The Last Time This Prideful Male Underestimates Women

How would a person react when they hear a voice out of the blue? They would try to find the source. But Raven couldn’t find any, even checking if a troublemaker had, for some reason, snuck an earbud on her.

“I’m speaking directly to you. As a kami you had prayed to, I’m looking out for you.” Naturally, I would never introduce myself as the Horseman of Death.

“I didn’t donate to any shrines.”

“You did. During the New Year Visit.”

“That is tradition. Everyone does that for obligation’s sake.” She got a little heated here.

I didn’t have time to argue with her. More goons were gathering nearby, searching for what the device detected. The bright side was that they didn’t know our specific location yet, thanks to the nature of my spirit scrambling the information flow. The gentlemen Raven was observing remained at their posts inconspicuously, so Raven still thought that her stake-out was progressing smoothly.

“7923014, and your PIN is 9467.”

Raven’s expression tensed up. Hearing your bank account number and PIN so casually must feel the same as having a gun pointed at you.

I rode her shock to hammer home the reality. “I have a better way to hurt you than with false information. So, when I said they know someone is watching, they are.”

“How do I know I’m not hallucinating?” She just had to refute me in another way.

“There’s a ten-yen coin inside that small can in the corner.”

Raven spotted the litter and verified my information, while pocketing the coin as if she needed it. I would never tell her that I sensed urea on both objects.

“I’ll believe you. For now. What should I do?”

What can I say? Bribery always works.

“Slowly and carefully, get off the roof. Act natural. They don’t know what you look like.” A sensible person would follow my instructions immediately, but…

“So they don’t know anything at all. Running away would be more suspicious.”

These few minutes of interaction already reminded me how infuriating the hosts could be. The snark and the self-importance. I almost had the urge to… And halt. I withheld the flow of unnecessary thinking. Any more and I would be dragged into irrelevant memories.

“They have the resources and tools to search everyone one by one. Do you want to stay a sitting duck? Or I can guide you out of here safely.”

“How will you do that?”

“Hello? I’m a kami? I found you the coin, didn’t I?” There were restrictions to what present facts my quasi-omniscience could tell me, but she didn’t have to know those limits yet.

“Oh, I thought you could only locate riches.”

Really tempted to tell her about the urea.

I didn’t have to though, since Raven finally graced me with action, taking one painfully long step at a time down the stairs.

“I told you to move slowly and carefully. Not pretending to be a sloth.”

“You should have been more specific.”

Finally, Raven settled on solid ground, with only three minutes wasted.

“Go left.”

I led Raven along the optimal route as if I were Poodle Maps. Normally, tech companies like Poodle would charge millions of yen for a premium magic-integrated navigation system, but Raven couldn’t appreciate me providing it to her for free.

The stiff posture. Her hesitant movements. The peeks around corners when I already told her that there was nothing behind it. These features showed me how little she trusted me. That wasn’t the issue, nor was her complete lack of gratitude, but that the drones buzzing ahead would surely find her strange.

“You are acting too anxiously. They will notice.”

“Easy for you to say,” she whispered.

What I considered came to pass. The drone operator, in his air-conditioned office, spotted Raven and deemed her behavior fishy.

“The drone saw us. Run.” I said right as the operator turned around to wave at his superior.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, are you waiting until you’re surrounded?”

Raven inhaled a deep breath. Her heart urged her to flee. A single bead of sweat squeezed out from her forehead.

“Screw it.” She sped up into a jog, finally accepting the directions I fed her without a clever comeback.

Good timing. The goons near us just got their calls; Raven’s appearance was conveyed, and they sprinted towards their newly assigned location. The street where we were.

A few streets later, Raven got a glimpse of the first goon in a suit, at the other end of an alley she passed. His outfit was professional but impractical. He was already panting from the minimal exercise, clear as day that he was only part of the B team, and perhaps he should train his physique in his spare time instead of lounging around watching anime.

“How many… of them... are there?” Raven kept her breathing rhythmic and her pace regular to preserve her stamina, a technique I had to give her credit for.

“Fifteen. You are messing with a huge client. Don’t blame your informant. He didn’t know about this.” She was lucky that the magic users were sticking with the actual VIP. Or else the chase would be so much messier.

“You know… about… my informant?”

“Turn right here. And yes, I told you. I know everything.”

Two other goons were hot on her tail, but it would be a while before they could catch up; the rest attempted to cut off her escape path, but they weren’t quick and flexible enough, needing instructions from their command center for coordination. Whereas I instantly found the gaps in their formations and took advantage of them, misleading the headquarters by concealing the actual intentions I had in mind.

They were right that I wanted to get to a crowded area, the part of the Kichijōji Honcho that tourists would frequent. They tried to counter that by positioning personnel to block all the routes. The staff spying on Raven almost cheered as she crossed into a street with no unguarded exit. They seemed to have us cornered.

Raven tensed up when she saw the finish line. We were at the edge of the commercial area, but in our way was one of those pompously dressed goons, his stance firm, entirely focused on stopping us. He was a head taller than Raven, somewhat muscular, and had a red belt in taekwondo.

But I picked this route for a reason.

“Relax. I’ll take over your body for a moment. Trust me.”

“What? Hey!” Raven stumbled a little from my sudden control over her legs.

“Don’t move your body if you want to escape.”

Raven didn’t respond to my warning. Whether she was too shocked or scared to do so, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. My focus was on the obstacle I was charging towards. A man named Nonaka Kenta.

I knew his fear. I knew his insecurities. I knew his worries.

Almost there. He opened his arms, not even thinking it necessary to fight me.

He thought the outcome was decided. And it was, but not in the way he expected.

“It’s your fault Pochi died. He is in hell now because of you! Weak boy Kenta!” I screamed at the top of Raven’s lungs.

A beloved pet that had died a few days earlier, and a name from a bullied childhood. The unprocessed trauma stunned Kenta. He had trouble processing what I had just said.

That meant an opening. Sure, he had a red belt in taekwondo, but…

I was at the expert level for several schools of martial arts and had hundreds of years of experience, while residing in a variety of bodies of different shapes and sizes.

In other words, he was so screwed.

He didn’t even get to attack. In one smooth motion, I punched him in the gut, and passed by him without a dent in my speed.

It was a breeze from there. I relinquished the control of the body back to Raven, and she blended into the crowd, obscured from the drones and shaking off the other goons in pursuit. In the end, though they deployed a number of guards around the area, it was more of a show to the client than for any practical purposes. They couldn’t even stop one woman from escaping.