/p>

Shinobu went to grab a bag with a first aid kit and emergency goods inside.

He pulled out the flashlight and helmet and ran back.

“Yukari, let’s go search for buried treasure!”

The story seemed to have grown inside his head, but once he was this excited, he would never take a nap until he checked.

He tightened and loosened a bundle of rope he didn’t really know how to use and his mother called out to him. She was skillfully holding a tray of iced tea and cookies on one hand.

“Shiiinobuuu. Will you carry this to the Japanese living room?”

“I’m looking for the buried treasure now!!”

“You’ll only get lost if you try that without a map and I won’t give you a map of the house unless you help out.”

“Drat,” cursed Shinobu as he took the tray.

While watching him totter down the hall, I asked his mother a question.

“Is someone visiting again?”

“Yes, and on this snowy day no less. She seems to be a friend of Hayabusa-kun’s. Heh heh heh. And she’s pretty high-spec if you ask me.”

High-spec, you say?

I could only think of one candidate for a “high-spec” friend of Hayabusa’s. Then again, there was only one human girl who would have a proper conversation with that fierce-looking boy.

As always, I grabbed a rag and wiped up the iced tea Shinobu had spilled on his way to the living room. Inside, a girl in a high school sailor uniform was sitting casually at the tea table.

Her name was Atou Minori.

Her black hair was gathered behind her head with a hairpin and her huge breasts looked terribly out of place in a school uniform. The legs extending from her miniskirt and their overly casual positioning were both quite seductive. She was wrapped in an aura that announced every bit of her body was top quality.

“Here you go. It’s black tea.”

“Hm? Oh, excuse me. You’re Hayabusa-kun’s broth-...no, nephew, aren’t you? How about we play a game? With the cookies stacked up like this, we have to remove them one at a time without causing the pile to collapse.”

She gave a friendly smile, but Shinobu looked troubled.

“When a guest is here, I’m not supposed to play around.”

“Eh? Oh...That’s certainly correct, but it kind of hurts to be treated like a complete stranger.”

Incidentally, Shinobu did not get so timid around the Youkai that entered the house without permission. It seemed we really were such distant beings that he saw no need to be concerned.

Hayabusa then entered the living room with a notebook in hand.

“Sorry about the wait. ...Why are you hanging your head like that?”

“The shock of a slight rejection hit me pretty hard. Can I just go home for the day?’

“What’s this? Are you a complete moron or something?”

Having completed his task, Shinobu seemed to have nothing on his mind but the treasure map his mother was to give him. However, the beautiful student council president (ha) seemed interested in the helmet he wore.

“A quick question. What is that?”

“I’m exploring the attic!! The journey to the secret treasure chest is harsh and dangerous. It’ll be a dangerous adventure.”

“Kh. Why must everything you say stimulate my interest!?”

“Atou-san.”

That quick comment was enough for Atou Minori to reluctantly sit up straight.

Meanwhile, I grabbed the curious Shinobu’s hand and pulled him back to the Western living room. We received a hand-drawn map of the house and made our way to a sliding door at a corner of the hall that led nowhere.

Inside was a steep staircase that almost looked like a ladder.

“It’s a staircase up.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Wow, Yukari! The treasure map is real!!”

“So it seems.”

I followed him up the stairs to the attic.

As an attic, the ceiling was low and it was not flat like in a normal room. It followed the shape of the thatch roof and rose to an acute angle in the center.

In exchange, it extended a good ways to the sides. It was a large house, so it should have been obvious that removing the inside walls would make a large space.

It was surprisingly warm, but I guessed that was because the house’s heat moved upwards.

“I-it’s dark...but I won’t lose! This is nothing compared to going to the bathroom at night!!”

While urging himself on, Shinobu continued further in.

He seemed not to have noticed that there were bare light bulbs hanging here and there and that he could light the area with the flip of a switch.

Darkness lurked in that space. Places like this reminded me of the organization named Hyakki Yakou that had once imprisoned me, but this place had no connection to that gloomy past.

It had originally been a large room for servants to sleep. The Jinnai house was famous for its warm reception, so I doubted it was filled with the strange kind of grudge that made spiritual something-or-others’ mouths water.

“Ksshh! Kssshhhhh! ‘Ingredient Choices that will Shorten Your Life’ begins Thursday at seven. This week, we will be taking a thorough look at the scary parts of fish that are usually viewed as healthier than pork or beef.”

