CHAPTER 20

“Question: how the hell do we save a dead guy, from a death curse aimed specifically at him, to free a kitsune from another kitsune just so they could focus entirely on a mystical drought that basically stupefied all of Tokyo?”

“My Dear Little Sister, if I knew the answer to that question, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

Despite how aggressively Chi involved herself in nightwalker culture, there was one aspect of Chi that Kou thought was rather severely underappreciated: she was a reader, much like her brother. She’s nowhere near as avid, though, as she preferred to experience things firsthand, but she was by no means a bad reader. She blazed through books nearly as quickly as her brother, and much like him, she tried to equip herself with at least enough knowledge about the nightwalkers. Information is advantage. She liked having advantage.

All that said, it was virtually impossible to get what they needed in just one night. There were some old materials about ancient medicine in the National Diet Library down in Chiyoda—just a special ward away from Shinjuku, no big deal—but they were pretty strict about submitting an application at least six days away from their scheduled visits. Also, Kou wasn’t sure how he’d explain why he needed access to ancient materials in one of the world’s biggest libraries. Oh, hey, I kinda wanna save this mystic fox from being eaten by a bigger mystic fox from Kyoto, so I need ancient wisdom that could probably also save Tokyo while we’re at it! It wouldn’t have been that much of a problem if he knew how to use hypnosis, but he didn’t, so.

It was why they were now just stuck in Kou’s room reading manga, waiting for the weekend to pass. Chi had taken control of Kou’s bed, while he sat down right next to it, lazily leaning onto its leg. Kou barely registered a word, but Chi was still keeping her eyes on the book in her hands. “Oh, yeah, don’t you have a date with Yamato-senpai later today?”

“Mngh. We agreed to push it back. It feels weird to have a nice date when everyone’s on the verge of beating each other up like this.”

Things had finally escalated. Kou didn’t remember where he heard it first—it was either some news his classmate shared on their SNS or something he overheard on TV. Onihime had offered to stay at the Kokonoes’ to help until the entire dragon vein thing was solved—as penance for the rogue oni incident, she said—and while Kou felt really bad about it, he couldn’t deny how helpful she had been. She wasn’t all that big on domestic tasks, but she was more than willing to learn, and she learned very quickly. Kou had to teach her how to use little human conveniences like the toilet or the tap, and among those he taught her to use, he let her use the TV.

Onihime quickly warmed up to the entertainment box and now made it a habit to watch TV while eating breakfast. She was already up and about since before Kou and Chi prepared to head for school, so Kou occasionally caught glimpses or overheard things that she played on TV—things like, occasionally, the daily news.

Some man broke down in the middle of the Shinjuku crossing. That wasn’t really a big thing, but then another man followed-up by being so mad at the man who broke down that he threw hands. The depressed man, somehow, found it in him to fight back, pushing his attacker into traffic, breaking someone’s window, inciting more angry people, and nobody tried to break the fight apart.

They either just walked away or joined the mess.

Before long, a large-scale fistfighting broke out in one of the most crowded areas in the Tokyo Metropolitan.

Nobody even knew why it started. They just felt too angry or too depressed to care, apparently.

The comments on social media were getting more and more vicious, too. Kou had developed a habit of scrolling away whenever he saw an opinion he didn’t agree with, but lately he’s been scrolling past whatever’s on his screen so quickly he might’ve well scratched his phone nearly beyond repair. It was a tiring cycle to go through an aggressive mood online only to find that the mood in real-life wasn’t any better.

“It’s a miracle our school wasn’t nearly this bad yet.”

“Probably because Himiko was there.”

“She’s not in the middle school division.”

“Well, they’ve got you there.”

Chi actually blushed a little. She hid her face with the manga she was reading. “The adults probably just had it really hard.”

“Yeah. I’d hate to be an adult.”

“We’re going to get stuck being adults, for better or worse.”

“What do you mean I have to keep making my own money and never even get to rest in death? Vampirism sucks.”

“You tell me.”

Chi wasn’t entirely correct—vampires could get stuck in much younger forms. Countess Karnstein, an ancient vampiress better known as Carmilla, had the look of a very young girl, and she usually used this look to prey on young women who were of the same age as she could give them an intimate sense of camaraderie. Apparently it was also part of their key ability to shapeshift, although Kou only heard from his mother that the specifics were a bit different for each vampire.

Most vampires chose younger ages as they usually wanted either younger prey or just the advantage of still having a functional body. Nothing particularly attractive about having creaking joints and back pains when your life deeply involves hunting and killing things. Count Dracula himself, for example—he starved for a while, but as soon as he had Jonathan Harker’s blood on his menu, he didn’t waste time trying to make himself younger.

