Scattering Beads

“Come again, dear,” calls the old fortune teller. Her thick indigo robes swaying in the pea soup fog as her customer walks 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 cloth charm bag and yellow envelopes 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? All she’d done was prick his finger and place the blood on a crystal orb; yet she knew that he’d been snuffed for a promotion last quarter. She knew that the woman who had gotten the promotion was now his section manager, even though she had joined the company nearly five years after him. “And she knew to get these prepared?” he said without realizing, 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.

The envelopes were filled with enough documents and photos to incriminate and slander her in any number of ways. Pictures her and the department chief going into a love hotel after the New Year's party. Documents and accounting records that would prove her involvement in a massive embezzlement scheme at her previous company. Even the fruits of her time in adult films during her college days. Along with a list of names and addresses. The woman, the department chief, his wife, the CEO, her parents, and so on. The charm 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 charm jiggled more. He could feel it was filled with something, probably pebbles or beads, but it didn't matter to him. “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 charm split open as if slashed by a blade. A tide of pebble-sized stones plummeted from the charm, scattering across the street. “Wha— No! Hey!” the man called, kneeling in a desperate attempt to collect the pebbles. 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 him 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. Under the hood was 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 further dispel any suspicion that such piercing blue eyes could belong to a man.

“Charm cut, stones 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 stones. He already has a handful.”

“Then perhaps we should reset his progress,” the archer suggests, straightening her posture to complete the Dōzukuri (correct posture) stage of shooting. 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 eight 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 pebble 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 charm?” 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 stone 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 extend from the stones. Thin and lanky limbs follow, drawing out bodies and faces covered in horns and bony spikes. Hisses and screams escape maws lined with jagged teeth as the bodies grow from palm-sized to meters tall in seconds. 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 10th year of our Lord 2053.”