hat..?”

Red was the symbol of the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi, so was this the Ver. 39 running out of control?

Once I realized that, the presence of the spinning kaleidoscope grew much larger in my mind. It was the first and last piece needed to seal away the Ver. 39’s ruinous power. Grabbing it would reject its destiny. That was why this paranormal phenomena had started and why the Zashiki Warashi had transformed. With each millimeter the kaleidoscope approached my hand, she had to be leaving reality at a quadratic rate.

The Zashiki Warashi’s yukata had become a sea of handprints. Her ankle-length black hair began to move. Something danced within that hair that had the luster of polished ebony. They were bones. Specifically, human skulls. These too looked like they belonged to small children. They swam freely through that sea of fine black hair like the moon reflected in a lake at night. Sometimes a skull covered her bangs, sometimes one circled behind her with the long black hair acting as a screen, and sometimes one clung to the side of her head like it was rubbing cheeks with her.

Then I recalled that the Zashiki Warashi was an aggregation of the children killed during famines and the like.

She took the form of a sexy Youkai, but if someone like Majina of the old Hyakki Yakou broke her down into her original phenomenon, countless deaths would cling to her.

These had not attached themselves to her. They were coming out from within her.

That was why we had built the Package.

That was why I was attempting to grasp that first and last chance.

And the skulls swimming through her hair used a low, low voice to give me a simple but absolute command.

The voice seemed to come from the headphones she always had around her neck.

“Die.”

It was filled with hopeless malice.

The almost childishly simplified statement was innocently sharp. That may have come from the mentality of those children killed to have one less mouth to feed.

Then the distorted sense of time came to an end.

My fingers finally touched the kaleidoscope.

I grabbed it.

“Yukari.”

I called her name, but I already knew deep down that I wouldn’t get an answer.

She changed again.

She passed some kind of limit.

She was now the Bloodstained Zashiki Warashi. She was something meant to invite death to the world.

So I said more.

“I will bring you back. I will save you.”

My senses returned.

A moment later, everything vanished.

Except for the Zashiki Warashi and me, the entire world became a tatami mat floor that stretched beyond the horizon.

It went far beyond the concept of projection mapping. My ability to verbalize it was about at its limit. Her long black hair slithered like snakes and hid more than half her face. Small decorative jewels glared at me like twisted eyeballs. Countless handprints moved across the yukata that contained her bewitching body. The entire world had been blotted out as soon as they had dripped from the bottom of the yukata like drops of water and reached the floor.

“..!!!???”

The tatami mats were bright crimson, as if soaked with fresh blood.

The heavens were pitch black, as if dyed with evil.

Flames flickered atop tall candlesticks lined up at even intervals as far as the eye could see. Those flames were the only light source. Candles were commonly seen as symbols of life or a lifespan. There was also the eerie legend about a Zashiki Warashi predicting a fire before its family declined and fell into ruin.

It was all so colorful and psychedelic. Everything grounded in reality had been erased from this world.

But I kind of understood. I had no proof, but I felt like I understood since I’d been with the Zashiki Warashi all my life.

A Zashiki Warashi manipulated destiny.

But they were not destiny itself. They were just the controller or the terminal. In other words, there was something deeper. You could call it the main unit or the server. We had been dragged up from the world we normally lived in and had reached a higher “stage” where that server lurked.

You could call it the hidden side of the world.

Or maybe it was the source code hidden behind the browser that gave it a nice understandable visual form.

It was possible I couldn’t properly grasp what this place was using my five senses. It may not have actually been what I was seeing. It was just like how the ancient Greeks used a combination of animals when imagining a monster. I couldn’t deny the possibility that it was just so psychedelic that the resources in my mind could only throw together some kind of montage to show me.

This was probably beyond what the human mind could comprehend.

What did this look like to the Zashiki Warashi who was always in contact with this?

But to my eyes at least, something pulsed down the surface of the candlesticks with each flicker of the flames and then slithered along the crimson tatami mats. I could not help but understand that this was causing “something” to happen in the world we knew.

Messing with that would destroy all of the emotions of the people working so hard to live day in and day out.

Then it hit me what exactly the destiny controlled by the Zashiki Warashi really was. I didn’t even have to confirm it.

It came down to inevitable decline.

It was the idea that decline was inevitable for even the most prosperous person.

That concept had worked itself deeply into the Japanese psyche over a thousand years or more. Think of Dan-no-Ura, Honnouji, or Sekigahara. Even historic figures who influenced an entire era were forced to accept their own ruin as inevitable when the powerful, powerful fangs and claws of destiny reached them.

