Papa's Grimy Underwear Smells Like Dirty Coins

“Attachment…” Hazama started as her fingers cut through the table’s dusty surface. “The majority of our magic scholars believe that at the time of our deaths—when our subconscious realizes that our bodies can no longer contain our souls—we forcibly unlock the ability to project our mana and attach it to things as a last-ditch effort to survive. What do you think?”

Hoshino pulled his wand out of the pocket of his jogging pants, careful not to let Hazama see. “I think it was wild how we got a very heated debate out of that during training. How about you?”

This stillness in the air was unnerving.

Inside him were two wolves. The first wolf was certain that someone—or something—was watching them. The second wolf was supposed to be playing mind games; it had long abandoned the board in favor of wanting to taste another matcha bun instead of thinking of ways to prove that someone was, indeed, watching them.

The table was clear. It was largely unused, which could explain why the guy was an athlete.

It was quite easy to spot malevolent magical signatures, especially the malevolent ones. The habit was drilled into him as soon as he learned how to manifest and command his mana.

Hoshino looked for a flame-like, bright yet grayish energy or aura. Cursed objects. He had seen a few: a broken teacup that whimpered under the moonlight; a rusty box cutter that gave its user the ability to drop sick beats with their mouth, along with an insatiable thirst for blood; a blue-haired sexy figurine saved from a jar he would rather not describe; shoelaces that couldn’t be untangled for a week once tied; pink BDSM handcuffs that carried a deep, malevolent smell. The one item he could not forget—which held the greatest amount of malevolent mana—was a pack of purple kitty cat band-aids.

A cursed object’s signature could appear as bright as a torch or as faint as a matchstick’s flame. But of course, all that shit wouldn’t help you tell how dangerous a cursed object truly was.

Hoshino’s eyes drifted to the closet behind them. It had no trace, but it was still worth a shot.

Hazama probably thought the same thing with the table, but she went the extra mile and checked the victim’s workbooks, notebooks, pens, scissors, and other items that had not been touched for many moons. Hoshino took the opportunity to stand guard and watch her work.

“The theory is largely unproven.” Hazama placed the last pencil down on the table. “It’s so bad that the only thing everyone can agree on is that we don’t know enough.”

Hazama faced the closet with a firm grasp on her wand. Her glasses gleamed. She was waiting. She probably caught Hoshino glancing at the completely normal-looking furniture behind them and found it within her purest heart to test him again.

It was unfortunate that he had no other choice but to bite.

Hoshino pointed his wand at the closet and exchanged glances with Hazama. She eyed him up and down. He swallowed. She was onto him. She was definitely wondering where he could’ve hidden his wand. Nevertheless, she seemed pleased and threw back a small nod a second later. It was his go signal.

Hoshino opened the closet. Surprise, surprise—it was nothing special. It was just the victim’s clothes; his school uniform and gis were also there, but both of them were clean. No magical signatures. Nothing.

The revelation chucked him back to the drawing board. He wanted to check the dirty magazines and cigarettes, but if it had passed by Hazama, then she might’ve dealt with it already.

“Good work, Hoshino-san.”

Hoshino fought to keep his smile as he nodded back. There was nothing to boast about. This was standard protocol. But it wouldn’t hurt to turn down her praise. Sweeping through a crime scene—particularly if it was supernatural in nature—was required to be done in pairs.

His eyes moved from the windows to the ceiling and then to the bloodied floors. Weird. He was becoming more and more aware of the room and the ripeness that choked it. His heart started to race.

Another nasty thing about cursed objects was their potential to develop a shell of a personality on top of manifesting a curse. Worse, this personality could further evolve into a full-blown malevolent spirit. In both cases, the item or the spirit could consciously suppress its mana to protect itself; at this point, it could only be identified if seen directly by an exorcist or by a dedicated detection spell. Hazama probably knew one but was holding herself back to test him.

Which was fair.

Hazama let the tension thickening her shoulders loose. “My gripe is that our scholars are too focused on pursuing the ‘truth’ instead of making the myriad of observable and provable tidbits of knowledge more serviceable to us who are working in the field. It annoys me more when I think about it.”

“Like this room, Hazama-san?” Hoshino forced out a polite chuckle. Was she testing him? “This room is way too clean in a way that doesn’t make sense, given that it’s the room of a teenage boy.”

Hazama’s pale yet pinkish lips formed a small smile. “I’m also as surprised and annoyed as you, however. I found one in the display case. It’s the first trophy the victim ever won. On average, we’re supposed to discover four to five items—up to three if the person is really attached and the items’ signature is really strong. We only got two weak ones so far, counting the item that was found under his bed.”

“Please, tell me it's the dirty magazines—”

“It was the cigarettes.” Hazama adjusted her glasses.

“Shame—”

Hoshino covered his mouth. He found his gaze falling, twisting as though it was being reeled in, toward the door. His heart skipped a beat—not in a romantic, poetic, or any kind of complicated way. It was the “you need to pack your shit and go very, very far away” kind of way. His knees buckled. The air swelled, pregnant with malice and the smell of old coins. The silence in his ears gave way to an out-of-tune, slow ringing sound, which was then replaced by a maddening choir of broken laughs tracks, borrowed from multiple late-afternoon shows.

Hazama finished up her matcha bun. She sighed and dialed a number on her phone. It took five seconds before the other person on the line picked up.