“Wahh! Wh-what was that? I just heard a voice. Is someone there!?”

“Shinobu, your emergency flashlight has a radio on it. You probably hit the switch.”

After my exasperated comment, I came to a sudden realization.

“Hm?”

Because the lights were off, I could catch glimpses of the house’s light through the gaps in the floorboards. I peered down and saw the Japanese living room from before.

Hayabusa and Minori were speaking with the tea table and notebook between them.

“As I said before, that method would mean too many victims. A crime like organ trafficking stands out, so they’d want to keep things quiet. There must be something else we’re not aware of.”

“But if some shady salesman came to the closed society of an Intellectual Village, no one would fall for it. Using the TV would be the best method.”

“You misunderstand. I’m not completely denying your celebrity theory. I’m trying to say there’s something else on top of that. Something that would prevent anything from showing up even if the police searched the celebrity’s house.”

“There is one thing that caught my interest related to that.”

“You mean the online store? I thought that would be the best place too.”

The flashlight turned toward me.

It blinded me a bit and Shinobu’s excited voice reached me.

“Look, look, Yukari! This is amazing!”

“What is it, Shinobu?”

“I found the treasure chest. And it had a backpack in it! A brand new one! This is the legendary backpack that only elementary school kids are allowed to wear!!”

His grandmother had likely set this all up before she began ironing.

But despite that heartwarming thought, I couldn’t focus.

Something else tugged at my attention.

The voices coming from the small gaps in the floorboards gave me a very bad feeling.

“The celebrity advertises it on TV and the customers buy the official goods on the online store. That’s the standard way of doing it.”

“But if you could make a site similar enough to the official one to draw in some of those customers, they would buy a completely different product while thinking they were buying what the famous celebrity recommended.”

“Also, the celebrity on TV wouldn’t know the other site existed. It wouldn’t have any connection to his business, so he wouldn’t even know he was getting his fans caught up in a crime.”

“The true criminals have no connection to the celebrity, so it doesn’t matter if the police search his house. That’s how the criminals are using a national broadcast for their crime.”

Shinobu gave me a blank stare.

The voices had to be reaching him, but they may have sounded like news of a far off country to him.

“Hayabusa-kun, let’s go back over the Youkai being used here.”

“The Aburatori. It originated in the Tohoku region, but unlike other Youkai, it didn’t appear until the Meiji period. That makes it a newcomer. However, its traits make it dangerous enough to overwhelm even other Youkai. Isn’t that right?”

“It’s a Youkai that disguises itself as a farmer and slips in with the other villagers working on the farms. However, no one has ever seen its true form. The next thing they know, it’s already made its way in, kidnapped a child, pierced the child with a thick skewer for cooking fish, and roasted the child over a fire.”

“Its goal is supposed to be the oil from the child’s organs, but it isn’t known why it kills children to take their oil.”

“It’s a Youkai without the lessons present in most Japanese ghost stories. The story doesn’t teach you to go home before it gets dark, not to swim in the river, or anything else. The Youkai simply appears, kidnaps, and kills. This is a negative product of more modern times when the tradition of fear has been lost, but it’s a problem when people start spreading fear that has no countermeasure.”

I felt like my head was spinning.

I felt like I had overlooked something terrible and that I was only noticing it now that its fatal result was showing itself.

A celebrity. An online store. A Youkai that kills children. Dieting. Organ trafficking. Colorful skewers. A method of losing weight. Oil taken from the organs. Kidnapping children and removing their organs. A Youkai that performed meaningless killing. The Aburatori. A Package using that dreadful Youkai.

I turned my head with the stiff movements of a doll needing to be oiled and looked at “him”.

His supposed diet had visually reduced his weight, but the real reason lay elsewhere.

With the lightness of a marionette whose strings were cut, Jinnai Shinobu collapsed to the floor.

The backpack inside the “treasure chest” rolled out.

I could not even scream.

I used my trembling hands to roll him onto his back and hesitantly touched his stomach over his clothes.

At that point, I just about passed out.

As if I was touching a thin rubber film, my slender fingertips sank down deeper and deeper.

It was as if the organs meant to be there had vanished.

Part 12

I lost track of the flow of time.

The next thing I knew, I was in Shinobu’s bedroom and he was sleeping in the futon.

It was night outside and I could hear someone speaking from somewhere.

As I absentmindedly listened, I finally realized it was Jinnai Hayabusa’s voice.

