Scattering Beads

“Come again, dear,” called the old fortune teller. Her thick indigo robes swayed in the pea soup fog as her customer walked through the shrine's torii gates.

“Oh, you can bet I won’t,” grumbled the middle-aged salaryman under his breath as he stomped towards the station. “A whole month's salary down the drain, and this is all I got?” he asked, looking down at the thick black prayer beads and envelope clutched in his hands. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting coming to the shrine. It was an accident that he’d overheard someone talking about it during his lunch break. It’d been an accident that his final stop of the day was in the same neighborhood. And it’d been an accident that the old woman just so happened to be standing near the torii gate to offer him a reading as he walked by. It had to be, but then how did she know? How did she know that he’d been snuffed for a promotion last quarter? How did she know that the woman who had gotten the promotion was now his section manager, despite coming to the company nearly five years after him? “And how had she known to get these prepared?” he wondered aloud, staring down at the sealed yellow envelopes in his hands. Inside was enough dirt to ruin that woman's reputation, no, her entire career if not her whole life.

One was filled with pictures of the newly promoted section manager and the department chief going into a love hotel after the New Year's party. The second was filled with documents and accounting records proving her involvement in a massive embezzlement scheme at her previous company. And finally, one filled with the fruits of her time in adult films during her college days. Along with these three hefty yellow envelopes was a list of names and addresses. The woman was at the top, followed by the department chief, his wife, the CEO, her parents, and so on. The prayer beads jiggled as his grip tightened and his smile grew. Any one of these folders to the right address and she’d lose everything. He didn’t even have to mail them out; just showing her would be enough blackmail to get anything he could want. “Ha,” he laughed. “HAHA. I’ll show her,” he chuckled as the prayer beads jiggled. “I’ll show her what happens when you cross me. I can't wait to see the look on your face tomorrow when I—”

*Snap*

The man felt a gust of wind on his wrist, and the wire keeping the beads together snapped apart. The grape-sized beads plummeted from his wrist, scattering across the street. “Wha— No! Hey!” the man called, kneeling in a desperate attempt to collect the beads. He’d never believed in fortune tellers or the supernatural before today. But just the thought that this woman could scrounge up this same dirt on his was enough to make his blood run as cold as it ever had. Perhaps the only way it’d run colder is if it were gushing from his body into the street, or he knew just who was watching him through the fog.

Not far off, two figures lurked by a crooked tree deprived of leaves despite the early spring season. One sat crunched in the tree, body entirely obscured by the thick grey poncho that seemed to blend into the fog itself. Pulling down the poncho hood revealed a face deprived of color. Their pale skin practically glowed against the jet-black bob cut, and their eyes were covered with a visor that flowed as if made of the fog itself.

The other stood at the tree’s base, arms extended as she gripped a yumi nearly twice her height without a tsuru. The bow’s height looked almost comical at first, even more so when the missing string is noticed. Unlike her companion’s poncho, which completely hid their figure, the muneate across her chest gave a hint of her feminine features. The elegant red menoshita-men mask, which left her eyes exposed, would dispel any suspicion that such piercing blue eyes could belong to a man.

“Thread cut, beads are scattering,” reported the poncho wearer.

“Any sign of the enemy?” asked the archer, maintaining her footing.

“None yet,” reports the poncho wearer as their fingerless gloved hands stir the fog at their feet. “Perhaps they’re hoping he’ll collect the beads. He already has a handful.”

“Then perhaps we should reset his progress,” the archer suggests, already forming the Dōzukuri stance. With practiced grace, she raises the yumi above her head but doesn’t grip the string. Instead, her fingers clapped around a rosary embedded in her yotsugake glove. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” She recites the prayer as her body flows through the stages, exercising perfect technique at every stage. As she brings her arms down in the Kyūdō fashion, the bow bends despite having no string, and a thin twinkle of light sparkles through the fog despite never drawing an arrow. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” With the prayer's conclusion, the bow snaps back, sending a rush of air streaming through the fog directly at the salaryman’s hands.

*CRACK*

Just as he opens his palm to add another bead to his fist, the whole pile explodes, breaking like balls on a pool table.

“What the hell?” the man screams, eyes darting as he spins aimlessly in the fog that only seems to grow thicker. Even on hands and knees, he can’t see the ground, and realizing the fruitlessness of his search, gathers the yellow folders. “Who cares about some stupid beads?” he laments, climbing to his feet and holding the yellow folders even tighter. “This is all I really need.” With that, he walks briskly down the street, eyes darting around every corner, even as he exits the eerily thick fog that keeps his hair standing on end.

“Think that’ll do it?” asks the archer, looking up to their poncho-wearing companion. For a moment, the poncho-covered figure is silent. Eyes closed as every fiber of their being is focused on feeling every sway and vibration in and through the fog. They can sense every bead sent flying from the man's hand; how they roll down the street, colliding with the curb and each other. Even the heat they radiate, like furnaces. Unseen by anyone else, clawed hands rise from the ground. Thin and lanky limbs follow, drawing up bodies and faces covered in horns and bony spikes. Hisses and screams escape maws lined with jagged teeth as blood-red eyes flash through the dense fog. Despite the cries and shrieks, neither figure buckles. Both stared stalwart through the mist before the poncho-wearing figure glanced at a wrist watch.

“Metropolitan’s Record: Obscuring Mist and Rosary Bow engage surfacing horde at 20:29. March 3rd, year of our Lord 2040.”