oonlight that pierced through the shadows.

Once I reached the mountain, a bit of a damp chill came over me.

I walked to the elevated clearing from before.

With no wind, I couldn’t even hear the rustling of the branches. Late March was too early for the insects to wake up, so I couldn’t hear any of them either. The silence was almost painful. And that may have been why I heard the whispering voices so clearly.

“Are you sure this will work?”

“Nine years. My calculations say nine years will fulfill all the conditions. That will liberate you.”

“But that boy saw me. I want to be more certain.”

“It’s a Kaeshigami, remember? You’ll be fine. You restrained yourself this long, and you only have a week until the limit. You can make it that long.”

..What? What are they talking about???

The hoarse elderly voice was likely the Aburatori, but who was the young man? “That boy” probably meant young Shinobu, but I couldn’t figure out the rest. Nine years, liberate, restrain, limit, certain..and Kaeshigami. I didn’t know what they were doing here, but it didn’t sound peaceful.

And just as I was thinking that, a young female voice spoke behind me.

“Hey, what’s going on here? We have a visitor.”

My heart jumped more at all the gazes focusing my way than at the loud voice.

The other two were focusing on the comment made by that young female speaker.

That meant they were aware of my presence.

“Hm? Where’s this visitor, Ohatsu-san?”

“Here. I’m rubbing up against them right now.”

“Yeah, but we can’t see anything there..”

I slowly looked down.

A small dog was rubbing its cheek up against my right shin.

The Sune..kosuri?

It looked similar, but this wasn’t the one that worked with Hishigami Mai. It spoke like a woman, it had a scarf around its neck, and it had a ribbon on its right ear.

The young man who had been speaking with the Aburatori then spoke in a seemingly random direction.

“Shikimi-saaan!! Can you see anything?”

“Don’t ask me.”

Surprisingly, this new voice came from directly overhead.

A girl in a kimono sat on one of the branches forming the tunnel of trees. She had a thick shimenawa around her waist instead of an obi, her long hair was a colorless white, and she was pretty yet eerie. The way she wore her hair up made it look like a strange flower, she had a surprisingly large chest, and her bare feet were dangling down, so I could see her soft-looking toes and the bottom of her feet. Her slender and lovely appearance was belied by tough mannerisms and how her arms stuck out from the collar instead of using the sleeves.

“My specialty is war, so I don’t like spending a bunch of time gathering intelligence or setting everything up just right.”

“Ha ha. And how do you expect me to do something that the founder of the Hishigami line can’t?”

The founder of the Hishigami line.

Shikimi.

I had no idea what was going on, but I could feel unpleasant sweat pouring from my entire body. I wasn’t entirely sure I could actually sweat in my nearly out-of-body experience state, though.

“You need to stop looking down and rejoicing when you find someone who can’t do something. It’s pathetic. You’re going to be a father soon, so you need to fix that self-indulgent side of yours.”

“Ohatsu-san, is the visitor still there?”

“Yes. It seems Youkai can tell ‘somehow or other’. Sensitivity and accuracy seems to depend on the specific species, though.”

“I see.”

The young man seemed to be enjoying this situation.

A moment later, I could have sworn the moonlight got stronger. Or maybe the clouds had cleared out.

And..

This man in a dress suit was surrounded by a bizarre group: the Aburatori, Hishigami Shikimi, and a Sunekosuri named Ohatsu. But rather than the kind of clothing the nouveau riche would wear just once to a special occasion, this man seemed perfectly at home in his dress suit, as if he had stepped out of an old painting. The term “old nobility” naturally came to mind. His sleek black hair was tied off at his waist and an old-fashioned monocle adorned his handsome face. At first I thought it was the monocle’s doing, but his eyes really were different colors. Also, he was accurately looking me right in the eye. He claimed he couldn’t see me, but his gaze seemed to stab directly into my mind.

“Nice to meet you, visitor.”

My heartrate increased and I felt like my throat was growing dry. In my out-of-body experience, no one from the past could harm me, but I felt like that assumption had been overturned and I had been thrown into the lion’s cage.

And without any concern for how I was feeling, he spoke.

“My name is Majina, spelled with the character for ‘curse’. Oh, and I don’t mind if you use my first name. For a variety of reasons, my family name is treated like an heirloom sword.”

As if dropping an even larger bomb than the Aburatori’s name, he pointed his thumb toward the family crest on his dress suit’s chest.

“Simply put, I am the leader of Hyakki Yakou. I don’t know the exact method, but since you’re relying on something like that, I can assume you’ve taken at least a step into our narrow field. In that case, I assume you’ve heard that name before.”