But there was nothing odd about it showing up here.

I mean, that’s just what a Zashiki Warashi was. They brought prosperity when they arrived at a house and they drove the house to ruin when they left. They were truly the messengers of inevitable decline. That was a concept you couldn’t remove or ignore when talking about a Zashiki Warashi.

There were beginnings and there were endings.

There was creation and there was destruction.

There was life and there was death.

There was no opposite pattern. It was inevitable, so it was only a matter of sooner or later. Whatever the speed, the gears could only turn in one direction and those gears were the true essence of a Zashiki Warashi. And as I was trying to forcibly turn those gears in the opposite direction with the kaleidoscope, the Ver. 39 seemed to speak to me.

It seemed to say I had successfully acquired your beloved and that was exactly why destruction must come to me.

It was truly awful.

The greater my success, the greater the absolute defeat that would follow.

It was the extreme form and original version of the childish idea that people had a fixed amount of luck so if something good happened, something bad was sure to follow.

Inevitable decline was a truly frightening sort of destiny. It was an unshakable malice and nothing could be more persuasive as every Japanese person understood it. Everyone assumed good luck would not last forever and often even wanted to see the successful suffer. The nail that sticks out gets hammered and we all fall equally. It was a subconscious aggregation of evil thoughts. It was a dark inheritance that no one had ever been able to throw out.

It could be the Taira clan and the Minamoto clan.

It could be Oda, Toyotomi, and Tokugawa.

Even if they had conquered Japan, that ultimate and solitary law would drag them down from the stage of history and force the end of an era onto them. In a way, it was a form of destiny that every Japanese person could picture just by closing their eyes.

But.

Even so.

That didn’t matter.

I didn’t care what it was. What I knew was simple but could not have been more critical. The Ver. 39 had been gently using natural shifts in destiny to interfere with us before, but it had finally decided drastic measures like this were necessary. It had brought out the handprints on her yukata and the skulls in her hair while showing off this hidden side of the world. This could not have been worse for me, but the same went for it. This dead end was also my best chance of turning this around.

And turn it around I will, Ver. 39.

I don’t give a crap about inevitable decline. I won’t let you turn this success into ruin. I’ll turn this ruin into success. You could only settle in and leave and you could only give out and take away fortune on a whim, but I’ll show you a new path.

That said, I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do with the kaleidoscope.

But when I reflexively took a step toward the Zashiki Warashi, a change assaulted me.

“?”

The skulls used her headphones to howl emptily at me.

“Die.” “Die!” “Fail.” “Ah ha ha!!” “You’re going to fail.” “Are you stupid?” “Ee hee ha ha ha!!” “Why are you taking this so seriously?” “Die!” “Give up.” “Everyone must die!!” “Stop.” “Shut up.” “You’re an eyesore.” “Shut up!” “The way you take this so seriously is just a pain.” “Ksh.” “Kssshhhh!!”

The deluge of noise lost all meaning and became a single cracked roar.

It was on the move. Faint drops of light ran through the Zashiki Warashi’s long glossy black hair.

As soon as that light dripped to the red tatami mats, an infinitely expanding ripple instantly flowed to the horizon in every direction.

That was when it happened.

The way was forcefully closed. Countless translucent and glowing red sliding screens closed in from the left and right between Yukari and me. Some symbols were drawn on the surfaces, but there were too many of them to make out any individual one. I simply saw the Zashiki Warashi standing beyond that red color.

It looked like less than ten meters, but the infinite number of ultra-thin screens created an absolute wall in my way.

They were red.

They were bloodstained.

They seemed to be refusing anyone that would shake her existence, her coloration, and her essence.

“To hell with that..”

What did those screens mean and what were they really?

Why would I bother thinking about that?

“To hell with all of this!!”

I gathered speed and prepared to kick through them rather than open them.

Immediately, I felt my sense of time die once more. This second time, it finally occurred to me that it was much like the feeling of running out into the road and finding a tanker truck approaching you. It was a lot like having your life flash before your eyes. When I felt that and had the incomprehensible phenomenon surround me, I finally realized what those translucent red screens were.

Each and every one was filled with just as much “death” as a speeding tanker truck. An endless supply was lined up before my eyes as a barrier that I couldn’t breach no matter how many lives I had.

Part 10 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

We had no choice but to do it.