(In Dracula’s case, it was probably also a matter of ego, but Kou tried to avoid badmouthing the dead whenever possible—especially since that person was his direct ancestor.)

Kou sighed. “I wish I could just use magic to make work easier.”

“Just use a shikigami to replace yourself at work. How are those shikigami you sent to the oni going, by the way?”

“They’re still active. Nothing weird from both oni so far.”

“Maybe you were really mistaken about them being bloodlinked?”

“… I still don’t feel very confident about that … let’s keep it there a bit longer.”

“Ah. Well. If you say so.” Chi had obviously stopped reading her manga, because she now just idly started kicking the walls from Kou’s bed. She waved the book to Kou’s face. “How many volumes of these have you got?”

“Up to the latest.”

“Nerd.”

“I bought them for you.”

“Siscon.”

“You’ve got a comeback for everything, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Tell me how to solve this problem.”

“Use your brain for once.”

“I always just use my brain.”

“You rely on your guts more than your head.”

“That’s not even true, I use my head most of the time.”

“Oh good, you’re in your element, then!”

Kou groaned. “How the heck did you do that?”

“General bitterness against existing. Also, did your girlfriend only give you two shikigami? I was serious, we could probably use more of those to do stuff.”

“There’s not a lot we could do, though. They were originally created to be a physical medium for stuff like curses, so—”

Like curses.

Then Kou stood up.

He shot to his feet so fast that even Chi jumped. “Nii-chan, what the hell?”

“Curses,” Kou turned to his sister slowly. “That kudagitsune was a curse carrier, correct? It isn’t itself the target of the curse, but it carries the curse, yeah?”

“Uh … huh,” Chi was hesitant, but she at least knew where the conversation was headed.

“In other words, he was a shikigami, right?”

A kudagitsune was definitely more mystical than a piece of paper, but shikigami weren’t always pieces of paper. Paper was just the simplest medium that an onmyoji could use to host a spell. There were lots of these things throughout history, items that carried a curse or a spell, and they could be found around the world—paper shikigami was simply the most practical at the time because of how portable and malleable paper was.

And shikigami weren’t always paper. To begin with, shikigami used to be called shiki-no-kami, with the same shiki as the kanji written on the Enforcers’ face cloth—the name originally meant ‘ceremonial spirit’. Shikigami wasn’t a magical piece of paper, they weren’t even magical dolls, they were spirits summoned through ceremony.

The most famous vessel was the paper pieces, but a shikigami could be vesseled to anything that could be used to host the spirit and deliver whatever the spirit was meant to.

For example, a kudagitsune.

Although the ritual wasn’t exactly the same, nightwalkers like ghosts or youkai could be used as shikigami vessels—greater onmyoji who had no qualms about their means, like Ashiya Douman, were known to use them. Using a nightwalker to carry a binding curse that must be passed on was virtually the same as using a shikigami to curse someone.

On the other hand, it was also possible to bind this spirit not to carry a curse to someone, but to receive a curse meant for someone. Kamo no Yasunori, for example, was said to have protected himself from evil this way: he created proxies with shikigami, who would redirect everything aimed at himself.

“In other words,” Kou let his thoughts keep running, “just like how shikigami could be used defensively to take on curses meant for its user, it shouldn’t be impossible to transfer that kudagitsune’s curse to another vessel, right?”

“So you’re saying …,” Chi sat up and thought for a moment. “You … want to use the principle of shikigami protection … to misdirect the kudagitsune’s curse?”

“Because of its nature as having to be vesseled, it’s possible for a shikigami to lose its curse—it just had to move to a new body.” Kou touched his chin. “I’m not sure we can create a shikigami for a dead man to absorb the curse, but we could create a new body to host the kitsune’s curse, right?”

“Making the kitsune no longer a vessel for the curse,” Chi furrowed her eyebrows. “Then, if the new vessel was a harmless thing, it won’t hurt anyone else.”

“Even better—we can exorcise it.”

Chi’s eyes widened. They were so used to having to be on their own that it was easy to forget they now had a great exorcist in their midst. “Huh. This might actually work.”

“Now all we need is onmyoji knowledge to pull this off,” Kou said. “Someone who knows how to redirect chi, who understands vesseling rituals, who could defend themselves against curses … and pull this off no later than tonight.”

“Ergh. Fine. Let’s talk to your girlfriend.”

“Ah … I wasn’t thinking about her, actually. She’ll do great exorcising the curse, but for the rest of the ritual, I think she’d recommend another person for that.”

Chi tilted her head. “Who?”

Kou took a deep breath, realized just now that his hand was shaking a bit, and sighed. “It’s time I talk to my girlfriend’s mom.”

*