That was just how messed up my ability to grasp the situation was.

“The Aburatori is a Youkai that kidnaps children and takes the oil from their organs. We are pursuing an organ trafficking Package that uses that trait to steal organs without anyone knowing. More specifically, it takes organs for transplant into children ten and under.”

“...”

“Organ trafficking seems like it would be naturally eliminated by tissue engineering, but young children are apparently a different story. The technology saves the healthy tissue before the illness occurs and creates new organs when necessary later. A baby born with an incurable disease can’t supply any healthy tissue, so even if the diseased tissue is used to create a new organ, there’s still a risk of the disease reoccurring. That’s why even that wonderful new technology isn’t perfect.”

“...”

“And with normal transplants, they have to wait their turn on a long list. Also, extremely young children can’t use adult organs. The lung or liver can be cut down to an appropriate size for transplant, but according to my upperclassman, there’s a limit to that too. However, there’s almost zero chance of getting an organ transplant from a brain dead child. ...And even if people would be hesitant to do evil to save their own life, parents are willing to bloody their hands for their child. Some stupid bastard is taking advantage of those feelings to make some money here.”

“...”

“Shinobu used the colorful skewers endorsed on that diet show, didn’t he? I thought that looked dangerous, but it seems you’re chosen as the Aburatori’s target if you prick the inside of your mouth with them. In other words, your organs are taken. I hadn’t caught on until recently. If only I’d been sure, I would have taken them from him!”

“...”

“The Aburatori is a Youkai that kills without anyone noticing, so even the children having their organs taken in the organ trafficking Package don’t feel any pain. Something like an emulator makes up for what was taken. Of course, that won’t last forever. If that was enough, the children waiting for their surgery could just have their organs emulated. In other words, the emulators come with a time limit. Once that arrives, Shinobu will die.”

“...”

“The key to all this is of course the skewers he was using. That celebrity who was going all out advertising them on TV and the online store where they’re sold are completely unrelated to all this. If we look into the other site, we’ll find the people behind this Package. Once we do that...”

“I’ve heard enough,” I cut in quietly.

That’s right. I had no interest in the answers the humans were looking into.

To sum it up, a Package that stole and sold children’s organs without anyone knowing had been unleashed on this village.

The effeminate celebrity on TV had advertised a skewer diet and the criminals had created a fake version of the official site to pull in a few of the celebrity’s customers.

The customers who accessed the fake site and bought the colorful skewers identical to the real ones would be sent dangerous items that contained the deadly power of the Aburatori. From there, it was a matter of probability. If some percentage of the users pricked the inside of their mouth with the skewers, they would be designated a target and have their organs secretly removed.

That was how the village’s children such as Shinobu and Nagisa had been brought into it.

As the children continued their carefree daily lives, their situation had grown truly hopeless.

Also, I most likely knew who the silly human behind it was. Real life was not a mystery novel, so the most suspicious person was almost always the criminal. In that case, there was only one possible candidate I had seen recently. They knew a lot about programming and software, they were gloomy, they had plenty of complaints about Intellectual Villages, and they were unlikely to care if they got the villager’s involved.

But I didn’t have time to gather evidence and accuse the criminal.

Shinobu’s time limit would arrive as I did so.

It could be a few hours away or only half an hour. I didn’t know the specifics, but he had collapsed because the emulator was starting to give out. I doubted I had much time left and I had to end it all before he “fully realized” that his organs had been taken.

“Yukari...”

He spoke from the futon, so I smiled and lied.

“You have a cold. Playing in the snow too much really isn’t a good idea.”

“Nn.”

I couldn’t tell if that was an agreement or a wince.

“I need to tell Nagisa I’m sorry.”

“?”

“Once my cold is better, I need to tell her I’m sorry that I said I couldn’t eat fried prawn tails.”

With that, he shut his eyes as if he had run out of strength.

Seeing it made me think quietly.

Ahh, he’s really going to die.

There’s no normal way to save him now.

The new backpack he had found in the attic lay next to his futon.

It would never be used even once.

It would become a symbol of the tragedy and it would collect dust because no one could bear to throw it out. No one had wanted it, but some unwanted interference had caused it all to fall apart.

As the thoughts in my heart scattered into a million pieces, something quietly gathered together.

I realized I had made up my mind.

