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,” grumbles the middle-aged salaryman under his breath as he stomps toward the station. “A whole month’s salary down the drain, and this is all I got?” he asks, looking down at the cloth charm bag and yellow envelopes clutched in his hands. He isn’t sure what he’s been expecting, coming to the shrine. It is an accident that he overhears someone talking about it during his lunch break. It is an accident that his final stop of the day is in the same neighborhood. And it is an accident that the old woman just happens to be standing near the torii gate, offering him a reading as he walks by.

“It has to be a coincidence, but then how does she know?” he wonders, thinking back to the reading. She’d only prick his finger and place the blood on a crystal orb, yet she knew that he’d been snubbed for a promotion last quarter. She knew that the woman who got the promotion was now his section manager, even though she joined the company nearly five years after him.

“And she knew to get these prepared?” he says without realizing, staring down at the sealed yellow envelopes in his hands. Inside is enough dirt to ruin that woman’s reputation, no, her entire career, if not her whole life.

The envelopes are filled with enough documents and photos to incriminate and slander her in any number of ways. Pictures of her and the department chief going into a love hotel after the New Year’s party. Documents and accounting records that 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 jiggles as his grip tightens and his smile grows. “Any of these folders to the right address and she loses everything. I don’t even have to mail them out; just showing her is more than enough blackmail.” His face twists into a devilishgrin as the blood from his finger seeps into the charm, staining it red.

“HAHA. I’ll show her,” he chuckles as the charm jiggles more. Inside the charm, pearls are coated with his blood, radiating light and heat unseen to normal humans. “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 feels a gust of wind on his wrist, and the charm splits open as if slashed by a blade. The pebble sides pearls plummet like a waterfall from the charm, scattering across the street. “Wha— No! Hey!” the man calls, 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 can scrounge up this same dirt on him is enough to make his blood run cold. Perhaps the only way it could run colder was if it gushed from his body into the street, or he knew just who was watching him through the fog.

Not far off, two figures lurk by a crooked tree deprived of leaves despite the early spring season. One sits crunched in the tree, body entirely obscured by the thick grey poncho that seems to blend into the fog itself. Under the hood is a face deprived of color. Her pale skin practically glows against the jet-black bob cut, and her eyes are covered with a visor that flows as if made of the fog itself.

The other stands at the tree’s base, arms extended as she grips a stringless yumi bow nearly twice her height. Unlike her companion’s poncho, which completely hides her figure, the muneate chestplate across her torso hints at her feminine features. The elegant red menoshita-men mask, which leaves her eyes exposed, further dispels any suspicion that such piercing blue eyes could belong to a man.

“Charm cut, stones are scattering,” reports the poncho wearer.

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

“None yet,” reports the poncho wearer as her fingerless, gloved hands stir the fog. “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 clasp around a rosary embedded in her yotsugake glove. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” she prays. While reciting the prayer, her body flows through the eight stages of Japanese archery, demonstrating perfect technique at each. 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. Realizing the fruitlessness of his search, he 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 her poncho-wearing companion. For a moment, the poncho-covered figure is silent, eyes closed as every fiber of her being focuses on feeling every sway and vibration in and through the fog. She 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 stare stalwart through the fog as the archer glances at a wristwatch.

“Take a note for the report. Obscuring Mist and Rosary Bow engage surfacing horde at 20:29. March 10th, the year of our Lord 2053.”