One Thread at a Time

“MAY WE BE TOGETHER, UNTIL DEATH DO US PART,” read Hasegawa Ryuuji, staring with contempt at the white piece of paper in his hand.

At a glance, it was nothing more than an ordinary slip, meant to be the vessel for a wish during Tanabata. And yet, this particular piece of paper told a different, more tragic story… as the bottom half of it was stained with fresh blood.

“What a sick joke,” said Ryuuji, standing outside a popular arcade now turned into a crime scene. Next to him, the body of a young woman lay on the ground, spread out over a pool of her own blood. Claw marks were fresh on her neck, and the air was thick with the stench of corruption.

“It was an oni,” whispered the store owner, his eyes gaping with shock. “I swear on my life, it was an oni…”

Ryuuji had no reason to doubt his account. Regrettably, as a private security contractor, scenes like these were a common sight.

“There are traces of divinity in the area,” Ryuuji noted, sensing a whiff of the familiar energy amidst the chaos. “Was there a Kami nearby?”

“That was Akarin,” the store owner replied, failing to hold back the tears. “He lived in the lamppost over there, helped me bring in new clients. He was such a gentle, little soul…”

Ryuuji’s eyes narrowed, his blood quietly boiling with rage.

Killing a woman and a Kami was already bad enough, but he couldn’t help taking it personally when the dead Kami had almost the same name as his apprentice.

Then, speaking of the devil...

“The shikigami is in the air, Ryuuji,” came a female voice from his earphone. It was Minase Akari, who had reached her advance position and begun the groundwork to track the culprit.

“Good work,” Ryuuji replied, taking a few steps away from the store owner. “I’ve finished collecting intel on our suspect. His name is Watanabe Genji. Twenty-nine. Former JSDF officer, recently turned oni.”

“Just a moment, I’m relaying it,” said Akari, parsing the details to her familiar.

“According to a witness, he fell to corruption outside the Shooting Star Arcade,” Ryuuji continued after a brief pause. “He killed his girlfriend, and a local Kami as well.”

“Poor souls…” Akari muttered from her side.

“As for his appearance, he’s tall and muscular, with a military buzz cut,” Ryuuji elaborated. “He wore a black suit and white shirt at the time of the attack, typical to any salaryman. According to the store owner, the suit was a tight fit.”

“Tall, buzz cut, tight suit…” Akari repeated, going silent for a few seconds before bursting out, “I got him. I’ve found a match!”

Heck, that was fast, Ryuuji thought.

“Can’t hide from me with such bad karma,” Akari boasted. “He’s running away in Shinjuku; I’ll keep him tagged for you.”

“Noted,” said Ryuuji, his mind forming a telepathic link with Akari’s familiar. It wasn’t strong enough to share thoughts, but plenty to follow the culprit’s location. “Connection established. Initiating pursuit."

“Godspeed, Ryuuji,” said Akari.

Then, Ryuuji’s figure vanished into thin air, leaving the arcade owner alone and stupefied in the street.

* * *

THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS echoed off the walls, as a salaryman ran through a desolate alley in the city of Tokyo. His breathing was ragged, his eyes bloodshot, and his white shirt was stained with dried blood.

“It wasn’t me… It wasn’t me…” he kept telling himself. But try as he may to deny his sins, the horn sticking out from his forehead begged to differ.

Alas, he was no longer a human being.

He was an oni, twisted and cursed by the touch of corruption.

But how in the world could things have gone so wrong?

Just a while ago, he and his girlfriend had visited the arcade where they first met, to hang their wishes onto a bamboo branch. Certainly, their relationship had gone through some hiccups, but they’d made up for it properly.

And yet, the memory of snapping her neck with his bare hands remained fresh in his mind. It was an atrocity beyond comprehension. One moment, he was reaching out to her for a sweet kiss. Then the next thing he knew, he had strangled her, his hands slick with her fresh blood.

It was madness.

A nightmare.

It had to be.

The oni ran aimlessly like his life depended on it.

Then, without warning, the ominous figure of a tall man manifested in front of him, cutting off his path. His stare was cold and brutal, piercing deep into the oni’s soul.