Shinobu had not exactly fallen asleep. His mind was rising and falling from consciousness like when suffering from a high fever. After I watched his consciousness temporarily drift off, I spoke quietly to Hayabusa.

“You humans can continue judging the human criminal, but I’ll take a different route. As a Youkai, I’ll directly crush the Youkai at the center of this.”

The standard process was to gradually solve the mystery, find the criminal, use the traits of the Package against them, and settle it with a battle of wits.

But I was not going to go along with that.

Against someone who existed outside the rules, there was no need to follow the rules yourself.

I would render their carefully-prepared stage useless on the most fundamental level.

I would even destroy the world if it meant saving Shinobu and the others.

“Wait. Don’t tell me...”

Just once, I stroked Shinobu’s forehead as he lay in the futon with his eyes shut.

I then stood up and gave what amounted to a death sentence.

“I will personally kill that piece-of-shit Youkai known as the Aburatori.”

Part 13

To those who did not know the truth, it may have seemed like a useless action.

However, there was no such thing as a useless action in this world.

“...”

I left the house and entered the snow. The full moon was visible directly overhead in that strange snowy night. My hands desired a weapon and my feet took me to the shed.

Two small figures hurriedly followed me.

They were a Hitotsume-Kozou and a Nopperabou. I did not know them, but they may have met Shinobu somewhere.

“Are you going to fight the Aburatori? I understand how you feel, but this makes no sense. A Youkai in a Package is just having its power misused by the worst sort of human. The Aburatori simply has the ability to kill. It doesn’t actually want to kill.”

“Also, we Youkai don’t die even if we’re stabbed or shot. That doesn’t always apply when it’s Youkai vs. Youkai, but that means you’re the one in danger here, Zashiki Warashi.”

That didn’t matter.

When I arrived at the shed, I grabbed the thick padlock on the door.

I did not need any kind of technique.

I merely needed a “chance”.

I randomly stuck a wire in the keyhole and shook it left and right.

The lock readily opened, so I opened the door, looked around, and randomly reached out my hand.

“A high branch cutter, hm?”

It was a two or three meter aluminum rod with a pair of pruning shears attached to the end.

The silhouette resembled a naginata.

More importantly, it was more than enough to jab and cut with.

I bit the edge of my lip with my canine tooth, scooped up the red blood with my tongue, and pressed it on the tool’s blade.

The Hitotsume-Kozou and the Nopperabou looked troubled.

“You can’t fight the Aburatori just because you have the power to kill. It doesn’t even matter if you have a connection to the Hyakki Yakou.”

“Its true essence lies in something other than strength. It simply appears, kidnaps, and kills. In other words, no one knows where it is. That’s what makes it so frightening.”

Oh, that.

It was true the human police were unlikely to ever find the Aburatori no matter how long they searched. Not even cutting-edge unmanned security could stand up to the power of a Youkai that surpassed human knowledge.

But there was one exception and I had it.

“Do you know what a Zashiki Warashi has control over?”

“?”

“Destiny.”

Part 14

Logic and instinct were not necessary.

I simply had to obey my inborn power.

I left the Jinnai property with the high branch cutter resting on my shoulder in place of a naginata and I ran through the snowy night illuminated by the full moon. I turned right at a fork in the road without hesitation, I continued straight at the next intersection, and I entered a very narrow farm road.

A Zashiki Warashi had control over destiny.

It was something like a formless temptation. Just as TV ads, magazine ads, internet topics, and other such things created a large wave that caused the customers to choose a product, people would slip in the direction that was easier to understand or easier to move in and they would not even realize they were doing it.

But if you understood how that temptation worked, you could move against the tide and fight it.

Normally, there was no way to come across the Aburatori just from running around randomly. That was simply how the world worked. In that case, I only needed to continue in the direction I would normally never go. I had to move in the direction that seemed most out of place and that I felt the most reluctance toward. If I moved against the flow, I would naturally head toward the most unlikely destiny.

I would meet the Aburatori who I supposedly could never meet.

And I arrived at that destiny.

“Oh? What have we here?”

The hoarse voice of an old man stopped me in one corner of the Intellectual Village.

The full moon stood out to a strange degree in the blizzard.

At first, I thought it was a scarecrow standing in the center of a snow-filled paddy with no water in it.

This was the symbol of an oddity invading a farming village.

Like it was an illusion, the entire scene seemed cut off from the rest of the world. It almost looked like something from a hanafuda card.

This place was “complete”.

It was a place no one should have been able to enter.

