novelRegarding the Slaughter (2)
| ← Ch.06 | Ch.08 → |
The cracks of that odd feeling spread. Things were not adding up. It was not simply that the Zashiki Warashi was not present. For example, I could not remember the order in which the tragedies had happened. What about the blood? Had it started drying as time passed? That should tell me in what order the bodies had been made. And yet I still had no idea. Hadn't every scene been dripping with blood like something from a movie or a drama?
I began to head back the way I had come.
I wanted to check to see if what I had seen was still in the same place
But then...
Someone struck me roughly on the right shoulder.
I thought someone behind me was trying to stop me.
But I was wrong.
"Hey, are you all right?"
That female voice came from directly in front of me.
The voice belonged to that woman who should have been dead.
Part 19 (Jinnai Shinobu)
Just as the feeling that something was not quite right grew too powerful to ignore, I sensed something that destroyed the unnatural silence. It was a noise. The noise of a human being other than myself. That noise had returned. It was faint and the hotel as a whole was still wrapped in silence, but I could sense another living being nearby.
At first, it came from directly in front of me.
The woman who had stabbed Matsukai-san in the restaurant was peering at my face.
"W-wahh!?'
"What did you see? You weren't bewitched or something, were you?"
Bewitched. When I heard that term that was usually seen in fairy tales, I started to question why I had not thought of that possibility before. When faced with an unrealistic phenomenon, wasn't it likely some kind of unrealistic existence was involved?
In other words...
A Youkai.
"You... you..."
"What?"
"I thought you died in the boiler room..."
"So you did see something."
It looked like the woman was about to ask me for details, but she suddenly stopped.
She stopped because of another noise.
Just a moment before, noise had brought me calm, but this noise was unpleasant. It continued at even intervals, so it had to be something like footsteps.
However, it was completely different from any footsteps I had ever heard before.
It sounded like someone crushing rotten fish underfoot.
Something liquefied was slowly approaching.
But from where?
I could hear the noise coming from beyond the slight darkness left by the dim lighting, but I could not tell what was causing it. And why was the lighting so dim? It may have been night, but a hotel hallway should have been more properly lit. What was this blindness that seemed to be oozing across the area?
"Not good."
I never saw her pull it out, but the woman now had an automatic pistol that fit within her palm. Its small size seemed a waste with the plastic-bottle-sized suppressor attached.
Is that... real?
I had never before seen a real gun other than a hunting rifle, but I doubted she would be pulling out a toy at a time like this.
"This really isn't good. It took me this long to grasp what was truly going on.... By the way, do you know what this is, boy?"
"I'm not obsessed with guns, so I can't recognize a specific handgun."
"That's not what I meant."
It was then that I finally noticed something.
Despite her calm expression, I could see sweat on her brow.
That woman was sweating nervously.
"If I have to rely on this, I have 80% lost already. I may be a bit biased, but I would say I am quite useful. I am at least useful enough to frequently receive jobs from Hyakki Yakou. But that doesn't mean I am invincible or that there is no one more powerful than me. There are people I would lose to."
"What are you talking about?"
"I think one such dangerous person is about to appear here. This is very, very bad. This goes beyond an evil spirit. That bastard summons up illness magic like calling in an aerial bombing via GPS. I would say this is on the same level as some noble's grudge that can destroy an entire city. This isn't a force you use to target individuals..."
I did not understand the entire second half of what she said. She may not have gathered her thoughts properly. This person and situation had caused that woman to fall into such great confusion. At first, I thought this was a continuation of that possible illusion of unknown origin, so I started to panic.
The woman tossed me something while staring into the slight darkness.
A radio? A cell phone? No, this is...
"It's a satellite phone. They aren't very common in Japan, but surely you've seen them in movies and foreign dramas. You can make calls without using the local cell phone towers."
"Are you telling me to call the police?"
"I sincerely hope this is a situation small enough for them to handle. But I doubt it is." She still did not look in my direction."0015. That will unlock it. Then it works just like a normal cell phone. You have to enter the country code at the start, but you don't have to worry about it as long as you use one of the numbers in memory.... One of the numbers is registered under the name 'Hyakki Yakou'. Once you call them, all the characters involved will finally be gathered."
"Characters involved... ? What do you mean!? What is happening in this hotel!? Why did you stab Matsukai-san!? What was that strange illusion I saw!? I can't tell what is real anymore!!"
"The scale of this incident is much larger than just this hotel!"
"Wha-... ?"
"Just go. If you saw what I can guess you saw, you are probably the only one who can resolve this incident. It is only you, the amateur, that can do this; not me, the expert! I don't like it, but I have to leave my life in your hands!!"
"Wait. Wait! I don't understand. What happened to my uncle and that other girl!? What about Madoka!?"
"The detective and my little sister have already fled! That is why I am in such a bind here. I haven't seen Kotemitsu Madoka. But the things you saw have probably not yet happened!!"
The wet footsteps approached another step.
The noise did not sound at all human to me.
The woman seemed to overreact.
"Go!! If you stay here, you will undoubtedly die. Not even I will last long. So use that satellite phone to its fullest! As I said before, you are probably the only one who can!!"
"Dammit..."
I didn't understand what was going on, but I gave in to my desire to flee from those strange footsteps. The woman stayed where she was. It wasn't normal to be able to stand up to that. Was courage really the right term for the source of her willpower?
The woman remained while I ran down the hallway. I fled.
If what I had seen before was an illusion, then Madoka, my uncle, and that other girl would still be alive. I decided to check their rooms. And I had to check on the Zashiki Warashi.
As I ran, I thought about what that illusion could have been.
In all likelihood, it had to do with a Youkai. But I could not figure out what Youkai it could have been related to. And had it really been nothing but an illusion?
If so, that was fine.
A mental illusion that you entered at some unknown point was certainly frightening, but it was not hopeless.
But there was another possibility...
"If that was a vision of the future, this could hardly be worse..."
And there were Youkai that could do that. For example, the Kudan. The Kudan was a dangerous Youkai with the head of a human and the body of a cow that did nothing but predict people's deaths. If this was a Package using one of those, I could not ignore that illusion.
And that woman had mentioned something about illness magic that could probably kill all of us at the predicted time.
I could not quite figure out what advantage the illusion gave, but it had to have taken a fair amount of preparation to cause that mysterious phenomenon. They would not have set it all up for no reason. They had some objective. If I could figure out what that was, I would likely find the key to unlocking the mysteries of this incident.
With that key, I could figure out who would gain the most from it.
And I could figure out what Youkai was being used.
"... Huh?"
I realized something upon reaching the front desk of the hotel.
I may have figured out a one portion of the enemy's identity.
I knew of a Youkai that would hint at a dangerous future.
I knew of a Youkai that could change how it appeared to humans.
Part 20 (Zashiki Warashi - Yukari)
Due to that strange woman going nuts in the restaurant, I still had not eaten dinner. My annoyance was growing. Madoka had not said anything for a while. She may have been worried about Shinobu, but I could not be sure because Zashiki Warashi unfortunately did not have the ability to read minds.
Someone started knocking violently on the door. Was it Shinobu? He had given me the key, so he had no way to open the door. I looked through the peephole and spotted someone unexpected. It was Uchimaku Hayabusa. He had some girl I did not recognize with him. The Sunekosuri from before stood at the girl's feet. He had called it a sad instinct, but I had a feeling his personal preferences played a part in it. At any rate, it was strange indeed for Uchimaku Hayabusa to come to me. Then again, it might have been Shinobu he was looking for.
I cracked the door open with the door guard still closed.
As expected, Uchimaku Hayabusa's entire body jumped in shock when he saw my face through the gap. But he did not stop there. He spoke to me like something was pushing him forward.
"Are you okay?"
"You say that like something dangerous is going on."
I had an idea what it might be.
After all, I had witnessed a man getting stabbed in the restaurant.
The girl cut in.
"You arrived with Madoka, right? Do you know where she is? She wasn't in her room."
"She's in here with me."
"Shinobu... hasn't come by yet, has he?"
"I haven't seen him since he went off to contact the police. Since he isn't back, he must not have had much luck."
"The police?"
"Because he saw a murder."
"Dammit, Mai. Has she still not released Shinobu?"
"Hey, " I cut in."You seem quite used to this kind of odd situation."
"Well, I am a police detective."
"Not you. The girl next to you."
"Unfortunately, I am even more used to being around corpses than the detective."
The Sunekosuri at her feet jumped in shock when he heard those easily-spoken words. He continued to rub up against her slender legs, so in a way, he did have guts.
Something was bothering me, so I asked about it.
"So is this incident related to Youkai?"
"Um, well... maybe. Just the other day, the detective and I were caught in the middle of a Package on Zashou Island that used Funa Yuurei."
"What about the Sunekosuri?"
"Eh!? M-me? I haven't done anything!! It was all Hishigami Mai-san's doing!! It's her fault that I had to live through that nightmare and couldn't return to HQ! And just when I think I can rest here in Fuuka Village, we run into them again!!"
Hmm...
And then you add in Shinobu, Madoka, and me.
I hadn't realized it at first, but their oddly casual acceptance of this strange situation was bringing me a gradual understanding of what was going on. If a normal person saw a murder, they would fall into a confused panic. It was not normal for them to even be able to put their thoughts in order. So when they were faced with something beyond that, they should have had their hands full simply trying not to be swept away by the nonsensical phenomena occurring before their eyes. And yet these people were different. Everyone gathered here had experienced some incident related to Youkai recently.
And I was a last-minute inclusion as a pet.
If some third party had predicted that far, it had to be an organization with quite a powerful backbone. When I had demanded to go along, Shinobu did not even have his ticket yet. He had merely mentioned the term "ticket". Intentionally drawing out that feeling of jealousy from within me would have been much more difficult to set up than the little tricks they had to pull regarding the hotel itself. And if they had guided every person here in a similar manner, their skill could almost be called a curse.