We used the Yakata-II cruise ship’s trading room to wage war with the Hishigami Group that was interfering with the satellite debris business by sending debris to the earth, including the nuclear batteries and tanks of dangerous rocket fuel. Seika-san and Madoka-chan bought up the rocket launch brokers they were trying to use while we made waves of posts on the message boards and forums people from that business used. We insisted that the Hishigami General Trading Group was doomed to fail and working with them would end badly.

There were plenty of ways to send something into space these days.

In addition to the rockets and shuttles managed by the government, there were projects by companies and universities that launched single-stage rockets from high-altitude airplanes or giant balloons that reached the stratosphere. Groups and organizations with the tech to leave the atmosphere were popping up like bamboo shoots after a rain.

That meant buying up and crushing each and every one would no longer work.

The infinitely expanding possibilities defeated our limited buying ability. We had to close off those many possibilities by informing the world that they would gain nothing by working with Hishigami. That was our only chance.

And yet..

“Warning: They’re doing this to help us all, so why would you try to make them sound dangerous? Do you just want attention? Are you shilling for someone?”

“Squall: And when the killer satellites detonate to bring down the debris, won’t the exploded killer satellites make new debris? It’s like a perpetual motion machine! It’s a never-ending lottery!!”

“Kitty Lion: If you’re against this, you must be one of those people getting rich off the satellite debris. Yes, yes. Pay them no heed. Better luck next time!”

..

..

..

“Damn, it’s no good! We’re telling the truth, but they make us out to be the bad guys. How can they rejoice at a civilian project that’s going to contaminate the entire world!? Do they want to see destruction that badly!?”

“You might not be that far off the mark,” muttered Enbi. “There isn’t some mastermind behind this. Hishigami is becoming something of a symbol, but they aren’t directly manipulating the information. This is the overall will of the internet. They’re averting their gaze from the destruction as they approach the cliff. Doesn’t it look like they’re enjoying the aesthetics of destruction? Just like how the ancient Greek empire had its fill of all kinds of entertainment and then decayed amid corruption and degeneracy.”

“I refuse to believe that,” I spat out.

It may have been true Japan was enjoying the festivities. The network and the bonds magic trick had given them plenty of money, they had bought everything they wanted, and they had nothing else to spend their money on, so they were pouring money into this nonsense.

But that wasn’t all.

In Intellectual Villages, there were plenty of farmers who created those valuable vegetables. There were also plenty of living national treasures. There were craftsmen whose metalworking could not be recreated by the precision machinery in the city and performers who continued the traditions of noh and kabuki.

In fact, it didn’t matter if they had special qualifications or a name everyone knew.

It could just as well be the people working hard at convenience stores or gas stations. Or the daily paper boy and the delivery service for old folks with weak backs. There were plenty of people working to keep the gears of society turning without getting involved in these festivities!

And you expect me to believe they were drowning in desire and wished for death?

Nonsense.

People were free to grow world-weary and let their hearts fester if they wanted, but I couldn’t let that subsection of the rich drag everyone else down with them!

This may not have been the core of the issue and it may not have mattered to Shinobu and the Zashiki Warashi, but no matter how far removed from the center this was, people were still suffering. Then how could I allow it to continue? I had to stop it here!

Enbi must have liked how I had replied so quickly because she giggled next to me.

And she spoke.

“Then let’s continue our futile struggle to the very, very end.”

Once the Mystery Freak said that, I heard a confused voice from Madoka-chan.

“We have some requests coming in. Um, they’re from..PSI_ver_RAIN and Anemura Kaede???”

“Finally.” The twintailed demon snapped her fingers. “One’s an online idol whose new songs reach thirty million views within twenty four hours and the other’s a regular member of the national idol group Tarot Girls 22. With them on our side, we can change the direction this is headed! We can destroy this disgusting mood of pessimism!!”

Part 11 (Hishigami Mai)

A tremendous blow hit the Supplier’s modified tour bus. The entire vehicle shook. My focus shifted to the handgun hidden in the heel of my boot. The large bus weighed a dozen or so tons on its own, so it wouldn’t budge from a normal vehicle collision.

That meant something just as big had hit it.

The Supplier had been driving it around, but now he gave a wide-eyed shout.

“Mai-san! A twenty ton truck is attacking! Any ideas who it might be!?”

“Oh, honestly..”

I looked out the tinted windows and a call reached my satellite phone.

I kept rejecting the calls, but he couldn’t take a hint!