Part 4

Early in the morning on my second day in the past, young Shinobu was throwing a fit in the entranceway.

“No!!”

“Come on, Shinobu. Even Ubu wants you to let him go. They came here to spend the night on their journey, so they can’t move on if you hold onto him.”

Despite the Zashiki Warashi’s gentle attempt to persuade him, Shinobu shook his head with the Youkai in his arms.

As for that Youkai..

Is it just me or is that spider more than two meters long?

“That isn’t true! Ubu’s still a baby!! All he can say is ‘ogyaah’ and ‘baboo’!!”

“Well, he is an aggregation of stillbirths and infanticides.”

historical

“I can’t throw a baby out!”

“But I’m pretty sure he’s lived for centuries, just like me. Come on, Shinobu. Let go.”

“Uuh.. Smooch!!”

Ah!?

I-I’d always assumed my first kiss was with my parents or a relative, but..it was..with a bug!?

Shinobu of course showed no sign of noticing my shock and tearfully pulled out his Youkai Stamp.

“Listen, Ubu. We’re friends now. If you have any trouble, come see me. I’ll always be waiting!”

Some other sad exchanges like that followed and time passed.

While young Shinobu and Nagisa were playing in the large yard, another visitor showed up.

“Haaayaaabuuusaa-kuuun.”

A sexy high school girl with a kanzashi in her long black hair wore Noukotsu High School’s winter uniform even though it was spring.

Who is that? I know she must be a friend of my uncle’s, but still..

Incidentally, that uncle looked annoyed as he opened the door.

“What is it, beautiful student council president? Why the childish entrance?”

“Eh heh heh. I couldn’t help myself after seeing Shinobu-kun and Nagisa-chan playing in the yard. I’m jealous. I want to play badminton with them! Hey, hey. Could you go ask them too, Hayabusa-kun?”

But..

“This stranger is scary.”

“Stra-..!?”

“Oh, it’s Shinobu-chan’s uncle. H-hello.”

“Unc-..!!!???”

Both of them were left in shock.

The student council president even had tears in her eyes.

“Wh-what do you mean I’m a stranger? Remember when we played in the river and I held your hands to teach you the flutter kick? Or at the festival when we walked hand-in-hand in our yukatas? Or at the athletics festival when we won first prize in the borrowing race together!? I was supposed to find something I could die happy if I had, so I chose you and ran to the finish line with you under my arm!!”

“Hmm???”

“You’ve forgotten! You’ve completely forgotten, haven’t you!? Heh. But I’m not petty enough to get hung up on the past. I just have to deepen our friendship starting today!!”

..I’m sorry, beautiful girl, but in ten years, I still won’t know who you are. And I can’t even imagine how chaotic a scene it was for the school’s beautiful student council president to race across the schoolyard in bloomers with a five or six year old boy under her arm.

The two high school students gradually held up their rackets and they began a doubles match with the president on Shinobu’s team and my uncle on Nagisa’s team.

“This person is too beautiful. I can’t get close.”

“Wh-what am I supposed to do about that? But if it means getting along with you, I’m willing to eat a ton of cakes and get super fat!!”

“President.”

The high school students must have mostly wanted to help out the kids because they leisurely kept the rally going while chatting with each other.

“By the way, Hayabusa-kun, that problem from before has gone up a rank. I still have no proof, though. It’s more of an atmosphere or a thorny nuance.”

“Yeah, I know what the underlings are up to, so I’ll hunt them down before long. But you need to make sure your GPS and alarm are working.”

“It must be tough for you too. But, well, it may just come with the territory for the Jinnai Brewery.”

“This is honestly no laughing matter. Of course, I haven’t lived a clean enough life to be surprised when some shiners show up.”

???

I wasn’t the only one tilting my head in confusion at that.

Shinobu and Nagisa also looked puzzled as they smashed the shuttlecock back and forth with some help from the high school students.

“What’s a shiner?”

“Shinobu-chan, it’s a type of sushi. I think the shiny silver fish are called that.”

“Then are we having sushi today? I can’t wait!!”

But when Shinobu saw the pasta with meat sauce served for lunch, a completely dead look came over his eyes.

“..I can’t accept this.”

“Eh!? You don’t like my cooking anymore!?”

My mom was left all alone in shock, but Shinobu’s attention turned to the flat screen TV as he covered his mouth in the red of tomato. The sports segment of the news was on, but in late March, there was nothing much happening in soccer or baseball. It was more about introducing some upcoming events.

“Look, Shinobu. The sake we made is on TV. It’s being used to commemorate their victory.”