To freely control things to that extent, the scope of this incident had to stretch farther than just this hotel. At the very least, it had to cover all of Japan.
But...
What was this third party planning to do by gathering people who had dealt with incidents related to Youkai?
Part 21 (Jinnai Shinobu)
While I waited for the elevator in the elevator hall, I messed with the satellite phone the woman had given me.
Its antenna was extremely thick and the body was unrefined. It looked more like a large radio transceiver than it did a cell phone. 0015. After I entered the number she had told me would unlock it, I could tell it was quite easy to use. You could make calls and send emails. That was it. It did not even have a memo function. However, she must have been the type to delete any kind of records because the mailbox was empty.
I opened the address book and found a few numbers.
None of the names looked like names of people. Nor did they look like the names of corporations. They looked more like names of groups or organizations, but I did not recognize any of them.
I moved the cursor to one of them.
The name for the number was Hyakki Yakou.
The last of the "characters involved".
Even with this satellite phone, I doubted I could contact them repeatedly. If they hung up, it would likely all be over. It all came down to the first call. If they thought I was of little consequence, this last thin strand of hope would disappear.
But...
I had never met this person (?) listed as Hyakki Yakou.
And...
If I had some connection with someone I had never met, I could only think of one place that connection could come from.
After all...
It did not necessarily stay in one place. It had no clear owner. The possibility of having it leave you was always there. And since it was well known what happened in such a possibility, the odds of that possibility could not be all that low.
And so it was entirely possible Hyakki Yakou and I had a connection there.
"..."
I brought my thumb to the call button.
I hesitated.
But I pressed it in the end.
It did not ring. It likely would have normally, but someone on the other end picked up before it had a chance
"Hello, " said someone who sounded like an elementary school girl.
However, her voice had a gracefulness unbefitting of that age.
I had never met her, but I felt like I had heard the voice before... and then I realized I had heard that same voice in a cell phone home video not long before.
"You need not pretend to be Hishigami Mai. I already know that phone has left her possession."
She "knew".
Was it simply that she had seen it happen? Or had she set this all up so it would happen?
"I know how we are connected."
"Is that all you wish to discuss?"
"The Zashiki Warashi, " I said.
I decided to get straight to the point rather than trying any tricks.
I guessed the sudden shock of that knowledge would provide the most impact.
"A Zashiki Warashi is a Youkai that protects a specific house, but there is no guarantee they will stay in one place. After all, it is well known that a household a Zashiki Warashi leaves will decline. I have no idea what house she... Yukari used to be in. I just assumed she had always been in mine. But it is possible she used to be with yours."
"Is that a problem?"
"I know what it is that happened to me just a bit ago. It makes perfect sense. A Zashiki Warashi has the following abilities: 1. Adults cannot see them. 2. They provide ominous predictions of fires or other dangers to their household."
Then again, my grandparents could see our Zashiki Warashi without issue and I had never heard anything about her predicting a fire.
But...
That was an issue with our specific Zashiki Warashi. Those facts held true for the species as a whole.
"They can rewrite the information people see and they provide information on coming dangers.... That fits perfectly with the illusion I saw. What happened in this hotel? If what the woman who gave me this phone said is true, all of the workers here have been switched out with fakes. You created a Package to acquire that Zashiki Warashi, didn't you?"
"Is that all you know?"
"What?"
"I am asking if that is the extent of your knowledge. If so, I am sorry to say that I see no reason why I must continue this conversation."
"If luring the Zashiki Warashi to this hotel was your top priority..."
I thought hard while I spoke.
But it was not enough.
I had my hands full already, but if I did not gather my hand quickly, I would lose the thin thread of hope that was the phone call.
"The lodging ticket for this hotel came to me via Madoka. That seems odd. Surely you had some way of giving one directly to the Zashiki Warashi."
"I am sorry to say that-..."
"It seems odd that you would use such a roundabout method. For one thing, it means you had the precision to know for a fact she would announce she was going along as a pet. But that isn't the only reason. If you can control people with that precision, you should have been able to lure the Zashiki Warashi to the hotel without bringing Madoka and me along too. And that means, " I paused for a second."You purposefully brought Madoka and me here. Our inclusion was unrelated to the Zashiki Warashi."
In my mind, I wondered if that was enough. However, I did not have time to think everything through carefully. If I fell silent, the girl would hang up. But I still felt like I was onto something.
"And that makes me suspicious of the guests other than Madoka and me. Is it just a coincidence that they are here too? Is there perhaps some kind of common thread between all of our inclusions? There is little in common between Madoka and me. Assuming we were not chosen for being in the same class in the same school, I can think of only one other possibility.... We were both involved in the Youkai incident at the Sanatorium."
"Are you suggesting the other guests are also deeply related to Packages or Youkai?"
"I have no proof, but I could gather it if need be."
"What could we possibly want from gathering all of you in one place?"
"You gathered a group of people who had overcome some incident involving Youkai and then caused a bizarre phenomenon centered on that Zashiki Warashi."
That illusion.
Other than its precision, I could not immediately see any monetary value in that bizarre phenomenon.
But that was not the point.
The actual phenomenon did not matter. Something that gave it added value existed within the hotel.
"Here is what you are doing. You want to envelop the entire hotel in the Zashiki Warashi Package, and then easily defeat and kill us. That would be a success for you. I suppose it's an issue of flexibility. By showing that this Package is something like an unavoidable black hole that swallows up even people who have dealt with various different kinds of incidents, you give your Package a valuable brand name image."
That's right.
It was the same as an Intellectual Village that strengthened the brand name image of their crops by using cutting edge technology to create the clean image of a rural area.
Hyakki Yakou was doing the same.
They had put together this plan to raise the value of their Youkai products.
What I did not know was whether they were actually in the business of buying and selling or if they were establishing manufacturing techniques and researching means of application.
"... So you have worked that much out, " said the girl.
"Indeed I have."
"But I still see little meaning in continuing this conversation. You have not completely changed my mind. This may be useful to you, but I see no value in it for me."
"Don't be so quick to decide that. That woman gave me this satellite phone. She could have tried to negotiate with you or threaten you, but she didn't. She handed this last thin thread of hope to me. Why do you think that is?"
"..."
"Because it is my house's Zashiki Warashi at the core of this incident. I am the point of contact here. I have no intention of claiming I own her and she may have been in your household at one point. But I am probably the one with the strongest connection to her at this point in time. It isn't you."
"Do you think you can interfere with our assembly using that connection?"
"Do you think I can't?"
...
That was of course a bluff. I did not have that ability and this "connection" was not something tangible. I had no idea how valuable a thing it was. Also, I doubted this enemy would actually take a high school student's words seriously.
But...
While my personal actions were one thing, I doubted that girl could ignore what that woman did.
And she had given the satellite phone to me.
"... We need a revival, " said the girl.
"What?"
"For the most part, the organization actually taking action in the hotel is Saishi Kajin, not Hyakki Yakou. Does the name Matsukai Hiroshi sound familiar? They were absorbed into Hyakki Yakou the other day. We had to weaken them during the incident in Ubasute Village to do so. However, it was still not enough. We are still far from being revived. We need more than that."
"What are you talking about?"
"The house a Zashiki Warashi leaves will decline. That is exactly right. It took hundreds of years, but that is what happened to Hyakki Yakou. That is why we put together a plan to recover her as quickly as possible. She is not a new acquisition. We are merely taking back what we once lost. But even if we compensate for our lost power with her, it will not be enough to stop the decline. Hyakki Yakou has already begun to collapse. That is why we must use everything we have to raise the value of the Zashiki Warashi's power."
"Answer me!! What are you talking about!?"
"If you actually knew what you were talking about, what I said should have been enough. If that was not enough for you, I will count you as a secure asset."
Not good.
Don't let her shake your resolve.
"That woman was fighting with someone other than the Zashiki Warashi. Did you send them?"
"He is one of our top 5. He is one of Hyakki Yakou's few pure spell users. That alone is a sign of our decline, but he is enough to defeat Hishigami Mai. This is another secure asset. Even if she defeats him, he will take her out in the process. The Zashiki Warashi will not be destroyed before this can truly begin."
Dammit.
I was understanding less and less of what she was talking about. And the girl's tone of voice was plainly changing as well. The longer she continued speaking, the shallowness of my knowledge grew more evident.
I knew very little of what was going on.
The household or organization known as Hyakki Yakou had begun to decline. One of the reasons for that was that the Zashiki Warashi had left them. They wished to retrieve that Zashiki Warashi to prevent further decline.
But that was not enough to know how to stop their plan.
She was shaking my resolve, but I had nothing to shake her resolve with.
... No.
Wait.
What did that girl say?
And what did that woman say before we parted? She said she frequently receives jobs from Hyakki Yakou, right?
So...
"It is my duty to bring about the revival of Hyakki Yakou, " said the girl.
Her words were icy.
She knew I had no trump card and would soon hang up.
"I will not shy away from sacrifice to do so. We absorbed Saishi Kajin, we will retrieve the Zashiki Warashi... and you all will be crushed underfoot to play the role of fertilizer. Sorry, but you cannot overturn this. I see nothing at your disposal that would allow that."
"Can I say one thing before you hang up?"
"What would that be?"
An amateur student like me had no hopes of victory when it came to Youkai or underground society.
I had to change my strategy.
I had to use some method where a student like me was superior.
"Young lady, you may be an expert when it comes to Youkai, but you don't like your science classes much, do you?"
"What are you talking about?"
"It's just... I'd rather not die in some plan thought up by an idiot who can't do math. I was hoping you would deny it. If I'm going to die, can't it at least be in some plan thought up by a genius!?"
