this time of year hot tea was all that kept me warm.

I could faintly hear the hustle and bustle outside. I liked to listen quietly to the sounds.

It was a shopping area in front of Kichijoji Station called Harmonica Alley, narrow little streets packed tight with shops. There was only barely enough room for a person to fit between the stores in the alleyways.

It had gotten its start as a black market after World War II, and there were still traces of that today. There were bars, cafés, fishmongers, general stores, florists... a random hodgepodge of anything you could imagine.

Over the past few years, people had even built some bright, inviting, and fashionable stores, too. During the day, there were a lot of girls here.

At night, the shutters went up on the places that served alcohol, and men stopped by on their way home from work. Of course, that was true of bars in any town.

But most people passed by my store, whether it was day or night. Even with all the different shops in Harmonica Alley, mine was clearly unique.

The sign out front— it was closer in size to a plaque— read, “Black Magic Agency — The House of Crimson.” If anyone saw that plaque and came inside, they were clearly a little unique themselves.

Suddenly I heard faint footsteps on the stairs below.

That was enough for me to realize that tonight, my strange little shop would actually have a customer. And it was a woman, too. Just by listening, I could hear the sound of high heels. She was cautious as she walked, but that was true of everyone who came here.

The shop was on the second floor of the building. Anyone who came would have to go up a cramped, steep staircase.

I could sense someone outside the door.

Slowly, it opened. One of the hinges had almost fallen off, so it made a high-pitched creaking noise, like the cry of a bat.

A woman in her thirties peeked in. Her face looked pale.

“Um... This is the black magic agency, yes?”

“Welcome to the House of Crimson. Please be seated.”

The woman bowed to me and came inside.

She didn’t seem to be feeling well, and she was covering her mouth with a handkerchief. And she was shaking, whether it was from the cold or for some other reason.

She swayed a little as she sat down in the rococo-style chair across from me.

She didn’t even try to hide the way she was staring at me.

“So you’re... Aria Kurenaino? You’re quite young.”

“...” I put away the doll I was sewing and returned her bow.

I heard that a lot.

My age, my appearance... This shop had nothing to do with worldly things like that. That’s why I had no intention of talking about them myself.

“I didn’t know where this place was, so I wandered around Harmonica Alley a long time. I’d say about twenty minutes.” She tried to force herself to smile. But it didn’t work, and she ended up with a strange, twisted expression.

“The entrance to this place smells so bad though, doesn’t it? Is there a garbage pickup spot nearby? I think there’s a lot of bars and eateries around here.”

I ignored her comments and poured her a new cup of tea.

I didn’t talk about things that didn’t matter. I didn’t feel the need. They didn’t want me to, either. Especially the sort of person who would come to this shop.

“It’s your first time here, correct?”

I offered her the cup of tea to warm her up, but she didn’t take a sip. Instead, she looked at me, searchingly.

“Yes, that’s right. It’s... in rather bad taste, isn’t it?”

Some people seemed to think that, yes. Her eyes were terribly cloudy as she spoke.

No, it wasn’t just her eyes.

I hadn’t noticed at first because of the dim light from the exposed bulb, but now that I saw her in front of me, I could tell.

Her skin was a mess, and her hair was unkempt, too. Her coat was battered and in poor condition.

She seemed to be brooding over something, hard.

“I was told that you can place curses on other people here at this store.” That’s right. I was a professional black magic agent.

Any time two human beings interacted, one person was sure to hate the other. Those negative emotions would never disappear, not even decades or centuries from now.

But the risk of carrying out black magic was too great, and it took knowledge and skill as well. So I would practice black magic on other people’s behalf.

That was my job as a black magic executor.

“Tell me your story.” I took a candelabra from the shelf next to me and put it on the table. It had two black candles in it. I struck a match and lit them. Then I turned off the light.

The room grew darker.

Our shadows flickered against the wall in the candlelight.

It was easier for people to talk in the darkness. Especially if they were saying something that made them feel guilty. Creating such a space made communications with the client go smoother.

The curtain had already risen on the stage. I was what my customer sought, the jester known as a “black magician”.

And now, I will dance for you...

So show me your darkness.

I smiled to relax her, and the woman leaned forward.

“I want you to kill a certain man.” Her tone, naturally, dropped.

That was a very common request. I’d taken many such jobs in the past, so I didn’t find it surprising at all.

“Black magic requires the use of a catalyst. Have you brought such an object with you today?”

The woman nodded slowly, and then took an envelope out of her bag.

There was no name on the envelope, but inside was a carefully folded piece of paper.

She put it on the table and spread it out.

“I see.” Inside was a lock of hair. It was about five centimeters long. There were ten or so strands.

Without the hair of the person I was cursing, I refused to accept a job. But if they brought the hair, I never turned them down, no matter who they were or who they wanted to curse.

I handed the woman a blank, white sheet of paper. Then I dipped a black feather pen into ink mixed with bat’s blood, and put it in her hand.