“That bottle the sumo wrestler is holding?”

“Something from the Jinnai Brewery is the standard way of celebrating the spring competition. That bottle those baseball players are breaking in front of the camera is also ours. There’s even a rumored jinx saying teams that don’t end their spring training camp with something Jinnai will do terribly next season.”

“Oh.. You’re amazing, grampa.”

Shinobu pointlessly spun around the fork he wasn’t entirely sure how to use. I could tell how hard it must be to get your kid to follow the family business. The special small happi coat he wore was probably meant to instill a sense of being a part of the industry (although it probably also had a lot to do with my doting parents.) He was an only child, so it would be a problem if he suddenly decided he wanted to be a rock star.

Once he had finished lunch and wiped off his mouth with a tissue, Shinobu began playing with the Zashiki Warashi.

“Nee-chan, look at me!”

“What is it, Shinobu?”

“Look at me!”

Shinobu was wiggling around on his back, but when the Zashiki Warashi approached, he grabbed onto her leg.

No..?

“I get in trouble if I climb the trees.”

“Well, it is dangerous and it can harm the older trees.”

“That’s why I’ll climb you. Nee-chan climbing!”

He began his after-lunch exercise.

But by afternoon, Nagisa was back with her St. Bernard.

“Sh-Shinobu-chan, I brought my What’s-This Wand.”

“What’s a What’s-This Wand?”

“My dad bought it for me. If you don’t know what something’s for, you wave the wand in front of it and it tells you. Wh-what’s this!?”

Is that a type of electronic dictionary?

Nagisa held out the toy with a CCD camera and image recognition system installed and she pointed it toward her St. Bernard.

After an electronic sound effect, it spoke in an artificial female voice.

“Guard dog of hell, two melons, hooray.”

“..”

“..”

With the same look as someone faced with a ridiculous machine translation, Shinobu and Nagisa left the What’s-This Wand on top of the shoe shelf in the entranceway.

“Anyway, let’s play with your dog! Do you want to use the ball or the flying disc?”

“Shinobu-chan. He’s saying to throw both.”

The St. Bernard barked and wagged its tail in full readiness. As I watched the dog race across the large yard, I happened to see the Zashiki Warashi circling around the veranda to the back yard.

“?”

I was supposed to be pursuing the truth of the past, so nothing was as irritating as scenes of complete normalcy. In order to gather whatever information I could, I followed the Zashiki Warashi.

And I found a sudden bombshell.

Majina of Hyakki Yakou was leaning against the house’s outer wall with his arms crossed.

“——————!!!???”

“Why are you here?”

“For a follow-up visit.”

Majina replied to the Zashiki Warashi’s stiff voice in an indifferent voice of his own while tracing his finger along the edge of his monocle.

“Don’t look so threatening. You really are worried about the Ver. 39 contained inside your body, aren’t you? You escaped long ago when it was still incomplete and unfinished and it hasn’t had any maintenance done in the century or more since. It could break at any time and no one knows what will happen when it does. Personally, it would frighten me more than a strange shape on the X-ray scan.”

“It’s not like you can do anything about it these days.”

“True enough. The Ver. 39 is a black box to us as well. We cannot reproduce it or create a new one. But that is exactly why I want you to rest easy. Hyakki Yakou cannot steal the technology even if we forcibly abducted you. As such, we have no reason to. Having nothing to gain is the proof of peace. Now, let us shake hands in the theme park!”

He jokingly held out his hand for a handshake, but the Zashiki Warashi did not comply.

Her displeased look remained as he waved his hand at her.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Why should I after what you – well, your ancestors – did to me?”

“Fair enough.”

Majina let out an exasperated sigh.

He pointed his thumb at the family crest on his chest which was modeled after some kind of animal.

“This points to the Youkai that are completely removed from any ecosystem while also pointing to the frightening human imagination. Combine the two and you have Hyakki Yakou. It’s said that Hyakki Yakou has fallen quite a bit over the past hundred years, but that isn’t accurate. It would be better to say we were insane until one hundred years ago. My generation is attempting to return us to our original form, but I do wonder how that will turn out. Whether in politics, the military, or the chair of the company president, power is a devilish thing. Once it falls within your grasp, it will drag you down without end.”

Their conversation was cut off there.

The front yard had grown much noisier. I peeked around and saw..something wearing a worn-out kimono. The small figure looked both like a child and like an old person as it hung its head at the end of the yard.

“Sh-Shinobu-chan, this Youkai is called an Akaname.”

“Why can’t he come into the house? This fizzy stuff is great! Drink some!!”

