Chapter 1:
The Sticker Problem
The Talisman And The Floofball
I swear, if this thing peels off one more time, I’m switching majors from ‘Applied Thaumaturgy’ to ‘Retail Management.’ At least shelf-stocking doesn’t involve having my furniture spontaneously combust.
My name is Kenji Sato, and my current life goal is to keep a sticky piece of enchanted paper affixed to a creature that resembles a perpetually disgruntled cloud.
“Fumo. Stop wiggling,” I hissed, leaning precariously over the back of my desk chair.
The aforementioned creature, Fumo, made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a wet sneeze mixed with a rusty hinge. Fumo isn't its real name, of course. Its real name, which I can’t pronounce without summoning an uncomfortable amount of localized lightning, is something that translates roughly to "Great Void-Eater of the Northern Realm," but when it's sealed, it looks like a large, fuzzy cotton swab with tiny, clawed hands and four grumpy yellow eyes. Hence, Fumo.
And the Talisman? It’s a beautifully calligraphed, ancient paper seal—the only thing preventing Fumo from reverting to its true, house-demolishing form. The problem isn't the magic; the magic is solid. The problem is the adhesive.
The seal, which looked like a fancy orange sticky note, was already listing dangerously. It was positioned right in the center of Fumo’s forehead, where the demonic energy was most volatile. If it peeled off, even for a second, I’d be dealing with something far worse than a bad grade in Ancient Script.
“Look, buddy,” I muttered, adjusting my glasses and trying to ignore the pulsing magenta glow emanating from Fumo's fur, “I know you hate the seal. It makes you sleepy and fluffy. But you know the rules. We had an agreement with the Guild: I get a small stipend for containment, and you get to exist in the Mortal Realm without destroying it. It’s a win-win!”
Fumo snorted a tiny cloud of purple vapor. It didn’t talk, not in a human language anyway. It communicated solely through various degrees of indignation and the strength of the air current it generated when it decided to ‘float.’ Right now, the air current was strong enough to ruffle the papers on my desk.
They told me, "Keep the talisman on its forehead," but it keeps falling off!
It was a mantra of my miserable existence. Every new Talisman—and I’d been through five this week—came with the same instructions from the Exorcism Guild: Apply gently, do not bend, and under no circumstances should it be replaced before the full moon.
Which would be great if the Talisman actually adhered to the forehead. I’d tried everything. I tried pre-moistening the forehead. I tried rubbing alcohol (which resulted in a miniature vortex that shredded my textbooks). I even tried a cheap craft store glue stick, which Fumo just dissolved with a sad, oily tear.
As I reached out to press the corner of the current Talisman down, Fumo chose that exact moment to execute a perfect vertical backflip.
SHHHHHHP.
The sound was terrible. It was the sound of millennia-old magic disconnecting from its host. The Talisman, my lifeline, fluttered uselessly onto my futon.
Immediately, the little ball of fluff exploded in size.
"Oh, crap!”
The grumpy cotton swab turned into a ceiling-grazing shadow—an amorphous, oily black mass with too many limbs and an eye the size of a dinner plate. The air temperature in my tiny studio apartment plummeted thirty degrees, and the low, grating noise it made felt less like a sound and more like a headache manifesting directly in my skull.
Fwump!
My tiny, cheap bookshelf—filled mostly with poorly organized light novels and discarded ramen cups—collapsed into a pile of splinters.
The stakes were clear: If I didn't re-apply the seal in the next five seconds, the shadow would solidify into something truly terrifying, likely destroying the entire building. Then the Exorcism Guild would send someone competent (and grumpy) to clean up my mess, and I’d lose the stipend. Which, frankly, was the worst consequence. How else was I going to afford the limited-edition figurine I’d pre-ordered?
I didn’t panic. I just executed ‘The Kenji Maneuver,’ a desperate sequence of moves I'd perfected over the last month.
First, I had to distract it. I grabbed the nearest object—a half-eaten bag of potato chips—and threw it.
The oily shadow paused, its huge, cyclops eye tracking the trajectory of the chips. The distraction only lasted 0.8 seconds, but that was all I needed.
Second, I vaulted over the kitchen counter, grabbing the emergency supply I kept hidden behind the sugar jar.
The emergency supply was not another ancient scroll. It was a roll of high-quality, transparent, heavy-duty packing tape.
I had discovered, purely by accident, that while Fumo's anti-magic field dissolved spiritual adhesive, it only slightly warped industrial, polyester-based polymers. It was a loophole, and I exploited it ruthlessly.
I slapped three inches of tape onto the talisman, transforming it from a fragile paper seal into an enchanted sticker bomb.
Third, the application. The enormous shadow was now starting to condense, twisting itself into a shape that looked suspiciously like a nine-foot-tall suit of armor made of pure midnight. Not good. I took a running leap onto the wreckage of my bookshelf, using it as a springboard, and launched myself towards the shadow’s pulsing core.
“Take this, you sticky menace!” I yelled, sailing through the freezing air.
With a perfect, diving tackle, I managed to reach the exact center of the oily mass, which was, naturally, the location of its forehead.
SLAP.
The packing tape held. The Talisman was back in place.
The nine-foot suit of midnight armor shimmered, shrunk, and popped out of existence, replaced instantly by the grumpy, floating cotton swab, Fumo, who landed gently in my arms.
Fumo looked up at me with its four yellow eyes, blinked slowly, and made that wet sneeze noise again, but this time it was more of a sleepy grumble. The magenta glow was gone, replaced by the faint, comforting shimmer of a successfully contained demonic entity.
I peeled Fumo off my shirt, placing it gently on the only piece of furniture that hadn't been recently destroyed—my small, folding table. The talisman, now secured by the packing tape, looked ugly, but completely stuck.
“See? Was that so hard?” I wiped a bead of sweat off my forehead. “You get fluffy, I get paid. Now, I need to find a way to explain why my landlord will smell ozone and see wood splinters everywhere. Maybe I can blame it on a faulty toaster.”
I looked at the clock: 2:17 AM. High school starts in exactly six hours. I had a math test, a paper due on feudal era agrarian practices, and now, a small crater where my bookshelf used to be.
"I need coffee," I sighed, running a hand through my already messy black hair. Fumo just stared at me, the packing-taped talisman sitting squarely on its forehead like a ridiculous price tag.
But as I finally settled back into my chair, Fumo gave a sudden, sharp jerk. Not a wiggle. Not a backflip. Just a twitch. It was the same twitch it made every time the Great Void-Eater of the Northern Realm sensed something… new. Something powerful.
I leaned closer to the creature. “What is it, Fumo? Did the toaster survive?”
It twitched again, then turned its yellow eyes toward the window—specifically, toward the light from the nearby Andrew Bell High School, where I was supposed to be studying in a few hours.
My gut clenched. The only time Fumo got this agitated was when a rift, or at least a minor tear in the spiritual barrier, opened nearby. And if it was opening at my school, then keeping this flimsy talisman on Fumo's head was about to become the easiest part of my day.
I had a very bad feeling about class tomorrow.
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