“Hallo, hallo, Hazama here,” she said in a courteous but also in a supposedly cute but deadpan manner. “I won’t be able to leave my current location due to some unfortunate circumstances. Please evacuate the family below, as well as the other neighbors within a 30-meter radius of this house. I’ll also be adjusting the threat level of this case to D-rank… no… maybe C-rank to make the civilians more likely to comply. That will be all. Thank you.”

“This… this is a C-rank?” Hoshino took two steps back, keeping his face frozen and borderline confident as Hazama pocketed her phone. There was something. Something was climbing up the stairs. Something was marching toward the victim’s room. This presence. It wasn’t as strong as the D-rank spirit that scarred him that day. “Isn’t that…”

“No,” Hazama replied with a tired smile. “For starters, the ranking system isn’t the most accurate when it comes to how dangerous a malevolent spirit is, but it does speak in a language that anyone can understand—collateral damage. I’m also not the type to misidentify the threat level of one. Besides, I’m dead tired. People tend to make mistakes when they’re tired, right? I’m sure the boss will forgive me.”

“I mean, I get that, but…”

The doorknob twisted, making Hoshino imagine his own spine cracking under the weight of the room’s ripe, suffocating air. The door creaked open. Only slightly. A shitty dramatic flair. But effective. His grip on his wand wavered, even more so when a bony hand with long blackened fingers emerged from the darkness. It grasped the door’s edge as it was being slowly pushed inside. The atmosphere grew more tender, nauseating. The borrowed laughs grew louder, making the static between them more evident as the thing invited itself in.

Hoshino breathed low and slow. So this was what it truly felt like to stare death in the face. It was not as hot as he could remember. But who was he kidding? He was coping. Still, he was gathering himself back. Acclimating to its presence was easier. The hard part was keeping your shit together at the initial part of the encounter—like Hazama, for example.

“It’s okay.” Hazama stepped forward with her wand raised, effectively hiding Hoshino in her shadow. “Hoshino-san, I’d like to say that from this point on… I’d like you to act on your accord. I will no longer be testing you. I don’t care which you do. Collapse. Run. Fight. Your safety is still a priority, especially to me. But please, do not get in my way.”

Hoshino let out a breath. His back was bent forward, his limbs were both tight and loose, his gaze was calm and low. He could say the same for his asshole—the other wolf in his body screamed. The other wolf thought it was funny. His stomach had been twisting for so long that it felt like a tie-dye shirt. His bladder felt like a shitty dam that was in desperate need of repairs and someone murdered all the beavers. And just like that, his confident, scared, and shit-eating grin was back. Fuck yes.

“I… I’ll fight.”

“Good choice.” Hazama nodded. “Actually, let me test you again while the spirit figures out the most dramatic way to open the door. So… in cases such as these… this situation in particular… What do you think our priority should be?”

“To keep the monster at bay—to make it feel like it’s winning—until all the uninvolved parties escape.”

“Correct.”

The malevolent spirit growled and grasped the side of the door to establish its dominance. The door didn’t break, much less crack. The force should’ve been enough to break a human thigh.

Hoshino’s eyes gleamed, somewhat amazed and begging to be allowed to laugh. Hazama placed a shield in between the monster’s hand and the door. Annoyed, the monster kicked the ground—Hazama placed a shield there too right before the second it landed—and charged toward them.

Oh. Hoshino figured it out at first glance. He’d die. Three seconds. The malevolent spirit was already towering over him, its blackened, bony limbs delicately spreading out like tendrils and poised to smash his skull open with a downward swing of its fist.

On a closer note, the malevolent spirit appeared to be male, resembling the victim’s father. It was also worth noting, as death flashed across Hoshino’s mind, that the stupid thing wore nothing but white grimy underwear.

Hoshino’s first thought was to scream. The next one was to drop his wand so he could shield his body like a coward. But from what he’d learned in training, from every moment he’d been punched in the gut for dropping his wand, even for closing his eyes every time he was about to get slammed—the situation made him want to laugh.

“Shield.”

Hoshino flicked his wand and summoned a barrier made of light to intercept the monster’s fist just a few inches above his head. There was another barrier beneath it, but it wasn’t his. The room rocked upon the sheer weight of the blow, making Hoshino’s knees tremble as a quivering puff of air escaped his lips. By then, Hazama stepped into the spirit’s side with a small ball of light at the tip of her wand, glowing and eager to be fired point-blank into the spirit’s temple.

“Bolt,” Hazama said calmly.

The spirit snapped its head back, dodging the ball of light and watching it slam against the shield that Hazama herself placed on the wall—in the very same moment she fired the bolt. The malevolent bastard chuckled at the very next second and whipped both its arms wide, forcing both Hoshino and Hazama to take a step back to give it enough space for it to jump back to the door.

“Seems like my assessment was correct.”

“This spirit won’t level cities, Hazama-san…” Hoshino controlled his breathing, reminding himself that he was the master of his own body, that his will and mind would triumph over matter. At least, it was definitely more manageable than the spirit he encountered that day. It was still a pain in the ass though. “Though… I guess it could if we leave it alone.”

“I like the way you think, Hoshino-san.” Hazama chuckled, brandishing her wand. “So… another pop question… In order to exorcise a malevolent spirit, what should we do?”

“Now that’s just tempting to answer incorrectly.” Hoshino combed his hair with his fingers, smiling wide as he tightened his stance. “We hit it till it dies.”