"What... ? Oh, I had heard that it used to be called science class. We call it 'life environment studies', and I like it just fine. Combining traditional science with history into one class was a decent idea, wasn't it? Then again, I just learn from the textbooks. I am homeschooled."
"Ha ha."
I could not help but laugh.
I had been afraid my acting wouldn't be good enough to fool her.
"Did they still call it 'life environment studies' when they were talking about curriculum reform, getting rid of the more relaxed schedules, and maybe even going to school on weekends for more class time? I thought they changed it back to just science class then."
The girl fell silent.
I then began speaking again to cut off her next excuse.
"And even the textbooks a homeschooled elementary school student would use will match the categories of the official curriculum. Once the schools stop calling it 'life environment studies', they would start making textbooks just for science. Wait... or would they? Which would it be?"
To be honest, a high school student like me had no idea how things worked for an elementary school student.
No matter how much knowledge someone gathered, there were things that only someone who was actually that age would know. And yet the person on the other end of the phone remained silent. They may have had extensive knowledge, but their confidence had been shaken by a student like me.
And that meant...
My guess had been right.
With the confidence that gave me, I took the plunge.
"How about you end this act. It's no fun now that I've figured it out."
"..."
"Was that not enough? You're embarrassing yourself, so how about you start acting your age."
I said it.
It was a natural question to come up with given everything that had happened. Was the person I was talking to actually the person that woman had wanted me to contact with the satellite phone?
To be blunt, wasn't it possible she had been switched out with an imposter just like the hotel workers?
"Ha ha ha."
And...
I heard laughter. The voice was the same. It was the voice of a lovely young girl. But something about the tone of the voice had changed. The tone was that of a rude and vulgar man.
"Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!"
"Enough pretending. It's not like I can see you through the phone."
"What tipped you off? That science vs. life environment studies business had to have only been the final push. You must have some more fundamental proof, " said the girl (?) while she gradually corrected the emotions hidden behind the words.
My answer was simple.
"That woman said she frequently receives jobs from Hyakki Yakou. And yet she did not hesitate to stab that worker from Saishi Kajin... Matsukai-san was it? That makes no sense if they had already been taken in by Hyakki Yakou. At the very least, she wouldn't kill him on sight like that."
"That is not proof. So all you really had was speculation."
She did not explain what the fault in my reasoning was. Perhaps I did not have a proper understanding of the organization of Hyakki Yakou or of that that woman's actions.
"But I will admit that you have seen through this farther than expected. Hyakki Yakou has split. One side is the Kaikoku faction that compromises and allows those outside the organization to take jobs in order to preserve order, and the other side is the Sakoku faction that will abandon order in order to strengthen the organization and keep everything within the organization. [1] The actual 'removal' did not begin until about a week ago, so it is unknown if Hishigami Mai is aware of the situation as she was working in Europe at the time."
One side was trying to protect order and the other was trying to destroy it.
From the situation, it seemed clear to me which one was our enemy.
In the ideal democracy, the majority did not have power robbed from them.
"For something you planned, you certainly are talking about it like it doesn't matter."
"What, do you want me to be more triumphant and to brag about it? Gwa ha ha ha ha. All we did was purge the incompetent leaders."
"... I see. You saw crushing them as such a natural move that it does not even excite you and you do not feel any need to explain yourself. Are you even aware what you did qualifies as a coup d'etat?"
In a way, this was even more dangerous than a hackneyed demon king.
Didn't I hear someone say that a sense of justice can destroy nations?
"What happened to the real Hyakki Yakou? What happened to that girl?"
"I am part of the real Hyakki Yakou. Have you ever heard the story of the Tanuki of Kachi-Kachi Mountain that killed an old lady and took on her form?"
"..."
"Just kidding. Things did not go that well. But even though we split, it was not an even split. One side is much larger than the other. And we absorbed Saishi Kajin to expand even further."
"So you joined with an external group despite insisting on the purity of the organization?"
"We overwrote them. We merely gave them a chance for a religious conversion. Discord only occurs when differing systems are built into the organization. If they are completely remade before we use them, no rejection reaction occurs. The main principle required is a unified format."
... ?
She was speaking with absolute confidence, but something about it seemed off to me.
Something about that ideology did not feel right.
It was like someone talking about a specific genre while not understanding any of the details of that genre. It was the same as how people would broadly describe matcha or red bean paste as tasting like Wagashi.
The Sakoku faction wanted to preserve purity by cutting off the normal flow of information and distribution, so would they actually carry out a plan that took in an external organization?
Was this girl (?) really part of the Sakoku faction?
In fact, was she even part of Hyakki Yakou?
Just as terrorist groups received support from powerful nations during the Cold War, it was possible she had merely been given her objective by whoever was truly behind the incident and that she actually had another objective of her own.
I had no idea what that might be, but I felt it would be prudent to keep that fact in mind.
Whether she had realized what I was speculating or not, the girl began to speak about what may have been related to her objective.
"The remnants of the old leaders abandoned their flying wing and have found somewhere to hide on land, but it is only a matter of time before they are found. They needed that wing to continually flee. It is self-evident what will happen if they stay in one place."
According to her, Saishi Kajin had been overwritten by Hyakki Yakou and absorbed, but it was still possible that process had actually been begun by Saishi Kajin. Or perhaps both sides had complexly interweaving plans and they were both using the other for their own ends.
Dammit...
This was worse than simply not being able to negotiate. The person that woman had been expecting me to contact wasn't even there, so the conversation could not even begin.
"Is keeping anything new out of the organization really that important?"
"If you were told to try living as a nudist for 24 hours starting tomorrow, would you simply nod and agree?"
Had this girl had checkmate from the very beginning?
Was the scope of the incident much larger than that woman had thought?
"Why did you choose this hotel?"
"For one, because its layout was easy to work into our plan. But that is really of little consequence. What truly mattered was Kotemitsu Madoka. We wanted to gather every single one of the characters we needed, but we had to stick to the formalities to lure her in. This hotel gave her peace of mind. If we had created a brand new hotel for this, she would have been too suspicious to get anywhere near it.... That did mean we had to do some horrible things to the original workers. That made this quite expensive."
Her tone made it clear it was of little consequence to her.
Even if all of us were wiped out in the process of assembling this Zashiki Warashi Package, she would likely not even bat an eye.
"But it was not a major issue since almost everything has gone according to plan. Actually, some things have gone better than planned if you look at it in the right way. Circumstance has worked in our favor."
"What?"
"Human greed can be a frightening thing. We had initially determined it would be impossible to have complete information control. That satellite phone is a good example. That was why we simply had to accept the possibility of you calling the police in. Since we were creating bizarre phenomena that would swallow up people who had overcome other Packages, we figured the police would just be swallowed up as well."
"Wait. So the flat tires on the cars and the phones not working wasn't Hyakki Yakou's doing!?"
"Thanks to that, it looks like the precision of our Zashiki Warashi assembly will increase. It isn't an entirely good thing on our part, but... it doesn't really matter. It will give us greater results in the end." The girl paused for a second before saying, "And if you were not aware of that, then you truly do not have a proper understanding of this situation."
The connection cut off.
I reached for the redial button without thinking, but did not press it. I knew trying to call again would be hopeless. She had said she "knew" what we were doing. Unless I did something that drew the interest of the current Hyakki Yakou, she would not answer the phone again.
But...
"Hyakki Yakou isn't the only enemy. Not all of the characters are accounted for yet."
The flat tires.
The nonfunctioning phones.
"Just how many enemies do we have here... ?"
Part 22 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)
I first noticed that something wasn't adding up when we decided to pool our information in the Zashiki Warashi's room.
The Zashiki Warashi and Shinobu's classmate Kotemitsu Madoka both gave the same story.
Shinobu had gone off somewhere to call the police. And since he had not yet returned, he must not have had much luck. They guessed the phones were not working.
But...
"Mine works, " I said.
"What do you mean?"
"My cell phone has a proper signal."
It was possible Shinobu had lied to them and had gone off to do something else. But it seemed that was not the case. Kotemitsu pulled out her phone to check.
"Mine doesn't. It has no signal."
"Detective, neither does my smartphone. Maybe it's because we have different carriers. I don't even have a signal for the flat-rate calls using wi-fi."
I had a bad feeling about what this meant.
I had a good idea what could be causing it. Besides the carrier, there was one other obvious difference between my phone and theirs.
I was a police officer.
To prevent important information from getting blocked by congested phone lines in emergencies, there was a system to artificially restrict those phone lines. Cell phones owned by the police, firefighters, EMTs, the JSDF, and government workers had a different designation that was allowed through while that system was active.
And in that case...
The people cutting off communications to isolate the hotel had to be...
"It can't be..."
I pressed the call button on my cell phone. I simply pressed the call button without entering a number. When the system was being restricted, the places that could be called were also restricted.
And someone answered.
"It connected, " I said.
"Is that enough for you to figure out who I am?" asked the person on the other end.
"If my phone works, this must not be a JSDF format communications restriction. My phone's designation would only get through with the police format. And only the riot police have the authority to activate that system. So you must be..."
"That level of information isn't enough to determine who I am. Of course, you could always try to back trace this number or analyze my voice print."
"Why?" The question naturally spilled out of my mouth."This is a high level system within the police. Why would someone high enough to use it be aiding criminals!?"
"I'm sure you know exactly why."
"What?"
"You are the one that has seen this collapse of law and order the closest. All sorts of crimes being committed in this country can no longer be dealt with by the police. And those exceptions are growing. The very people who are committing crimes that must be punished are living among us as if they are on the side of justice."
For an instant, I had no idea what he meant.
But then it hit me.
"Are you talking about the Hishigami sisters?"
"Our country is facing a crisis by allowing them to go free. People who know only a fraction of what they do are looking up to them and thinking they can do the same. These people have begun to appear and claim to be bounty hunters. But they are not very effective. They claim they are 'investigating' in order to justify stalking or explain away all sorts of destructive actions. Before long, they will likely decide who is guilty without carrying out a proper investigation and then carry out vigilante justice. We must put an end to this."