“Eeek!” yelped the oni, tumbling to the ground in horror. His instincts, honed by years of military training, were screaming at him: the man before him would be his end.

“You’re awfully loud for a monster,” said the man, casting a concealment barrier with a flick of his fingers. Now, no matter how much the oni screamed, no one would come to the alley for him.

“Stay away!” the oni cried, slashing at the air with his claws, but the mysterious man didn’t flinch. He was dauntless, wearing a dark trench coat, and a suit of tactical soft armor underneath. And in his chest, three letters were written wide and clear:

A.T.C.

Standing for ‘Auxiliary Tactical Corps’, this man was a mercenary.

“You will not get a bounty from me!” the oni stammered, fighting back the fear.

“I assure you I will,” replied the mercenary. “But before I do, I want to know something. Why did you kill the girl and the lesser Kami?”

It was an impossible question.

After all, the oni himself had no idea.

“It wasn’t me…” he insisted, shaking his head in despair. “I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. It was that twisted, wretched Kami! It cursed us! It turned me into this!”

The mercenary did not believe a word of it. As a veteran, Hasegawa Ryuuji knew a lesser Kami like that couldn’t possibly bestow such misfortune.

A serious illness? Maybe. But it couldn’t turn a grown man into a killer.

“I suppose asking was a waste of time,” said Ryuuji. Then, without a shred of ceremony, he reached into his coat and hurled an object at the oni.

With a dull thud, the projectile sank into its target’s chest.

Then, pain.

A stabbing, searing pain shot through the oni’s body, his heart run through by a sanctified combat knife. His blood boiled at the touch of its blade, the corruption coursing through his body forcibly purified.

“Target down,” Ryuuji spoke through an encrypted communications channel as the oni squirmed in agony on the ground . “Prepare for cleansing procedures.”

And just like that, he was ready to wrap up the job.

To the oni, it was ridiculous.

The mercenary had come out of nowhere, asked him a single question and struck him down like a rabid dog. All his suffering, all his tragedy, all the blood on his hands… the sell-sword would trade it in for nothing more than a meager paycheck.

“Don’t you screw with me!!” screamed the oni, clenching the knife in his chest.

With every fiber of his being, he poured his hatred into the sanctified blade, his dark and terrible aura tainting its holy inscriptions.

Then, in a swift and desperate motion, the oni pulled the knife out from his body and hurled it at the mercenary before him.

Ryuuji was unperturbed. He covered his hand with an arcane barrier and swatted the projectile aside, causing it to stab clean into the wall next to him.

Seething with rage, the oni shot to his feet and charged his opponent, with eyes burning crimson, claws and horn crackling with black magic as he lunged.

Ryuuji met the oni head-on, stopping the attack with an arcane barrier. Clad with cursed energy, the creature dug its claws into the defensive ward, shredding its surface like an ethereal fabric… and in the process, the oni let his guard down.

Like clockwork, Ryuuji exploited the opening. With expert technique, he slammed his palm into the oni’s chest injury and blasted him with a magic shockwave.

The attack echoed throughout the alley, followed by the splatter of blood and cries of torment. It was a gruesome sight, the oni writhing miserably on the ground with a gaping hole in his chest.

“And now he’s down,” said the mercenary, lighting a cigarette as a runic sigil flared beneath the oni. It was a binding spell, holding the crippled creature firm in place.

“Geez, Ryuuji…” came a young woman’s voice. She was in her late teens or early twenties and wore a set of tactical gear similar to the mercenary’s. “Did you have to blast him that hard? The knife wound was plenty enough.”

“That was the idea,” Ryuuji replied. “But in case you didn’t notice, he still had some fight in him. Heck, he even corrupted my knife.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll purify it later,” said Akari, before kneeling next to the fallen oni. “But first, I’ll take care of him. It’s Watanabe Genji-san, right?”

The oni could barely turn his eyes to look at her, let alone speak.

“It’s okay, Watanabe-san,” Akari murmured, sitting formally in seiza next to him. “You’ll be free of this soon,” she assured.

Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and clapped her hands twice.

At her signal, a smooth, cylindrical device floated off the belt on her hip, hovering over the oni’s chest. It was the size of a common thermos, pitch black, with a protective braided cord on the upper end.

As Akari uttered a silent prayer, small beads of light manifested around her, dancing in the air like fireflies. They were lesser Kami, answering her request to help purify the corrupted soul before her.

Despite its injuries, the oni struggled against the runic circle restraining him.

Akari leaned in, gently covering his eyes with her hand.

“When you return to your senses, please use the rest of your life to reflect and repent,” she said tenderly. “Let your next life be better than this one, for the sake of those you have taken today.”

The oni’s resistance weakened. The dark flame burning within him flickered, dimmed… and the cylinder hovering above him opened with a soft click.

Akari pressed her hands together, interlocked her fingers, and prayed.

The Kami around them shone with divine radiance, and a stream of darkness slowly poured from the oni’s mouth. It was thick and heavy, like a smoke of decay, yet it flowed harmlessly into the waiting vessel, guided by the Kami’s light.

Then, as the last trail of smoke went inside, the floating cylinder snapped shut.

A red glow pulsed inside it like a lantern, revealing an intricate pattern of runes etched along its inner lining. It was beautiful, but eerily haunting, with the knowledge of what exactly lay inside.

Akari breathed a sigh of relief. The purification ritual was complete, and the Kami’s light peacefully vanished. All that was left in their wake was a critically injured man, who was no longer cursed to be an oni.

With the threat gone, the magic circle beneath him shifted, its sigils rewritten by Ryuuji from a binding spell to a healing one.

Slowly but surely, a soothing, green energy mended the man’s battered heart… but alas, the extent of his injuries went far beyond his circulatory system.

Watanabe Genji had endured severe spiritual contamination, to the point of losing his humanity. Despite the miracle Akari had performed for his sake, the man would need months of treatment before he could stand trial for his crimes.

“I need an ambulance,” said Ryuuji, speaking calmly into his phone. The police were already searching for the oni, so he only needed to report the subject’s condition and location.

Unfortunately, the operator was a talkative one, and wouldn’t stop yapping about mercenary ID codes, affiliation, permits and other bureaucratic headaches.

Ryuuji puffed his cigarette and exhaled a thick plume of smoke. As the operator kept rambling, he watched the smoke dissolve beneath a neon sign hanging above.

‘Red Thread - Keeping the world in balance, one thread at a time.’

The Red Thread. It was a multinational conglomerate based in Tokyo, boasting cutting edge technologies in energy, pharmaceutics, and military industries.

Among their many inventions was a key item in Ryuuji’s line of work, called the Soul Lantern. Akari had just used it to purify the corruption afflicting his quarry, saving the criminal’s life.

Without her assistance, Watanabe Genji would’ve died as an oni, his soul condemned to remain as a vengeful ghost. Now, he would still be judged by the police for murder, but at the very least, he wouldn’t be as miserable in the afterlife.

Knowing this, Ryuuji couldn’t blame Akari for having a smile on her face, despite the grim nature of their work. All things considered, she had done well.

“Ryuuji,” she called him, having waited patiently for him to hang up his phone.

“What is it?” he replied, cracking a new cigarette out of his dwindling pack.

“Good job,” she said, stepping to his side. Then she reached for his hand, tracing lightly with her fingers along its back. It was tender, almost romantic, until she snatched the cigarette away from him. “But no smoking!” she snapped. “I’ve asked you a dozen times to quit, haven’t I?”

“And there’s the usual bickering,” Ryuuji said with a sigh. “Why is it that you look like an angel only when you’re purifying something? I swear, all you do is nag at me whenever we’re alone.”

“Nag at you? Me?” Akari replied in indignation. “You’re the one who’s hopeless! You smoke all day, you never clean your laundry, and you live off instant ramen when I’m not around! Ryuuji, are you even listening to me?”

With their job done, Ryuuji and Akari slipped back into their usual rhythm, sirens rising in the distance as backdrop to their banter.