“Would you please give me more information about the person you wish to curse? Name, height, weight, birthday, blood type, address, family members’ names, school name, company name... The more information, the more likely it will succeed.”

The customer nodded and began to fill out the page, her eyes bloodshot.

She was writing a lot of detail, enough that she had to dip her pen in the inkwell many times.

I prepared the censer as she wrote. I heated a piece of charcoal in the candle’s flame, then placed it on top of the censer’s grating. Then I slowly shook a black powder incense made from citronella grass and wisteria on top of it.

The shop was filled with its unique scent.

“Will this be... enough?”

“Yes. That’s plenty.” By the time she was done, she’d filled the whole piece of paper. From the amount of information she put down, the man she was cursing was either an ex-husband or a former lover.

But I had no interest in asking for more details.

In my role as an agent, the relationship between the client and the target was not a matter of particular importance.

I folded up the paper and put it into a small, clear bottle. A cloth had already been spread out on the table. I put the bottle at the center of the triquetra pattern on the cloth.

“I’ll explain the packages we offer, then.”

“P-Packages?”

“The House of Crimson offers three packages for you to choose from. The number of dolls used in the incantation changes depending on the package you pick.”

“Dolls?”

“Think of them as servant familiars, if you like.”

The client seemed confused.

I pointed to the dolls on the shelves behind me. They were my familiars, which I had made myself.

“The most affordable curse is the Tomorrow of Despair package, priced at 9,999 yen. With this package, I will use one doll.”

I took a doll from the shelf and put it on the edge of the triquetra.

It was Ahriman, a doll with a green, striped body and bug eyes.

“The mid-range option is the Dying Screams package. It goes for 42,420 yen.” I took two more dolls off the shelf and put them on the table.

Gorgon had a honeybee-striped body and the face of a dog.

Coven had five eyes and a body patterned with stars.

“The first-class package is the Devil’s Ritual. This package goes for 66,600 yen.” I took one of the last two dolls, Peter, a mouse with a bright purple body and multicolored fabric teeth, and put him to the side of the bottle.

Then I took Lilith XII, a black cat prince who’d lost his tail, and whose head was covered in a burlap sack to hide his face, and put him at the top of the pentagram.

“Which would you like today?”

The woman hesitated before she spoke.

“I’ll take the cheapest one...” She seemed reluctant as she whispered.

It seemed like she didn’t have the money for the others.

Her hatred for her enemy wasn’t enough to overcome her financial difficulties. It was sad, but that was the way of the world.

“The Tomorrow of Despair package, yes?”

I returned the other four dolls to the shelf, and left Ahriman on the table.

“I will now begin the ritual.”

“The ritual...”

“It’s part of the process in performing black magic. It’s possible, strictly speaking, for the spell to succeed without a ritual, however. What’s most important is the strength of your will. But you want to really feel like you’ve put a curse on him, don’t you?”

“Y-You’re right.”

“And this is a step in that process.”

This ritual was old, but I’d added my own touches to it.

Black magic amplifies a person’s negative emotions, so skipping steps in the ritual could cause the curse to affect those around you.

So by adding my own modifications to the ritual, I had lessened the amount of negative power in play. I reverently lifted up a dagger in both hands and offered it to the client.

“I’ll take a few drops of your blood. Will you prick your finger for me? Either hand is fine.”

The client did as she was told and pricked her left index finger with the dagger. A tiny bit of blood came out from the small wound.

I gently took her finger and led it to the bottle on the table.

The blood dripped down into the bottle, and made a red stain on the paper.

“Yes, that will do.” I gently wiped her finger with a tissue.

I put the cork in the bottle to seal it.

Then I put Ahriman right next to it.

I picked up the hair the client had brought with a pair of tweezers.

“I will now burn the catalyst. As I do so, chant the most awful curses you can imagine in your heart.” The client nodded.

I brought the hair close to the black candles.

There was a stench and a crackle as the hair began to burn.

The client stared at it, unblinking, as if she was possessed by something.

When all the hair was burnt, I blew out the black candles.

The shop became totally black.

“The ritual is complete. Thank you. If your will is strong enough, the curse will succeed.”

Which meant, of course, that if her will was weak, the curse would fail.

I never told any of my clients that the curse was certain to succeed.

I turned on the lights and received my payment.

The client smiled slightly, satisfied, and left the shop.

“A woman’s story is always a sad thing, isn’t it?” I took the cork off the bottle on the table, then took out the paper inside and carefully moved it to a small box.

I had no intention of looking at the information about the target myself. I wasn’t the one who placed the curse. I was simply an agent. The work was done by a devil.

I put away the customer’s untouched cup of tea, and then took out my tablet PC from the drawer in the table.

It didn’t really go well with the gothic feel of the shop, so I probably shouldn’t have been using it so much. But since I received so few customers, lately I’d stopped caring.

I touched the tablet to bring up my email app. The House of Crimson had a home page, and that was actually where I interacted with most potential clients. I made sure to check it at least once a day.