"Is it really so obvious that these people are being influenced by them?"
"You are an excellent example."
"I don't follow."
"Why are you in that hotel? Did you just decide to suddenly take 7 days of leave for fun? Would you normally let yourself do that as a government official? And yet there you are. You decided there was nothing you could do to stop it since the Hishigami sisters were involved, didn't you? That kind of oddity is not isolated to just you."
"But how will you fill in the gap this leaves? I will admit that those sisters don't exactly walk the straight and narrow, but they do achieve results when it comes to cases involving Youkai. In fact, it is impossible for the current system of the Japanese police to actually destroy a Package. All we can manage is to arrest the human criminals using the Package. It is very nearly impossible for us to do anything about the deadly Youkai at the core of the case."
That was why a Package would cause more and more damage once it was established. It would spread from person to person like new method of phone fraud.
"Unfortunately, we need the Hishigami sisters. We do not have the ability to overcome those things, " I continued.
"But that is no reason to turn a blind eye to the Hishigami sisters."
He responded immediately.
He did not hesitate even for an instant.
"Our duty as the Japanese police is to stop crimes before they occur within this country and to solve cases that have already occurred. The circumstances do not matter. Even if the Hishigami sisters knew the sole way of stopping an asteroid that was on a collision course with earth, we would have no choice but to immediately arrest them if they broke the law. That is our duty as the police."
"... So you aren't giving this any thought at all?"
"It is because you think too much that you give into them so easily."
"So you have nothing to fill the gap left by the Hishigami sisters!? You know the victims of Youkai-related incidents in the country will skyrocket, but you're still going to eliminate the Hishigami sisters just because you resent them for butting into the police's turf!?"
"We do not think we can accomplish this via normal methods. It would be very difficult to reliably eliminate the Hishigami sisters with the means available to us."
Dammit.
He isn't listening to me at all.
"But the circumstances have turned in our favor. To be honest, having an organization like that operating within the country is a major problem, but we will deal with them later. The Hishigami sisters take priority. For now, we just have to carefully interfere with a conflict between different aspects of the occult."
"And to do this, you have no problem with killing living human beings and leaving other human beings to possibly die in the future?"
"So what if I am?"
"Then you are one of the criminals that I detest."
I received no reply.
The connection suddenly cut off. I tried to dial a few emergency numbers, but I could no longer connect. My number must have been removed from the communications restriction system.
"Get away from the window. It will probably be difficult to leave this hotel." I simply gave my conclusions to the others in the room."This hotel is probably surrounded by riot police. Not only is there some incident related to dangerous Youkai being carried out here, but some others have come here to use it to their advantage."
Part 23 (Jinnai Shinobu)
I rode the elevator to the 3rd floor. As the door opened, the satellite phone received a call.
It was from a different number than I had called before.
But when I answered, I heard the same girl's voice.
"... Ksshh... Is this... Hishigami Mai-san... ksshh... ?"
She doesn't know who has the phone?
That must mean...
"Are you the real from Hyakki Yakou?"
"Who are you... ksshh.. ? No, that does not matter. If that phone has left Hishigami Mai's possession, does that mean she has lost?"
I could not deny the possibility that this was the same girl (?) from before messing with me. But I could see no reason for her to do that. She had said she knew what I was doing. I didn't see what information she would need to put on another act to get out of me.
"She gave me the phone herself. She is fighting somewhere, but I don't know the details. What was it she said she was fighting?... Illness Magic, I think."
"That member of the top 5? That is not a good matchup. It isn't a matter of power. She is horribly incompatible with that opponent."
"What are you trying to say?"
"Nothing... ksshh. No matter who you are, I doubt you can stand up to someone she cannot. This may sound coldhearted, but I think I need to change my plan."
I did not like abandoning her, but it was true I couldn't exactly turn around and help that woman.
"You must have some connection with the hotel. Either a worker or a guest. Ksshh... The Package prepared by someone claiming to be from the Sakoku faction covers the entire hotel, so I assume you are a guest if you are still there."
The way she referred to the enemy seemed needlessly roundabout.
Had this girl also noticed something off about them?
"I am a guest. I was lured here with a free lodging ticket."
"Then you are one of the survivors of a Youkai incident. Someone there should have a deep connection with the Zashiki Warashi in the hotel. Please contact that person. That is the only way to bring this to an end."
And there it was.
If this girl was the same one as before, that would have been the bluff she was most worried about. My ability to interfere with the Zashiki Warashi at the core of their plan. She probably thought the odds were exceedingly low but still impossible to ignore.
To find a way to stop it, she had to get the information out of me.
The girl from Hyakki Yakou that carried out that coup d'etat had said she knew the situation here, but she could very well want to preemptively eliminate a risk.
And...
Even if this girl was who she claimed to be, she was still a member of Hyakki Yakou.
I had no idea why she had called the satellite phone. She may have had her own objective and interests that were different from the Sakoku faction's.
And she might need the Zashiki Warashi to do it.
Either way, I had to tread carefully from here on out. So carefully that I had to hide even the fact that I was treading carefully.
"I know Hyakki Yakou is trying to retrieve the Zashiki Warashi, " I said.
"I doubt doing so has any real merit."
"But they were saying they would be revived if the Zashiki Warashi is brought back."
"A household does not decline because a Zashiki Warashi left. The Zashiki Warashi leaves because the household is declining.... Ksshh... That is why you often hear that misfortune falls on a household once its Zashiki Warashi leaves, but you never hear of a Zashiki Warashi coming back. Unless the people of the household solve the underlying problem in their household, fortune will not return to them."
"So the cause is within Hyakki Yakou?"
"That should be obvious since you have been wrapped up in our issues."
"If you aren't after the Zashiki Warashi, what do you want us to do?"
"The only way to bring this to an end is to search out the details of the enemy's Package and destroy it."
"How will that bring this to an end?" I was unsure if I was succeeding in drawing information out of her, but I continued speaking anyway."We may be able to escape from this hotel, but won't Hyakki Yakou keep trying to acquire the Zashiki Warashi? I have no idea where you people are. Wouldn't we be left trembling in fear of another attack with no way to fight back?"
"Why would you?"
"What?"
"If you only just so happened to meet the Zashiki Warashi here in the hotel... ksshh... why are you so worried about her continuing to be targeted once she leaves the hotel?"
Oh, shit!!
That had not been the proper reaction for a normal guest who could just leave all this mess upon escaping the hotel. It had been the reaction of someone who would be staying with the Zashiki Warashi after escaping the hotel.
If this was the same girl as before putting on another act, then she had known who I was from the beginning.
But if this was the real girl and she was planning to use the Zashiki Warashi in some plan, it would be better if she did not know I had a connection to the Zashiki Warashi.
I needed something.
I needed anything that could explain away that reaction!!
"D-do you promise not to tell anyone?"
"Ksshh... Tell anyone what?"
"... It was love at first sight..."
"Nyah!?"
My whisper elicited a strange shout from the phone.
The girl then lowered her voice to match my whisper.
"Oh... um... Hyakki Yakou has a few records of... um... unions between humans and Youkai. Ksshh... So it is not impossible..."
Why did this have to head in that direction?
Well, whatever. I managed to fool her.
"How will getting rid of the Zashiki Warashi Package solve the fundamental problem? The person behind all this is comfortably watching everything from well out of our reach, right?"
"No, " said the girl decisively."The environment surrounding you... ksshhh... spreads much farther than you think. Ksshh... And the same goes for the person claiming to be from the Sakoku faction who is circling above the Pacific Ocean."
"?"
"They... ksshhh... have not realized it yet. They do not know how far it spread... ksshhh... after they pulled the trigger. Kssshhh... If they did, they would never have left that there with so little defense... ksshh. Ksshh... Even though it is a necessary part of the Zashiki Warashi Package, they... kkkkkkssssssssshhhhhhhhhh!!"
"Hey, what's wrong? I can't hear you. What do you mean by 'that'!?"
"Kssshhh! Ksssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!"
The static grew so loud I had to move the satellite phone away from my ear. When I hesitantly brought it back to my ear, all I could hear was the dial tone. The screen displayed a message saying the connection had been lost.
Had the Hyakki Yakou coup d'etat group interfered?
Or had something happened to the girl directly?
"... That got me nowhere."
I had not been able to receive whatever crucial hint that girl had. Then again, I had no way of telling whether she was telling the truth or if she was putting on an act for her own ends.
At any rate, my only option was to meet up with the Zashiki Warashi.
If that indoor Youkai was a crucial part of the Package at the core of it all, meeting up with her would likely help me figure something out.
I returned to my room and knocked on the door.
For an instant, the thought of no one answering or kicking down the door and finding a bloody scene passed through my mind, but luckily, the door opened after a slight delay. The person who opened the door must have checked through the peep hole first.
My uncle was the one who opened the door.
"Shinobu, you're okay."
"I want to put an end to this. Is the Zashiki Warashi there?"
My uncle headed back into the room. I followed him in. The Zashiki Warashi... was there. She was sitting on the single bed. Madoka was sitting on the floor. A girl whose name I did not know was there was well. And curled up at the Zashiki Warashi's feet was...
What?... A dog? No, a Sunekosuri?
"Zashiki Warashi, I need to speak with you."
"If it's a confession of love, wait until Christmas Eve. I'm steadily making progress on a merciless, decisive, and hilarious plan for that."
"Damn you!! There are some things you don't joke about!!"
She had been showing some signs of dere recently, but it looked like I needed to dig a bit deeper into that. Especially with that cold bath and nursing her back to health from before!!
"... So, Shinobu. What do you want to talk about?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but then froze in place.