“Hi, Mai. It’s your brother. I couldn’t bear it any longer, so I came to discuss it with you directly. Could you maybe destroy the Hishigami Group we’ve constructed!?”

“Kyou-chan, what happened to the reasonable-obsessed brother I knew? Not even the underground businesses crash their vehicles together like a Hollywood movie in this camera-filled city!”

“Hah hah hah. Didn’t I tell you? We can only obey what people consider reasonable. Look at the city around you. This is spreading without end. We’re approaching a world where this kind of dangerous driving is perfectly normal.”

I heard screeching tires.

But it did not come from our bus or Hishigami Kyou’s truck. A few fancy Italian cars had drifted through the intersection right in front of us. It looked like the drivers were college aged if not younger. And based on the roar of the engines, they had clearly been tuned to pro racing standards. These were not cars that should be driving on public roads.

If they lost control at that speed, the sidewalks would become a sea of blood in no time, but the crowds were cheering rather than screaming. They were starting to turn their smartphone and cellphone lenses toward the cars as they uploaded photos to their blog or gave commentary on a live broadcast.

It could not have been sillier.

“What counts as reasonable is only going to get more sickening.” The voice seemed to be cursing that fact. “Do you know what our company is doing now? We have no choice but to be dragged down with this god-awful moral hazard!!”

The heavy masses crashed together and sometimes knocked down telephone poles and streetlights, but I was focused elsewhere.

Specifically, the roof of the truck’s trailer.

The bodyguards with names like Zei and Akane wore the kunoichi-like Yozakura suits while hiding below cloaks covered in patterns that used the science of perception to divert attention away.

“This isn’t good. They’re going to board us, Supplier!!”

“So please do something about this!” said my brother. “Isn’t that your role, Mai!?”

With those words, red Zei, blue Akane, and yellow Ran lightly jumped between the two vehicles and smashed through the reinforced glass to get inside.

Youkai medicine had been used to artificially implant these monsters with Hishigami Women traits.

I ignored the storm of glass shards and took a breath to prepare myself while Zei tossed aside her cloak and spoke with no expression on her face.

“Assist us, original.”

“Oh, shut up. Unlike you artificial ones, I have no obligation to help a rich man with his hobby.”

“That is fine.”

I had not expected that answer.

Zei jerked her chin toward the truck.

“Throwing our lives away for Kyou-sama would be our greatest joy. His meeting with Uchimaku Hayabusa should have planted the seeds of a pleasant change inside him. We cannot allow that sprout to be trampled, even by Kyou-sama himself.”

“..”

I fell silent.

As a ferocious wind entered through the broken window, the Sunekosuri ran back and forth in confusion.

“What do you want me to do?”

“That truck is not meant to destroy the target by crashing into it. It is a special vehicle created to carry something.”

“Hold on. You don’t mean..!?”

“Ou.”

Zei spoke a name.

That name meant “slaughter”.

“She is a failure based on the anti-human Hishigami Enbi. If she is activated here, this city of thirty million will be destroyed. Kyou-sama’s rational side is just barely holding him back now, but if the reasonableness afflicting him grows any more distorted, there will be no stopping it. We want you to cut the storage pod from the truck before that happens.”

Part 12 (Jinnai Shinobu)

“..”

I still didn’t know what the screens were.

But the Zashiki Warashi’s Ver. 39 power to control destiny had likely done something.

It was getting in my way, keeping the kaleidoscope away, and protecting its system.

It was using the law of inevitable decline to rob me of success.

“See?” “You failed.” “You’ve failed.” “No chance of success remains.” “You will die.” “You will fail.” “You will lose everything.” “You tried to act cool.” “You tried to act important.” “But you only embarrassed yourself.” “So watch as you lose everything.” “Reach for it.” “Realize you can’t reach it.” “Die.” “Die!” “Die!!” “Ksshh!!”

The skulls displayed in the Zashiki Warashi’s black hair mocked me through her headphones. They were saying I’d fallen for their trap and stepped onto the rails of ruin on my own. And they did so with a childish sort of evil.

But..

“Ha ha.”

You little brats.

Do you really think you can steal my girlfriend from me?

You might as well have already given me the answer.

If the Ver. 39 was working this hard to keep me away, there had to be a good reason for that.

I didn’t know how to use the kaleidoscope.

I knew nothing about occult Packages.

If it hadn’t done anything, I might have wandered aimlessly until I ran out of time.

But it had pointed my compass in the right direction.

