3.2 Late Night Horror Fight Labyrinth Part 2

Nana followed Junna, but at a distance. Good. Junna was more equipped to handle this type of oddity. Nana could protect herself; Junna would remove what Nana needed to be protected from.

The ghost let out a creaking gasp.

“Not even any last words, huh. It would be weird if you died naked out in an intersection like this. Did someone move you?” Junna crouched down to get a closer look. The ghost woman’s arm shot out.

Well, “shot out” was relative. Her arm moved, from awkwardly bent on the ground to raised above her head, and then like she was trying to grab Junna, but she was too slow. Junna grabbed her damp, clammy wrist with one hand.

“You are not nearly as fast as you think. Minimal resentment. Let’s see…” Turning the ghost’s arm over revealed a long, straight wound on the inside. “I see… I’m sorry. You aren’t going to get anywhere sitting around like this, though. If you’re mad at someone else, I can’t help you. You did this yourself. You can get over it and leave in peace, or…”

They tugged on the arm, pulling the ghost closer. Her body squelched as she rolled onto her side, facing away. Definitely a little watery. Junna tried not to think of how long her physical body might have been dead in the tub before someone found her.

“I can absorb you.”

No good—this kind of ghost didn’t keep enough of its mental faculties to be reasoned with. She likely hadn’t had a strong attachment to life and was trapped muddling through her regrets. Left on her own, she wouldn’t do much damage. If she latched onto someone, she might kill them, eventually. She could make people sick at the very least, possibly attract worse ghosts with her resentful energy.

Speaking of that, Itsumise could be really tasteless and have her laying there as a trap to startle someone into panicking before another challenge appeared.

The second ghost wrapped its arms around Junna from behind and latched on.

“Carry me back,” she said with a gurgle in a raspy voice. “I can’t… walk… carry me back…”

Nana called for them, but Junna didn’t move. The ghost didn’t weigh anything, and yet, it was heavy; the words for ‘heavy’ and ‘emotion’ were homonyms in Japanese, after all. This one also sounded (and felt) like a woman, an adult but not of determinable age. Her loose black hair was shoulder length and brushed against Junna’s face while she clung to their shoulders.

“You sound like—car accident—” Junna coughed. The ghost gurgled at them again. Her pale blue-white face was gaunt, her limbs slightly elongated, but she retained a human shape.

“Carry me… carry me back…”

Junna unceremoniously dropped the first ghost’s arm and stood, the second ghost hanging. Definitely at least one broken leg. Something cold and wet was seeping through the fabric of their kimono over their left shoulder. Fresh ghost blood from a broken arm?

“I need to… get out of… the way…”

Junna heard a distant car engine, the sound of wheels turning over concrete. There would be no car; this was just part of the ghost’s existence, now. The first ghost reached up and grabbed onto Junna’s kimono. Was that the sound of a dripping faucet…?

“Don’t go feeding into each other’s regrets, I don’t have time for that.” Ignoring the gravity of the ghost hanging on their shoulders, they tugged their kimono out of the first ghost’s grip. “Last chance, anything you wanna say? I am happy to accept your final words.”

All she could do in response was wheeze out a death rattle while the second ghost continued to beg to be carried. This happened, and admittedly, it still pained Junna’s heart to see a ghost too far gone to talk too. Whether it was too weak to recognize speech or the emotions were too strong to be curtailed, it felt like a personal failure every time. Junna decided if they weren’t able to free the ghosts, they would absorb and carry them instead, bearing that weight.

Junna’s ghost fish started to swim in a circle around them and both human ghosts. This was one way Junna used them in exorcisms; they formed excellent boundaries to contain targets and both strengthen and guide their own powers.

That was a lot for what would normally be small, weak familiars. Junna just wasn’t normal.

Whatever was in the circle was now Junna’s territory. Boundary set, next step. All over the world, exorcists of ghosts and demons and curses had their own methods, culturally defined and not. Junna used plenty of ofuda; paper talismans were light, easy to carry a stack in their sleeve. Talismans could also be drawn in advance or on the spot. Recently, Junna didn’t bother to. They weren’t trying to disperse the ghosts, so using an object as a medium only complicated things. The air around Junna visibly darkened.

Junna had plenty of their own spiritual energy to disperse ghosts. They could completely eviscerate a typical spirit of a dead human with a hand seal. But that did nothing to appease the ghost, and if the ghost couldn’t be reasoned with, Junna might as well take them along and burn off some of that resentful energy in a productive way. They would carry the ghosts’ remaining negative emotions for them.

“JUNNA!” Nana screamed as soon as she was aware of what was happening, but Junna knew she wouldn’t interrupt. Nana already knew about this technique. It was far from the first time they had used it.