The girl (?) from the Sakoku faction of Hyakki Yakou had said she "knew" what was happening here. I had no idea how she "knew", but wouldn't I be putting unnecessary risk on everyone in that room if I told them the core of the issue?
And the danger did not end if we escaped the hotel.
This held the danger of having that organization constantly targeting us for the rest of our lives.
I decided to tell as few people as possible.
"Let's leave the room first."
"?"
The Zashiki Warashi and I left the room.
Before we began speaking, the Zashiki Warashi grimaced.
"... Ow..."
"What's wrong?"
"I have a bit of a headache."
"Even though you're a Youkai? I thought you couldn't be hurt by normal methods."
"I am not immune to things like heatstroke."
"Come to think of it, that Yuki Onna has seemed a bit dizzy after taking a bath lately."
"It might just be that time of the month."
"Unfortunately, I do not think that's it."
"What did you want to talk about?"
"I want to ask about where you were before coming to my house."
The Zashiki Warashi leaned up against the hallway wall, pressed her index finger to her temple, and sighed.
"I get the feeling you aren't going to be satisfied if I just tell you I was protecting some other household."
"The term Hyakki Yakou has come up. Does it ring any bells?"
"Shinobu." The Zashiki Warashi quickly called my name before continuing."In all seriousness, you might die. Even if you make use of the information I have and escape this hotel, you have no hope after that. I know staying here and not doing anything isn't an option either, but you should think long and hard about how you plan to resolve this."
"The very fact that I know the term Hyakki Yakou shows I've already gotten involved. Holding back now out of fear isn't going to get us out of this."
With that response, I showed I had resigned myself to this.
And I continued.
"So if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all out. I will completely crush the enemy. I want to get back to my normal life after leaving this hotel, and I can't do that if I hesitate to take a running start. I will jump to the other side of the cliff. If I chicken out, I will fall. The odds of success are not good to begin with, but I need a full running start to have any chance of survival."
The Zashiki Warashi tilted her head in puzzlement.
Her long hair covered her face so I could not see it.
"Hyakki Yakou, " she whispered. And then she continued."Hyakki Yakou has been involved in all sorts of things for a long time. And it seems one of those things involved Zashiki Warashi. Since it is in my nature to wander from house to house, I had assumed I had just happened to end up with Hyakki Yakou. But it turned out I was wrong."
"... You mean they influenced what house you chose?"
"I don't know. All I know is that it was odd. I still do not know what exactly happened, what they were after, or even if they succeeded or not. That is the level Hyakki Yakou has reached. The millennium-old established theories that humans cannot kill Youkai and that humans cannot understand what Youkai are thinking do not apply to that group."
Was the true threat humans or Youkai?
Or could Hyakki Yakou even be counted as humans?
"A Zashiki Warashi moves from house to house based on the rise and fall of the households, but after I saw a portion of the things going on there, I decided to leave of my own will for the first time.... I essentially ran away, but that may show that Hyakki Yakou's methods were imperfect. Or perhaps they were already headed down the path of destruction at that point."
"Was it after that that you came to my house?"
"That was about 150 years ago. I had some difficulties because places for Youkai like me were decreasing rapidly thanks to the end of Edo period. I certainly never expected for those places to make a comeback in the name of 'Intellectual Villages'."
"And Hyakki Yakou never tried to take you back?"
"There is no point in it."
... ?
She makes it sound so simple... but wait. That isn't what I heard.
"When a Zashiki Warashi like me leaves a household, it declines. At the very least, Hyakki Yakou had to have some internal trouble at the time. The stronger the household, the greater the chaos. And as I said, Hyakki Yakou was involved in many dangerous things, so there was a danger of causing a chain reaction that would destroy them utterly."
"But Hyakki Yakou didn't collapse. They still exist today."
"Since I had left by that point, I can only speculate, but they probably did some insane things to get back the power they lost. It was a twisted place to begin with, but I get the feeling they have become even more twisted now."
"What are you basing this speculation on?"
"From stories I have heard from Youkai passing by the house. Also... they are using everything they have to retrieve a Zashiki Warashi that has already left them. Hyakki Yakou must have transformed into something else if they do not realize the reasoning behind that is flawed."
"... You knew what they are trying to do?"
"From the moment you uttered the term Hyakki Yakou, Shinobu."
The Zashiki Warashi let out a deep sigh.
Either her headache was getting worse or the problem we were facing had her worried.
"Shinobu, you said Hyakki Yakou is at the core of this. And if they are after me, Yukari, specifically rather than any old Zashiki Warashi, that has to be their aim. If their plan simply needed a Zashiki Warashi, they should have targeted one they had no previous connections to. It's an issue of purity. I don't know if it's due to the good fortune or if it's some spiritual thing, but Zashiki Warashi are welcomed in this day and age. And they are not exactly rare. I can see no good reason for them to specifically target me."
"It 'seems' like Hyakki Yakou has undergone a split after a coup d'etat. But it only 'seems' that way. It might not be true, " I warned."It also 'seems' this rampage is thanks to that. According to the group that 'seems' to want to bring an end to the coup d'etat, we need to figure out how this Zashiki Warashi Package works to resolve this problem. Since it 'seems' you are the one it's built around, do you have any ideas or hunches?"
"That's a lot of 'seems'."
"What do you think they could gain by lying about all that?"
"I don't know." The Zashiki Warashi seemed to be the type to not give much thought to things she did not immediately know."Oftentimes, the Youkai a Package is built around is completely unaware of it. And in this case, Hyakki Yakou is behind it. They will have meticulously arranged the environment. It's a miracle I am even feeling this headache."
"... So it isn't going to be that easy."
"But if they have built a Package around me to create some kind of bizarre phenomenon, it would probably be related to a house or building."
"So you're saying the hotel itself is a part of the Package?"
"Not necessarily. Basically, they have to prepare something that perfectly corresponds to it and use that. It would be similar to magic that that uses a doll to harm a human. It could be a model of the hotel or a diagram of its layout. There should be plenty if we look. Unlike the old days, this age is quite convenient."
... Wait.
Didn't I see something like that?
That girl said something about the core of this Package being in the hotel. Not an illustration or a piece of art, but something functional and crucial to the Package. Where had I seen it?
"... I know."
"?"
"The diagram. The diagram of the hotel on the wall behind the front desk!!"
Part 24 (Zashiki Warashi - Yukari)
The diagram of the hotel?
Hotel diagrams had to be all over the place. For example, on the inside of every room's door. If I recalled correctly, they provided escape routes for guests in the case of different disasters. They were not required by law to be posted there, but it seemed to be standard.
And other than those escape route maps, oftentimes other diagrams would be posted to show the way to the restaurant and other services.
But...
Those diagrams did not need to be perfectly accurate. For example, the escape route maps only needed to show the way to the emergency exits. It could omit portions of a long hallway and things like that. Diagrams and maps that were precisely made would probably be rare.
"The diagram at the front desk?"
"That's right. A huge diagram was hanging on the wall behind it. If something that corresponds to the hotel is being used as a part of the Package, it has to be that."
"But you have no idea how many hotel diagrams there are in the building. What about the escape route maps or guide maps? There might be a diagram in the pamphlets. What makes you so sure the diagram at the front desk is the one?"
"I think Hyakki Yakou knows a lot of things about this situation that we can't see. And it probably goes even beyond what I am imagining." Shinobu grinned as he headed for the elevator hall."But there is one thing not even Hyakki Yakou can see. I was affected by the Zashiki Warashi Package. And that Package shows you an ominous future. And that is why a complete amateur like me knows something Hyakki Yakou does not."
"You saw something in the future?"
"I noticed something that seemed odd and it might be the true crux of this issue."
"So you're saying anything good that happens from here on out is thanks to me."
"I would rather bow down to Hyakki Yakou than say that."
We rode the elevator down to the first floor. No workers were at the front desk when we arrived. And sure enough, a giant decorative diagram of the hotel's first floor covered the wall behind it. It looked like someone had framed a wooden board covered with paper.
Oh, dear.
When I drew closer, I noticed something was splattered here and there on the diagram. I could see red dots of what looked like blood. It may have corresponded to what was happening in the hotel.
However...
It would be too naïve to think breaking that diagram would resolve the situation. That was like trying to stop a precise time bomb with a karate chop.
All the more so since this Package had been assembled by Hyakki Yakou.
"So what drew your attention to this diagram?"
"In the prediction the Package gave me, this was not the diagram I saw, " said Shinobu."I didn't take much notice of it at the time since I was finding corpse after corpse of people I knew, but I remembered it once I had calmed down and thought back on it. The diagram hanging here was not this one."
Shinobu climbed over the front desk and headed for the back wall. He reached for the large diagram that seemed to be covering some kind of painting and removed it.
And behind it was...
"This is..."
"This is a diagram of our house, " said Shinobu.
That's right. It was a diagram of the Japanese-style thatch roof house that I currently protected.
So is this what Shinobu saw in that vision?
But it turned out that was not right either.
"This isn't what I saw either."
He then removed that diagram. And below it was a third one. This one I had a feeling Shinobu did not recognize. Most likely, none of the hotel's guests would recognize it. Of all the people here, I was probably the only one who knew what it was.
"... That's Hyakki Yakou's old headquarters."
"So it's going backwards. Zashiki Warashi, this is your history. If I removed this one, I would probably find the diagram of the house you protected before it. And when we go forward through history, the diagram on top was for this hotel. Do you see what that means?"
"They are trying to move me from your house to this hotel?"
"I have no idea if they can make you do it against your will, but given what Hyakki Yakou wants, that is likely their ultimate objective. You might be stripped from our house when you are completely drawn into the Package."
"But this..."