No matter how much times had changed and no matter how much foreign culture had been imported, the Aburatori and I were surrounded by the pure scenery of “rural Japan”.

No one could encroach on this territory.

It was a transient alternate world.

And its ruler, the deadly Aburatori, stood in the center of that blue scenery.

“My, my. What an adorable intruder. However, I have no interest in you even if your name labels you a ‘child’. Why are you here?”

His kimono was dyed dark to hide any stains and it was tightened around his legs. I spotted leggings meant to protect his lower legs. Also, he had a broad conical hat on his head. This was the stereotypical outfit of a farmer, but the arms and legs leaving the kimono were closer to being those of a mummy than of an old man. His hat was worn too low to see his face, but I had my doubts about whether he even had eyes anymore.

The hat hiding his face had a pattern drawn on it that resembled a single large eye. The giant eye was filled with an imprudent brightness as if it were toying with people’s lives.

But none of that mattered and my reply was blunt.

“I am here to kill you for Shinobu’s sake.”

“Ho.”

He replied with a twisting of the voice that sounded like a mix of surprise and laughter.

“My, my. I had heard rumors I was being used for human crimes, but what has my power done now? You can discuss this with me. It pains me to think my power is being used to harm while I am wholly unaware. Now, how should we begin?”

“Try not to cry.” My voice came out as if to cut into him. “That settled it. I had thought the odds were about 50/50, but now I’m certain. Aburatori, I will kill you and I’ve found my reason for doing so. I am 100% certain that side of you is toying with Shinobu. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“W-wait. Please wait! It is true I may have been careless, but surely you understand as a Youkai who has grown close to humans. Humans are clever. They always manage to outdo us in cunning. No matter how careful you are, you sometimes simply cannot avoid being incorporated into a Package. I...I am a victim here too!!”

I felt I was being self-righteous.

Essentially, I was killing a stranger to protect someone I knew. That was no different from the parents of the sick children who were buying the organs. In order to save their precious child, they were willing to take another’s life. That was the essence of it.

“Don’t tell me you aren’t involved.”

However, I was not going to take the life of someone “wholly uninvolved”.

In other words...

“After all, you purposefully incorporated yourself into this Package because – deep down – you enjoy killing.”

A brief silence fell.

It was so silent that I almost thought I could hear the snow falling in the light of the full moon.

That silence was broken only by my voice.

“There are many different kinds of Youkai. Some curse themselves for possessing a deadly power, some reach a compromise and coexist with humans despite possessing such a power, and some...some enjoy attacking humans from the bottom of their heart. You wanted to have your fill of killing children while also shoving the blame onto some humans so you could hold the position of a victim. That’s why you overlooked the Package that you very well knew was being assembled. Am I wrong?”

He began to writhe.

An eerie wriggling as if of worms came over the unseen face below the hat.

The movement produced a laugh.

“Heh heh. Kah kah kah kah kah kah kah kah kah!! So you saw through it! You saw all the way through it! But I didn’t provide any of the material needed to reach that answer. Is that also because you’re a Zashiki Warashi in charge of destiny?”

Youkai like us were the occult given form and with a mind enclosed inside.

Thus when we were used in a shikigami, magic, or a Package, a way of controlling the mind beyond simple logic was needed. That is, if you didn’t pacify us, we would bare our fangs.

So before discussing the evil of the Package, one had to sometimes question whether the Youkai itself was good or evil.

“This child organ trafficking Package uses the TV and an online store. I thought it was an interesting setup, but it appears to have gone too far. I have a bad habit of prioritizing my prey over safety.”

“Of course it did. This kind of thing will be discovered pretty quickly. Even some local high school students had caught on.”

“No, not necessarily.”

I heard a sticky sound that made me imagine a smile beyond the hat.

“The buyers of the children’s organs would never speak a word. If they revealed that an organ obtained through illicit means was located inside their precious child, it would affect that child’s future as well as their own. So they will never speak of it. More importantly...”

I heard what sounded like heavy objects falling into the snow around us.

“The silly human behind this had a perfect plan, but they hesitated at the last second. They said they just couldn’t kill children, so they had the organs taken out as quickly as they could. I told them I would cut off the emulators to kill the children if they didn’t meet their monthly quota, so as long as this criminal system exists, they will keep the prey coming to me as if on a conveyor belt. I rearranged the entire system like that.”

They looked like pre-pack-->>

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