They reached over their shoulder and pressed their palm hard into the ghost’s coarse, tangled hair. The temperature in the circle of swimming fish was frigid, the ghost itself like ice.

The resent or regret and whatever other emotions tied the ghost to the world started to drip out of the wounds the ghost had received in life. First, a black liquid, then dissolving into a mist. Junna took a deep breath, gripping the ghost’s scalp harder and harder.

“Carry… me… carry…”

“Yeah, I’ll carry you. But you’re coming wherever I’m going.”

The ghost turned to mist, turned to dust, into a floating, dripping black mess. Junna balled their fist and swirled their arm around through it like they were trying to wind up a serving of cotton candy. It spiraled into a barely tangible black cloud, revolving around their hand.

Junna exhaled as hard as they could, then brought hand up to their face and inhaled.

There were plenty of ways to absorb a ghost: drink, devour, inhale, implant. Sometimes they could even be absorbed through skin or by staring. Most exorcists that did this (no matter what kind of spirit or entity they were dealing with) put the result in some kind of container to gradually purify or maybe even tame, instead of taking it into their body.

Junna absorbed that energy for themselves. It took a tough constitution, but they’d been so adamant about their methods they had forced themselves to practice until they could easily stomach a dozen weak ghosts so long as they did the proper ritual afterwards. They licked the rest of the resentful energy out of the air, where it hovered, not quite touching their hand. Then they did the same thing to the ghost clinging to their kimono, although the process was faster. That ghost had less of a presence.

There was a ritual known as “kodoku” that had been brought over from southern China in ancient times, a derivative of “gu” black magic. The one performing the ritual would gather poisonous or venomous insects and other creatures in a jar or similar vessel. Then, they would wait as the creatures killed each other until only one remained. The venom or poison from the final survivor, the strongest, could be used for all sorts of curses. This technique could also be used for spirits. And what was a human body if not a vessel for a spirit—

“JUNNA!” Nana grabbed Junna’s shoulder and spun them around. With both ghosts gone, the fish broke their swimming pattern and began lazily moving in all different directions, returning to drifting as they pleased. Junna smacked their lips and ran their tongue against their teeth, trying to get rid of the vague salty and bitter aftertaste.

“What? I need you to focus on protecting yourself, okay? I don’t have anything that can be considered healing magic.”

Nana did not remove her hand from Junna’s shoulder.

“How can… how can you just keep using it like that…”

“I don’t recommend anyone else trying it, but if you have a strong spiritual base, it’s fine.”

“It’s not!”

“The hell?! It is! I’ve been doing this for years! You think it’s any more humane to just disperse a ghost into nothing? Same result, no benefit for anyone. That’s like killing an animal and not eating any meat or taking any fur—not even burying it, just leaving it to rot. Hell, it’s not even that because we’re not the ones that kill the ghosts in the first place. I could have made the ghosts kill each other instead, would that have been better?”

“No!” Tears were streaming down Nana’s cheeks now. “It wouldn’t have, but you… y-you’re absorbing all that—all that…”

“Negativity. Kegare. Impurities. Yeah, I know. It’s fine. Everyone accumulates a little pollution over their lives. That’s why we’re so big on bathing culture here.”

This was why Junna wanted to do this on their own. The only people who had ever approved of their techniques were Ibuki and her family. Sure, at first the method sounded unpalatable, but Junna firmly believed the initial disgust came from cultural taboos about death and impurity, taboos that didn’t really need to exist. Death was a natural part of existence. It was fine to want to prolong one’s life, but they should never look away from the fact that in the end, everyone died. Everyone died, and somehow or another returned to the cycle, whole or in pieces.

Unless they were pulled out…

“Look, I’m sorry… This situation is just… I mean, I know, you’re stressed and scared, too. Just trust me on my own exorcism techniques, okay? I’ve been doing this for years.”

“I know…” Nana whimpered. “It’s just… it’s kind of scary. You don’t look the same as you used to…”

“I grew a little taller in the past two years.”

Nana laughed a little.

“But I’ve gotten better at controlling the powers I have. The fish help. Spending some time alone helped… I did some training in the mountains.”

“Oh, like Shigoro… he and Takuto went up to study Shūgendō for several months while you were gone.”

“I’m having a hard time imagining him having the discipline for that…”

“Well, he never seems to have a problem doing something if Takuto does it too…”

Nana’s fox-faced younger brother had been partners in business (or crime) with Takara Takuto since before Junna, Nana, and the Takara triplets graduated high school. That sneaky pretty boy had probably latched on to Takuto because, Junna loathed to admit, the eldest triplet with the worst personality was by far the most supernaturally talented.

“God, I hate those guys.”

But speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Both of them, even.