The Akaname wasn’t a deadly Youkai. It was completely harmless. However, it would lick up the limescale from the bath, so it was not well-liked in a beverage-making family. Intellectual Village brands got their value from an image of high quality, so anything that would give an unclean impression was the same as adding poison to the bottle.

“This is unavoidable. My traits and your family are incompatible.”

“Nn..”

Shinobu tilted his head.

“Then how about you play with me outside? Don’t worry. I can get along with any Youkai!”

The Akaname was pulled into their group in no time at all.

And it did not end there.

“Sh-Shinobu-chaaan! Th-th-th-this is a God of Poverty!”

“C’mon over here.”

“Shinobu-chan, what is this giant caterpillar thing? Eh? Kodoku???”

“I don’t know what that is, but let’s play together.”

As the shrill voices of playing children reached him, the man calling himself the leader of Hyakki Yakou gently narrowed his eyes.

“When I hear the word exorcism, I picture someone borrowing the power of a god or buddha to unilaterally blast the evil spirit with a smug look on his face, but this is completely different.”

“..”

“The essence of what he’s doing is removing and dispersing spirits. Were they calling him Shinobu-kun? In that way, he is demonstrating the ideal form of what we do. ..Even if we send the most virtuous priest on a rampage or send out a famous warrior with a spiritual sword in hand, there are some paranormal beings we simply cannot do anything about. But with Youkai that are immune to even the greatest violence, there are many stories of them leaving when approached in good faith. Gods of Poverty make all people equally poor, but if you fearlessly accept them in and show them proper respect, the stories say they will give you great riches. The Kodoku is the same I believe. They wield the most powerful curse which no charm or barrier can defend against, and once affected, the victim’s entire clan will be destroyed. But a man who tried to sacrifice himself for his family by swallowing the insect supposedly ended up living a long life with no ill effects.”

The man honestly sounded envious.

“I wonder how many people who can pull that off still exist in our narrow field today.”

He almost seemed ashamed of his own lack of virtue.

“We acquire all the power we desire, but in exchange for increasing the rank of our soul, we forget how to respect the paranormal. We are all distorted individuals who can only conquer our fears by becoming a greater monster than the monsters themselves. ..And because we fear being devoured by the insects on the ground once we lose speed, we build ourselves up more and more, creating a negative snowball effect. Truly a vicious circle. To be honest, we have too much power. We have enough to wipe out the human race several times over. I would like to change the direction of our field before that power spills out or the ever-expanding balloon bursts.”

This seemed to connect the normal scenery of the past and the bloody Hyakki Yakou I had seen in the present.

What have I been doing without even realizing it?

If the world really was that simple, could that messy conclusion have been avoided even when faced by such a violent Youkai?

“Is that what you’re doing in this village?”

“That is a test case. The Aburatori started it on his own, but since he was about to fail, we decided to lend a helping hand. This is a useful test for us as well. It will provide a concrete outline to our formless ideal. It’s the perfect presentation for the more destructive among us.”

What? What is he talking about?

Since it had to do with the Aburatori, it probably had some effect on the main incident here, but the Zashiki Warashi showed no real intent to stop him. No matter how good-for-nothing she might be, I wanted to believe she would act differently if the plan involved killing small children.

“Do you really think you can pull off the Kaeshigami?”

“It truly is just an ideal at the moment. But while it was on a completely different level, there is the example of Fujiwara no Michizane. Instead of starting with a Tatarigami born of human hatred, this Kaeshigami will begin with an evil Youkai. It would be perfect if we could gain more stability by downsizing that method.”

The group in the front yard must have decided playing with the dog and the ball would be difficult with so many people, so they shifted to playing house. As they sat in a circle and spoke together, Shinobu swung his arms around and gave a shout.

“I need to call Nee-chan too! This would be way more fun with her! Nee-chaaaan!!”

Majina shrugged while still leaning against the outer wall.

The Zashiki Warashi stuck her index finger against his nose to silently tell him not to show himself. Then she walked out from behind the house and toward Shinobu, Nagisa, and the others.

Shinobu was the first to speak.

“Since you’re our newest family member, you’re the baby, Nee-chan.”

“Vweh!?”

“Shinobu-chan. I don’t think that suits this Youkai.”

“It wouldn’t be a game if we act like normal! It’s fun because we do something different!!”

“Sh-Shinobu-chan. Umm, I was already worried when you made the dog the father, so..”

Hm? So how’s she going to handle this one?

The Hyakki Yakou leader and I both focused on the front yard.

Now, Zashiki Warashi, how are you going to answer that six-year-old’s request!?