"So you noticed?" Shinobu spoke slowly as if rearranging the information in his head on the fly."You are a Youkai that wanders from house to house. And you are thought to control the fortune of the house you currently reside in. But that isn't accurate. The house a Zashiki Warashi leaves will decline. Even after the Zashiki Warashi has abandoned a house, the Zashiki Warashi's effects remain. In other words, you are still directly having a negative effect on Hyakki Yakou. I have no idea where Hyakki Yakou's headquarters are, but if we have something that can directly interfere with you, then we can attack Hyakki Yakou's headquarters no matter where they might be. Just like they tried to interfere by putting these red dots on the hotel diagram."
His reasoning may have been sound.
When based in the laws of Youkai rather than the laws of physics, his reasoning may have been sound.
But...
"That won't work."
"?"
"That will not work here. We do not have enough here to strike back against Hyakki Yakou."
Yes.
I knew of a fatal weakness in Shinobu's escape plan.
"Hyakki Yakou's headquarters were lost long ago. It was the thanks they got for making too many enemies. They are likely using some completely other place for their headquarters now. In other words, you will not find the heart of Hyakki Yakou by heading back into the past. Hyakki Yakou's heart lies in the future, so it is out of our reach. Most likely, Hyakki Yakou plans to transfer me to this hotel and then hang a diagram of their new headquarters over the hotel diagram to transfer me there!"
I did not look at Shinobu's face when I told him that. I had a guess what his expression would be, but I did not look. After all, if that was the only hope we had and if that was the trump card Shinobu and the one who gave him the information had, then the only fate left for us was...
Vwah!?Why is... he... here!?
My consciousness began to break apart. It was coming from the right of the front desk. The hallway leading away was now wrapped in a dim darkness. The lights were still on, but it was now too dark to see far back into it and the area was wrapped in a clearly odd atmosphere. I was a Youkai so I could not be killed easily, but what I saw there made even me tremble. It felt ominous. I was fearful. I had felt this feeling before. I knew it well after the time I had spent in that place.
Hyakki Yakou.
An existence even more deviant than a simple deadly Youkai.
The woman who had stabbed a man with a fork had maintained her camouflage even after taking action. That was frightening enough, but this was on a completely different level. This was a mass of fear that gave one a new idea of what "pure" fear was.
As sweat soaked my body, I heard a simple electronic tone. It was as if someone had been waiting for that moment. It was coming from the object in Shinobu's hand that looked like an unrefined cell phone. Shinobu must have had an idea who it was from because he looked nervous as he answered it.
I heard a young girl's voice come from the device.
But was it really a girl speaking?
"I see you have made it to the core of this issue."
"Thanks to you."
"You probably have only a few minutes until the Illness Magic user reaches you. I do not care what you do until then, but you cannot reach me no matter what you do to those diagrams."
"So I take it destroying the hotel diagram will not destroy the Package."
"If you do that, you will only cause the hotel to come crumbling down with you inside. But the frame is sturdy and the glass is bulletproof, so destroying it would prove difficult."
"What if I destroyed the diagram of Hyakki Yakou's old mansion?"
"That mansion burned to the ground long ago. It is possible you might damage some unrelated building that has been built on the land since, but it will not reach me."
That was right.
The final piece of the puzzle was not in the hotel.
Shinobu needed the diagram of Hyakki Yakou's current headquarters. But it was not here. Once the Zashiki Warashi... that is to say, me... was fully drawn into the Package, my residence would transfer to the hotel. Then they just had to hang up the new diagram to complete their plan. And Hyakki Yakou had no reason to bring that final diagram here at this stage.
But...
"I just have one last question, " said Shinobu.
His tone of voice cut through my fear and made me frown. It did not match the situation. He seemed to have some hope left.
"In your Zashiki Warashi Package, you take the abilities of a Zashiki Warashi to keep adults from seeing her and to inform people of coming fires or other dangers to the household, and you have rebuilt them so that they will show people images of ominous predictions of death, right?"
"Yes. Due to the circumstances, we can only show them. We cannot see them as well. However, that tragedy of yours is set in stone. Whatever you saw, it had to have been an ill omen."
"And it was. The current situation is at a high enough difficulty level that even that woman's safety is unclear. This has been made so anyone would lose no matter what they do. So I believe what I saw in that vision. If I do not stop this, it will definitely happen. But that wasn't my question, " said Shinobu."Does this Package of yours only work once?"
"What?"
"The hotel diagram is only of the first floor. And I didn't see any illusions like that after heading into the elevator. What I want to know is: will I be forced to see that prediction again and again as long as I stay on the first floor of the hotel?"
I could not figure out what Shinobu was getting at.
I could not see how seeing horrible visions over and over would help him escape this crisis.
Despite the present danger of a Hyakki Yakou member approaching, I focused on Shinobu.
"Dammit. It's all twisted around. I can't figure out the order of events. It's just like back then. The Zashiki Warashi prediction is coming again."
"What good does that do you?" asked the girl over the phone."What help can you get by seeing a future that you cannot avoid? As I said, you cannot stop us with just the diagrams in that hotel. You are missing one crucial piece. What do you hope to accomplish?"
"It wasn't this one, " cut in Shinobu.
The force behind his words did not merely bring him to the same level as this person from Hyakki Yakou. It brought control of the conversation to him.
"The diagram I saw in the vision wasn't of the hotel. But it wasn't the diagram of Hyakki Yakou's old mansion either."
"What... ?"
"The diagram I saw was for a special V-shaped passenger jet called a flying wing! After it was all over, that diagram was placed over the others! That final piece may not exist here now, but it will be there in the future. And I saw the future!!"
The pen used when checking in was sitting on the front desk.
Shinobu snatched it up and brought the tip directly to the surface of the front desk.
"I only know the broad details right now. I can't make a detailed diagram right now. But if I see that scene again, I will acquire your weakness! By drawing it on the desk, I can bring the diagram of that flying wing back to the present!!"
"!! The Illness Magic!!"
I distinctly felt something approaching through the dim darkness spreading through the hallway. But something held it back. It was being stopped by something.
Is someone standing up to that monster!?
"You said this hotel would collapse if I destroyed the hotel diagram! And you said a new building constructed on the same land might be destroyed if I destroyed the diagram of Hyakki Yakou's old mansion. So if I have the diagram for that flying wing, I can make your airplane break apart in midair!!"
The girl was shouting something, but Shinobu did not seem to be listening.
His body lurched forward.
His eyes were following something that was very clearly not there.
Part 25 (Jinnai Shinobu)
And...
I once more faced that tragedy that I had never wanted to see again.
Part 26 (Jinnai Shinobu)
I had returned. I had returned to that place. I had returned to that time. It was such a horrific scene that I could feel sweat unnaturally pouring from my body, but I did not have time to care. I gripped the pen and faced the front desk.
I had to finish before this fresh fear left me.
I had to drag that flying wing diagram from the future and into the present!!
"That is impossible..." I could hear the girl's voice coming from the satellite phone."Even if you have the information from the diagram, an amateur cannot draw it well enough free-hand! You do not have the time needed for that!! One of our top 5, the Illness Magic user, will reach you soon. You will be eaten into and destroyed before you can finish!!"
"Hey, just to be sure: you drove the proper owners of that thing out and no one but the Sakoku faction of Hyakki Yakou is onboard, right? The real girl ran away somewhere, right?"
"What are you-... ?"
"Also, I hope you're flying over the ocean right now. I would really like to end this without getting any innocent people involved. I heard you were circling around above the Pacific Ocean, so hopefully that was accurate."
"Illness Magic, the contents of the prediction do not matter. Eliminate the uncertain factor right now!!"
"Will that tragic future finally arrive or will I put a stop to everything here? Let's see who is faster, young lady."
The tip of the pen raced across the desk.
At the same time, I noticed a strange black spot appear on the end of one of the fingers on my right hand. It spread in no time at all. This was the Illness Magic. This was what managed to defeat that monstrous woman. At first, I felt no pain, but I then felt something rising up from the depths of my stomach. I was unable to keep it down and it spewed out all at once.
"Cough cough!! Cough cough!!"
It was not vomit.
I had never eaten anything that red!
The Zashiki Warashi shouted something, but I could not make out her words over a tremendous ringing in my ears. My sense of balance ceased to function properly. But it did not matter. It did not matter what happened. All that mattered was that I had to force that weakness to appear in the present!
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!"
"Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!"
As silent changes assaulted my body, I focused everything I had on my right hand. I moved it quickly but accurately. To draw that answer that existed only in my memories into the real world, I had to keep my unnatural headache and feeling of intoxication from wiping it from my memory. I had to get as close as possible to the full picture of that flying wing!!
I could feel a straining noise. I couldn't tell if it was coming from my bones, my muscles, or my internal organs. An unpleasant sweat flowed from my entire body and I felt such a chill that I lost all sense of temperature. My legs grew unsteady beneath me and I felt like I was standing on the deck of a rocking boat. I could not stop the blood from coming out of my mouth. It was coming out so quickly I thought an entire organ was going to come up with it. My right hand shook. My strength on the pen faded. The pen fell from my hand. My final weapon slipped from my grasp.
"It is over, " said whoever it was that used that girl's voice."You had a chance, but you simply do not have the skill. Hyakki Yakou's Illness Magic user is reliable. He is so reliable that counting on his success is not a gamble. That is the difference between a pro and an amateur. Your trump card is not enough to overcome his reliability. No matter what."
"... Not... necessarily..." I forced out the words while primarily focused on catching gasps of air through all the blood."I do not need the pen."
"... ?"
"Did you really think I could draw an accurate enough diagram by free-hand? Keep in mind, I'm just a high school student. I'm not an Itako and I cannot use automatic writing. There's no way I could actually pull that off. And..."
As I spoke, I pulled out my true final weapon from where it was tucked into the Zashiki Warashi's obi.
It technically belonged to me, but the Zashiki Warashi always used it as a music player.
"The 21st century is quite convenient. You can acquire an accurate diagram without drawing it out free-hand."