And in the most difficult direction.

Thanks for telling me I just need to get close to the Zashiki Warashi, Ver. 39!!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

I gathered enough strength in my body to break free of the seemingly stopped time brought on by the fear of death.

It felt like the very space around me was cracking.

But then red filled my vision.

——And deep within the rising fear, “it” truly assaulted me.

After a bright flash, I found myself somewhere other than the infinite expanse of tatami mats.

I saw nothing but gray dust for as far as the eye could see. It was a rural scene filled with every form of contaminant imaginable. In this land of the end, simply breathing in and out and simply blinking my eyes filled me with such intense pain that I thought fire was bursting from every hole in my body.

“Gblgh!! Agweh!! Glgah!!!!”

I somewhat understood.

This was the Hyakki Yakou Prototype Ver. 39 Zashiki Warashi.

She could control not just the current destiny, but create a brand new branch of destiny.

Those barriers.

Each and every screen contained an image of hell. It was those images that Buddhist monks drew on screens as a simple warning of what would awaited those who were excommunicated. Those screens of light had a thickness approaching on zero and they were filled with images of failed destinies, mistaken worlds, and hells.

So this was a parallel world that could have happened. It was the result of a mistaken choice on my part. For example, if I had relied on the CIA at Goldmine Island and the national suicide Package had activated, this is what would have happened to the Japanese archipelago.

The pain rushed at me all at once.

I coughed up blood, my blood vessels seemed to crawl below my skin, and I clenched my teeth.

Even so, I moved forward.

I bore the pain of an entire world and moved further forward.

——And “it” wasn’t just the one.

I saw the world after the archipelago filled with zombies according to Majina’s plan. The living dead grabbed at my arms and legs, bit into my flesh with teeth that reeked of decomposition, and tore me apart. Finally, I felt the fear of having my body rot from within.

I was swallowed up by that fear.

But I didn’t care if my arms and legs were torn away or if my organs were dragged out.

I just had to move forward.

I had to keep going.

As I clenched my teeth and worked against the powerful headwind, I suddenly wondered what my enemy was here. I knew it wasn’t the Zashiki Warashi, but it might not have been the Ver. 39 either. Countless handprints oozed out onto her yukata and skulls swam through her glossy hair. They would sometimes circle around to the back with her black hair as a screen, they would sometimes cover her bangs, and they would sometimes move the side of her face as if rubbing cheeks with her. But even they may have been a broken safety device running out of control. Inevitable decline. The hidden side of the world where forgotten destinies gathered. The fragments of the ages gathered here, from past events like Dan-no-Ura, Honnouji, and Sekighara to the “what ifs” where mistaken choices had led to ruin for any number of reasons. The entire world was swallowed and chewed to pieces, and the fragments gathered in this graveyard. Had this awful “something” been dragged toward us because the Ver. 39 had carelessly reached it and contacted it?

In that case, this fight wasn’t about good or evil.

It was about putting a lid on the ruinous power pouring down on us. It was about closing the floodgates in a world of neither good nor evil.

I would do it.

I understood that. I understood it now.

It didn’t matter what I was up against.

I would reach my one and only beloved Yukari no matter what!!

——“It” had a seemingly infinite number of layers.

In a world where I had failed to stop Archdemon Tselika Wien Alpha Chelydia Lumidrier who did not quite qualify as one of the seven deadly sins, I was swallowed up by such great sweetness that my entire vision grew bright red and I convulsed with blood pouring from every hole in my body.

“Gah..bah!! Khah!? Cough!!”

In a world where the Aoandon’s plan had succeeded, I learned true exhaustion and weariness as I wandered endlessly through an empty rural scene where none of the Japanese remained.

“Ah, ahh, ahhhhhh...”

In a world where the worst of the deadly Youkai, the Aburatori, had taken control of time, space, and destiny, I nearly went mad from the psychedelic scene of organs hanging from the branches of every tree as far as the eye could see.

“Gyahhh!! Gyagahhh!?”

In a world where Kawabata Megumi, the old woman who had created the Aoandon in Zenmetsu Village, had succeeded with her plan, I felt the intense pain and fear of having my body thoroughly chopped to pieces by Kusanagi which precluded all defense and evasion.

“Oh, kh..! Khah!!”

In a world where Australian Witch Marguerite Steinhols had obtained the Succubus, I was continually afflicted by the dreadful sensation of having my soul rot thanks to Western magic.

“Ah, ahh..”

<-->>

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