Just as I thought, I had a message waiting for me.

The title was straightforward: “Request for Black Magic Execution.”

My policy was to just glance through request emails, and most of the time, to discard them. Hardly any of them ever paid.

The home page said that clients were required to visit my shop in person, but sometimes I got messages like this anyway.

Today’s email came with an image attached.

I looked at the sender’s name before I opened it.

“Fukuzo... Moguro?”

Even I knew who that was, and I wasn’t exactly up-to-date on popular culture. It was a character from a decades-old manga.

This was clearly a false name. Either they didn’t want me to know their real name, or they were simply playing a prank. There were actually a lot of people who didn’t like shops like mine and would play tricks like this. That was probably all this email was.

The message text was just a single line.

“Death.”

Very simple. And thus, very easy to understand. I liked that.

I decided to open the attached image.

When I opened it, I bit down hard on my back teeth without even realizing it.

The cold temperature in the room seemed to drop another few degrees.

It was an upside-down pentagram drawn in bright red lines. The inversion made it a demonic symbol. And in the center of the pentagram were letters drawn by hand.

“〒666 Isayuki Hashigami.” I knew that name, too.

It was a scientist who’d been all over the TV and magazines lately. He was a middle-aged gentleman, with distinctive long hair that went down to his waist. Despite his age, his black hair was beautiful and lustrous, and it left a strong impression even on a girl like me.

His job was to introduce the media to all kinds of different occult ideas. What made him interesting was that despite his role as a scientist, he was a believer in the occult, who said that he could scientifically prove the existence of ghosts.

The public had started to pick up on his existence, and the media was having its first occult programming boom in a long while because of him. He was popular enough that there were probably a lot of people who wanted to see him dead.

How disgusting.

That was my first thought as a person who called herself a black magician.

I could feel a strong aura of hate in these rough, hand-written letters, the kind of thing that was difficult to discern via digital text.

It was easy to extract their meaning.

“666 is the number of the Devil... or perhaps, the cost of his chosen package?” The number 666 appeared in the bible, and it had been used as the number of the Devil since ancient times.

The House of Crimson used it as well. The most expensive black magic I offered was the Devil’s Ritual, and its cost was 66,6000 yen. It was written on the home page as well.

But what was 〒?

“The postal mark.” The mailbox for this shop was downstairs. Had someone left something there? I wasn’t able to hear the footsteps from that far away.

But then what had they left?

Money? Or something else?

The awful premonition I felt kept growing stronger. It was like a ghost was licking the crook of my neck. It was extremely unpleasant.

I stood up from my chair, shivering from the cold. If something was in my mailbox, I couldn’t just leave it there.

I opened the door, which led directly to a series of steep steps.

I grimaced. There was the strong smell of something rotten. I remembered the last customer talking about a terrible smell. Maybe that was why she had the handkerchief to her face.

I’d arrived here shortly before noon. No one had visited the shop until her.

Had someone been here during that time? From upstairs, the mailbox looked like it was filled with something black. It definitely wasn’t a package. It was something much worse.

I slowly walked down the narrow stairs, taking care not to trip.

The smell almost made me vomit. I put my hand over my mouth, but it didn’t make a difference at all.

I somehow made it to the bottom and out into the street.

The tiny street where I had my shop was off of the main area. Most of the shops around it were bars, and since the sun hadn’t set yet, their shutters were still down. That meant there was no one here.

Just a few meters away, I could hear the bustle of a busy street, but...

It felt like I had wandered into a tiny portal to hell that had just opened near Kichijoji Station.

I gulped and turned to face the mailbox. Even from the outside I could see that it was stuffed tightly with something black.

I opened it up, trying my best not to vomit. The handle was slick with some kind of liquid. It was dark black— blood.

When I opened the mail box, the stuff inside spilled to the ground.

It was a lump, like vomit, but different. It was the size of a soccer ball, and soft. It was...

“Human... hair.”

The ball of hair was wet with black blood, and glistened in the light.

There so much of it. If all of this came from one person, he must have had very long hair.

I grabbed the ends with my bare hands and picked them up.

And then I realized...

It wasn’t just hair.

The hair was growing out of what looked like the mesh frame of a wig. The frame was the color of skin on one side, but on the other side it was slick and pink.

—It was human flesh.

This wasn’t a wig.

Which meant it could only be one thing.

All this hair belonged to one person, and someone had ripped off their scalp.

I immediately thought of someone with long hair.

—Professor Hashigami.

I could feel the depth of the hatred possessed by the person who had left this here, and I was confused.

If they were capable of ripping off the professor’s scalp, then why did “Fukuzo Moguro” need me to put a curse on him?

But there was one thing I did know.

This was a job. The hair I needed for the catalyst was proof of that.

My knees started to shake as I thought about it. I sat down on the stairs, cradling the ball of hair with both hands.

“What a terrible obsession... It makes me want to throw up.”