"You don't mean... A smartphone... no, the digital camera!!"
"I saw an accurate diagram of the flying wing hanging here in that tragic future. So naturally you must have a copy prepared somewhere in the hotel, right?"
"Illness Magic... Fall back, Illness Magic!!"
"That's right. The Illness Magic. That diagram is the cornerstone of your plan. You cannot allow it to be altered or damaged in the slightest, so you would leave it with the strongest person you had. You didn't want it getting destroyed before the plan was complete! That made things simple for me. I had to make the Illness Magic user rush things so the boss character carrying the flying wing's diagram would let his guard down! I had to get him to come forward and step into the danger zone!!"
Of course, I was just a high school student.
No matter how much I made him rush things, I could never hope to win against someone who sounded like they belonged in an RPG like this Illness Magic user. I would likely be unable to make him falter for even an instant. I would only end up transformed into some gruesome corpse.
But...
Someone else was there.
When I had started to draw the decoy diagram, the Illness Magic user had oddly stopped moving when he started to come to stop me. It had been as if something was preventing him from approaching. There was definitely something there. It was that monstrous woman who seemed more suited to appearing in an RPG than your average Youkai. She was the only one who could stand up to that Illness Magic user.
And so I just had to shout.
"You don't have to defeat him... Just snatch it away from hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!"
I heard an odd rumble in response.
The dim darkness filling the hallway wavered unnaturally and I glimpsed something white.
It was a large sheet of paper that had likely been rolled up.
It was a diagram.
A diagram of a flying wing.
A diagram of Hyakki Yakou's headquarters.
It quickly disappeared into the dim darkness like it was a ship sinking into the ocean at night. But before it did, I had held out the lens of my smartphone and the phone sent out several quick flashes of light. I took an accurate photograph of the diagram.
I lightly tossed the smartphone toward the wall behind the front desk and the long headphone cords wrapped around the fixture meant to hang the frame from.
"All I need is an accurate diagram hanging against this wall. It doesn't have to be the copy the Illness Magic user has, right?"
"Wh-wha-... ?"
"I've created your weakness, " I said slowly to make sure.
That smartphone had been expensive and I was unsure how much longer my backup phone would last, but it had to be done.
Meanwhile...
The girl was at a loss for words. A complete loss for words. She had constantly had control of the situation as the leader of a group that neither human nor Youkai could hope to oppose, and yet she was at a loss for words.
That told me all I needed to know.
The enemy's reaction when seeing my actions told me more than my own actions had.
Now...
It was time for me to finish things.
"Fall down to the depths of the earth, Hyakki Yakou!!"
I swung the heavy satellite phone as hard as I could and slammed the bottom of the device into my own smartphone. The second device was completely smashed. Or more accurately, the flying wing diagram displayed on the screen was completely smashed.
I heard violent static come from the satellite phone.
And I doubted it was simply due to the impact breaking the phone.
Part 27 (Hishigami Mai)
"Cough!? Cough cough cough!! Cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough!?"
Ugh, I thought I was going to die.
But something must have happened since the "invasion" had ended before the Illness Magic could destroy me from the inside out. I placed my hands on the floor and coughed up a pool of blood, but that was all. That was the end of it. It looked like the Illness Magic had left my body.
In the very end, that kid had made things easier for himself. I had just meant for him to do his best free-hand to draw the flying wing diagram out of his vision of the future. But thanks to him, I had been forced to directly steal the diagram from that monster.
The dim darkness faded away slightly.
I forced open the one eye that I could not see out of thanks to the blood flowing over it, and called out into the remaining dim darkness.
"You aren't going to continue this?"
"I see no reason to."
"You could kill me to take revenge."
"I act based on reason, not emotion."
"I have to ask. What caused you all to so hurriedly throw together this coup d'etat?"
"MI6, the CIA, and the European Security Force."
... Dammit. So that's it.
I had forgotten about that.
"So the people putting together a system to use Succubi in Europe had you that scared? I looked into it, but it was a failure. I believe I even sent in a report."
"The system itself may have failed, but the network built up around that failure still created a community built around the Succubus. The officials in control of the plan were completely charmed by her. Depending on how you look at it, this is an even greater threat. A demon has built this up using the power of a human organization."
I see. That is very true.
"But in that case..." I said.
"What?"
"Couldn't you interpret this infighting within Hyakki Yakou as having been caused by that Succubus? Just like our movements were controlled with those hotel lodging tickets.... And it must have been done cleverly enough to keep any of you from catching on."
"..."
"This new community would have a plethora of reasons to want the old Hyakki Yakou to be crushed."
"I suppose you could see it that way."
"Where are you going?"
"My priorities have changed. It seems there is someone else I must defeat."
And that was it.
The dim darkness completely disappeared now. The hallway was now illuminated like a normal hotel hallway. I could see clearly all the way to the wall at the end of the hallway. It looked like the Illness Magic user had truly left.
Not that he would be able to simply leave with no trouble.
He surely understood that and that may have been why he decided to leave me be and find an escape route as quickly as possible. Or perhaps he was looking for something of enough value to get Hyakki Yakou to forgive him.
"Are you okay!?"
Jinnai Shinobu came running over with the Zashiki Warashi with him. He must have received a bit of the effects of that Illness Magic. For someone with no defenses, he had done well to withstand its effects mentally. It was possible he had what it would take to thoroughly remodel his body like mine.
"... N-not so much. If this incident continues any longer, I might seriously be in trouble."
"I settled things with Hyakki Yakou. Their coup d'etat is over. The real girl will probably deal with the rest."
"That isn't the end of it."
Dammit.
I had a feeling it would come to this. Don't claim it's over when you haven't done anything to deal with that!!
"Hey, Jinnai Shinobu-kun. What did you see in your vision of the future? Were you spewing blood everywhere and dying after being attacked by some strange form of the occult?"
"Eh? Well..."
"You weren't, were you? If you had, you would have been more cautious about dealing with the Illness Magic user. I don't know what you saw, but it was more of a collection of different deaths, wasn't it?"
"But I avoided that future, so the present will be different, right?... Right? Are you saying that future is still going to happen!?"
"The riot police..." muttered the Zashiki Warashi."Uchimaku Hayabusa mentioned it. A portion of the riot police are surrounding this hotel and cutting off all communications in order to assassinate the Hishigami sisters who keep butting into the police's turf. They are waiting for an opportunity to interfere and eliminate those sisters that they cannot normally handle."
"Tch. Jinnai Shinobu-kun, does that match what you saw?"
"Not really... What I saw didn't seem at all related to Youkai either though. It was more like... something from a splatter film. It didn't look like something carried out by an expert marksman, that's for sure."
"The riot police can get away with it more easily by making it look that way. They probably secretly secured a serial killer to take the fall for it.... It's possible the deaths in the prediction were actually caused by the Illness Magic user, but the corpses were later altered to look more gruesome. That would be why you saw it as something caused by a serial killer."
Either way, this was bad.
Thanks to the Illness Magic user, Jinnai Shinobu and I could not move. The detective... well, he could not handle this on his own. He would be overwhelmed by a group like the riot police. My little sister was the intellectual type, so it was out of the question to ask her to fight. Kotemitsu Madoka was an unknown factor, but she probably would have played a bigger role during the issue with Hyakki Yakou if she was at all useful.
That left the Zashiki Warashi and Sunekosuri as our biggest hopes since they could not be killed easily.
But...
"Zashiki Warashi, do you think you can handle this?"
"Do not expect any kind of battling or action from me. And I refuse to act as a shield either."
"That's what I expected. And I really doubt I can expect anything out of the Sunekosuri."
A Youkai's testimony could not be used in court, so even if the riot police found they could not kill the Zashiki Warashi and the Sunekosuri, they would just ignore them and head into the hotel to slaughter the rest of us. That meant our situation could be summed up with the word "bad". I did not want to die yet and I did not want to get my little sister involved in all this.
Which meant...
"Jinnai Shinobu-kun. Where is the satellite phone I lent you?"
"It's mostly broken."
From the look of the phone he handed me, he had certainly not treated it as one should treat a borrowed item. If we survived this, I decided I would send him a bill.
I checked over it and discovered it could still make calls.
That was fortunate.
It was finally time for the final character to redeem herself.
"Young lady, " I said into the phone.
"What is it?"
"I assume you have noticed that the situation has been resolved. While I would rather not have you steal Jinnai Shinobu-kun's victory, I have a request for you if you have retrieved command of Hyakki Yakou."
"Tell me what you need."
"Take care of the riot police outside."
Those magic words showed their effects quite quickly.
Part 28 (Jinnai Shinobu)
That had been a terrible trip.
I hadn't had time to try to get it on with Madoka, the Zashiki Warashi seemed to be planning some kind of unpleasant surprise for Christmas Eve (I had a feeling she was going to make some announcement I would be unable to refuse despite knowing it was a trap), I had never gotten a chance to approach that mystery freak girl, and her older sister had been too frightening to approach!!
And yet with Hyakki Yakou and that Illness Magic user, I had way too many opportunities to come into contact with things I did not want to!! And even now that I had returned to my thatch roof house, I did not feel comfortable at all!! I had no idea when that kind of threat was going to appear again!!
So much bad had happened and yet no good had happened whatsoever.
The moment the Zashiki Warashi returned to her own territory, she folded one of the living room cushions in half and used it as a pillow.
"It's only when I get back that I remember how boring it is here, " she said.
"Don't just lie around. Help me carry in this luggage."
"I doubt it would help with this boredom, so I'll pass."
In the end, I was forced to carry in her luggage as well as my own. While I did so, the flat-chested Yuki Onna and the Nekomata ran out from farther in the house.
I was right. That Nekomata won over my granny so she can stay here.
"... Do you have a souvenir for me?... If not, let's get married..."
"I heard they have a local melon-flavored pet food there."