“Gyah! Gyahh!! Gyahhh!!!! Baboo. I want milk, papa. Baboo, baboo.”

She..

“She did iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!! That Youkai with a 98 cm bust just went into full baby mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooode!!”

“Well, a Zashiki Warashi is a collective spirit of the babies killed during famines, so maybe this is what she’s always wanted to do.”

I felt like some strange beams were shooting from my eyes.

And while Shinobu was innocently holding a toy baby bottle to the Zashiki Warashi’s mouth, Nagisa looked horrified.

The scene before my eyes had short-circuited some wiring deep in my head, so I hadn’t noticed at first.

But..

“..!? You..know I’m here!?”

The previous night, he had needed the (female) Sunekosuri to tell him I was there, but now Majina was giving me an amused look with his back against the wall.

“One night is plenty of time to put together a technique, visitor. I would recommend not confusing me with your everyday Package maker.”

Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no! Oh, no!!

How much would this affect history? While I did have to alter history at some point to resolve the true Aburatori incident without using the Zashiki Warashi’s Ver. 39, how much influence would this small conversation have? What was going to happen now?

“Do not worry. History has some elasticity to it. Or maybe you could call it an acceptable margin of error. If the smallest phenomenon would alter the whole like the butterfly effect, then the world could easily collapse just from having you standing there. Right?”

“..”

“In other words, as long as you make no extreme contact with anything, the flow of history will not change. Having me speak to you will not change anything. The controller is in your hands and you will not spread changes uncontrollably. Yes, this was a well-thought-out structure that took safety into consideration. I can’t quite understand why it has the same scent as us, though.”

My words could reach someone now and this man stood closer than anyone to the truth of the past concerning the Aburatori.

“If only the Aburatori could join that circle as well,” said Majina as he viewed the chaotic game of house including a God of Poverty and a Kodoku bug. “Unfortunately, he is the type who brings death simply from meeting him, just like the Shichinin Misaki or the Killing Stone. Some preparations are needed for the first step to remove that wickedness. That is, to make it so he no longer brings death simply from meeting him.”

“..”

Make it so he no longer brings death simply from meeting him?

You mean make a deadly Youkai not deadly?

“It isn’t that rare an idea. Some Youkai are old gods that were brought down to that level. There are also foxes and tanuki that gained divinity from their popularity with the people. And if you look to a higher level, there is even a vengeful spirit that tried to destroy Kyoto but was raised to the level of a heavenly god. However, reproducing it with human techniques instead of relying on a miracle is another issue altogether.”

That was the Kaeshigami.

It was the phenomenon in which a feared being was transformed into a god. They became a being that was both feared and respected.

“If the Kaeshigami is completed, that deadly Youkai will be able to fully switch off his trait of indiscriminate killing. Or he can switch it on of his own will to gain power greater than that of a mere Youkai. Of course, it would be less about providing an allover power boost and more about using more detailed control to reduce the energy loss.”

It was true that anything was fine if it would defang that monster.

However, I couldn’t see why Hyakki Yakou would hold back and use such a roundabout method on the worst of the deadly Youkai. He was clearly different from a Yuki Onna or Nekomata. He only thought about killing children, he had built a time travel Package, and he had even absorbed the Zashiki Warashi to obtain even greater power. He was a monster among monsters.

But..

“The name Aburatori might fill you with negative emotions.”

A probing tone entered Majina’s voice.

“But you might have seen things differently if you were more like Shinobu-kun over there.”

Part 5

By evening, I concluded Shinobu wasn’t going to do anything else even if I continued watching him, so I left the thatch-roof house and made my way to the Aburatori’s mountain clearing.

“The Comfort Association is known as the Japanese branch of one of the top four networks, and the police are on alert due to rumors that they are holding a large event in the near future. The rumors say they will be reorganizing and..”

The ground was covered in underbrush, the trees created a canopy overhead, and the dark rundown cabin sat in front of me. Hishigami Shikimi may have been watching a 1seg TV somewhere, but I couldn’t tell where even after turning in a full circle.

Also, two Youkai faced each other in front of the rotting cabin.

One was Ohatsu, the female Sunekosuri working with Majina, and the other was the Aburatori with his large conical hat hiding his face.

They were speaking to each other.

“If the unexpected happens, take care of things afterwards.”

“The unexpected isn’t going to happen. After all, our boss is working on this.”

“But I saw him. I saw Jinnai Shinobu. No one was supposed to come here.”

“Don’t worry. You’ve resisted killing any children for nearly nine years now.”

“That was only because I didn’t see any. Viewing my target has resurrected the hunger inside me. At this rate, there is a chance I will br-->>

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