Eh? How can they possibly expect a souvenir?
Those two may not have known, but it was a miracle I was even alive.
In fact...
Maybe that whole incident would have been easier if I had brought along those legitimately deadly Youkai...
But the group in Hyakki Yakou that carried out the coup d'etat had probably guided us such that it didn't turn out that way.
"Shinobu, " said the Zashiki Warashi as she pressed a massager belonging to my mother against her calf. (By the way, god, does it mean I have a dirty mind if the sight of a girl holding an electric massager gets my heart racing?) "Do not try to use Youkai to solve all of your problems. That would set you on the path to becoming like the people you saw."
She may have been right.
That woman, Hyakki Yakou, and the Illness Magic user.
All of them probably began with nothing more than a thought similar to mine. In most old stories, fortune given by some strange person or creature only gave you happiness if you were unaware of it.
Shita-Kiri Suzume, Hanasaka Jii-san, Tsuru no Ongaeshi, and Kobutori Jii-san.
You could benefit from those things, but it would turn to tragedy if you got greedy.
"Happiness comes to the honest" was not just a nice saying.
It was a coldhearted sign telling you those that did not know right from wrong would get their comeuppance. The people I had met may not have received any kind of obvious punishment, but that just showed how far from the normal path they had strayed.
I did not want to become like them.
It did not matter if doing so would give me the power to stand at the center of the issue.
I would rather stay on the outskirts of the issue to the very end.
"Then again, Shinobu, all that would happen if you were honest is I could have more fun teasing you.... But you aren't bad when you are like that. How about you go back to being a baby, Shinobu?"
That figured.
I was not dealing with a Buddha like in the story of the Kasajizou. I was dealing with Youkai. If you were hoping for any kind of favor, you would only receive harsh retaliation. If you were trying to subjugate them, they would provide an overwhelming counterattack. If you tried to act indifferent, they would come to you. If you tried to accept them naturally, they would have no qualms about tricking you.
I could not use them.
If I forgot to show them the proper respect, they would snap at me.
And yet when they occasionally decided to help someone on a whim, they could save someone who had only run across them by chance.
"... I wonder if there is any way to just get along with Youkai."
"That would certainly make this easier."
Suddenly, my overall small granny walked in.
"Shinobu, Shinobu."
"What is it, granny?"
"A package arrived for you. It is too heavy for me to carry in."
"??? Zashiki Warashi, did you order something on the internet again?"
"I bought a folding bicycle on your account."
"Why were you using my computer for that!? O-oh, no! My credit is going to plummet!!"
"But I would think a folding bicycle would be fairly light. It shouldn't be too heavy to carry."
I headed for the front door and found a giant cardboard box. The Zashiki Warashi was right about one thing: it didn't look like it was a folding bicycle. It was much too big for that. The box was large enough for a fair-sized washing machine.
And it was not a box from an online shopping site.
"Did my uncle send me something? Does it have a label anywhere?"
I looked closely at the top of the box.
And then...
With a loud ripping noise, the top of the cardboard box tore open from the inside. Something shot out of the box and struck me on the chin.
The world spun and my sense of balance was thrown out of order. I thought it was some kind of overly enthusiastic jack-in-the-box, but it was not. When I took a step back while holding my chin with one hand, I could see what had struck me.
It was a head.
It seemed a woman had been hiding in the cardboard box and her upper body had shot up out of the box.
But...
"Ahh, I'm exhausted. Hm? Huh? I can't get out... Well, I don't need the box anymore. I'll just rip it apart."
"Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait!!"
"You look like you're wondering why something shaped like a human was packed into this box."
"That's not the main issue here!"
"But there are some things in this world that look like humans but are not humans."
"That isn't it either!! In fact, I know that all too well since I already have 3 Youkai living here!!"
"... Then why do you look so confused?"
The "thing" tilted her head in puzzlement and I pointed at that glamorous beauty.
"You have spiraling goat horns on your head, bat wings on your back, and a pointed tail!!"
"I don't think I could be any more stereotypical of a demon."
"We already had our hands full with Japanese monsters!! We don't need you suddenly expanding the setting with a Western one right at the end!!"
Also, I was shocked to see my granny was only grinning in amusement at this Succubus's arrival!!
"My specific race is Succubus. I make sure to evolve daily to match the needs of the current age. As proof, I am wearing the classic of the sexy swimsuits, the micro bikini. But I can switch over to a PE outfit or a maid uniform depending on your personal tastes. Your options are endless!!"
"Nnhh!!"
As my veins protruded on my temple, the Zashiki Warashi whispered to me.
"Shinobu, if you just accept this and everything it implies, you will probably die."
"Yes, it would be too much to manage... But I suppose it was too convenient for only the Japanese islands to be full of these strange exceptions. It does make sense... but isn't this the kind of thing Hyakki Yakou is supposed to deal with!?"
"I'm actually on the run from Hyakki Yakou. Using the desires of some officials in Europe, I was about to take control of an international agency in the EU when I was defeated. They were really playing dirty. They sent Illness Magic in to take advantage of a weakness to the historic bubonic plague."
"Stop, stop!! Not only is that probably full of information that will put my life at risk to hear, but I can't possibly comprehend it all at once like that!! It's all too sudden!!"
"Not necessarily."
"What?"
"Have you heard of an organization called Saishi Kajin?"
"I think they came up in the issue related to Hyakki Yakou. Weren't they absorbed by Hyakki Yakou?"
"It was an art research group made up of strange people who were working to create the ultimate beauty. The ultimate beauty they wanted to create would surpass the barriers of time period and cultural region. They intended to have this beauty sit on a throne as an empress while they devoted themselves to her."
"... Wait..."
"Oh, you're a quick one! I think I can expect great things from you, master!! Just between you and me, that sounds a lot like the community based around desire that sprang up around a Succubus in Europe!!"
"That was your organization!? Also, don't call me master! It affects me more than I'd like to admit! So you had your organization be enemies of Hyakki Yakou and then be absorbed by them to affect their balance of power? So the one behind that coup d'etat was... !?"
"I come from Western European culture, so I of course had nothing to do with the creation of that purely Japanese organization. But Saishi Kajin failed to create the beauty they wanted. I will admit to showing them a bit of a dream while they were so disheartened, though."
So you took over that empty shell of an organization!?
If that European community, or whatever it was, had also been quietly causing trouble for Hyakki Yakou, then she had put pressure on them from both within the country and without!
She had slipped through the darkness and gaps in large but not overly powerful organizations to freely draw out the power they had. I was not accustomed to Western monsters, but that way of thinking may have made her a lot more dangerous than the straightforward methods of Hyakki Yakou.
"... Wait? Th-then was the person claiming to control the Sakoku faction of Hyakki Yakou..."
She had been in the form of a girl.
She had acted on the desire for political power.
She had robbed a large organization of its calm and then taken control.
And I had sensed something off about the girl (?) claiming to be from the Sakoku faction while I had spoken to over the satellite phone.
She had spoken in general terms as if she did not understand the details of Hyakki Yakou.
Yes.
It was as if someone from outside of Japan had been speaking of things within Japan based on secondhand knowledge.
Could it be?
"W-wait a second!! So was that leader of the Sakoku faction you too!?"
"No, no. That's reading too much into it. I can't split into two like a planarian. If I could do that, I wouldn't have to run away like this. In Europe, I created a community based around desire, the European Security Force, and went around winning over high officials from allied nations. That was one of those officials."
"You're still the one behind it!!"
"Yeah, but Hyakki Yakou was the one that interfered first. One of them came to see what I was doing, so I decided to check them out. They looked weak enough, so I gave the order to work our way in deeper. I pulled out too late and ended up being utterly defeated, though. It really is a bad idea to underestimate your enemy."
Despite having caused such mayhem, the Succubus spoke about it like it was nothing. It made my skin crawl.
She controlled pure desire.
She took the complex human psyche and took control of the very base.
For that reason, she had the ability to swallow up the various systems made by man, whether they were an individual's personality or the very institution of society.
When I thought about that, it sent a chill down my spine.
I was feeling a danger signal that my instincts would not let me ignore.
"Anyway, I was a character involved in all of this, so how about you reach out a loving hand to help me. More specifically, Hyakki Yakou proved more of a threat than I thought and I can't seem to escape them, so shelter me here☆"
"No! Don't say that like it's nothing! If they find out you've come here, I'll be in danger too!! And why did you choose my house!?"
"Well, my network in Europe, the European Security Force, was attacked and destroyed by Hyakki Yakou."
"Okay."
"That left only my connections in Japan, but I lost control of Saishi Kajin when they were absorbed by Hyakki Yakou. They were only meant as a disposable organization anyway."
"And!?"
"So the only connections left to me were the people involved in that incident."
"So!?"
"And of those people, you seemed to have the weakest defenses."
"That's allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!?"
She has no real plan! She has no guarantee of having escaped!! And if Hyakki Yakou attacks here, we'll be wiped out too!
I did have two deadly Youkai and a Zashiki Warashi, but that group seemed like they could lightly toss aside all standard knowledge about Youkai, not to mention humans. To be blunt, I saw no way we could win!!
I started imagining I could hear sounds like scraping claws coming from all the shadows in the gaps between the walls and furniture, behind pillars, and in the hole for smoke to escape from the Japanese fireplace. Meanwhile, the cause of my fears, the Succubus, was doing nothing but smiling.
"And so I'll be moving in☆"
Whether you wanted it or not, "they" would come.
And they brought either fortune or disaster with them.
It was looking like things were going to be very bad indeed if I did not quickly find a way to get along with them.
Notes
1. ↑ Kaikoku means "open country" and Sakoku means "locked country". Sakoku primarily refers to the extreme isolationist policies of Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate with Kaikoku being the opposite.
| ← Ch. 06 | Ch. 08 → |