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Yuichi and Yuri were taken not to the shrine’s main hall, but to a standalone building a short distance away.
It was a two-story, four-bedroom house, likely where the head priest lived.
Yuichi and Yuri followed the girl to the front door. She opened it, stepped inside, and urged them to follow, but Yuichi remained rooted to the spot just outside the door.
“What are you looking at?” the girl demanded, perhaps thinking he was getting ready to make a break for it.
The girl was the daughter of the shrine’s head priest. Her name was Furu Shinomiya. She was beautiful, with long, striking black hair, but Yuichi’s attention was elsewhere at the moment.
“Hey, do you have a big family?” he questioned.
“It’s just me and my parents. Why do you ask?” Furu asked in confusion.
He was detecting some sort of strange presence here. There seemed to be more people inside than the building’s size might suggest. Despite that, though, it was very quiet. He could sense the presence of others, but there didn’t actually seem to be anyone there.
“Um, no reason.” It wasn’t good to dismiss one’s intuition, but he didn’t sense any particular danger at the moment, so Yuichi decided to pretend it was nothing. Besides, this wasn’t exactly a good time for him to start nitpicking the girl’s house.
Yuichi was brought to the living room and made to kneel on the carpet. This sort of thing was par for the course for Yuichi, but seeing Yuri take her own place next to Furu on the sofa stuck in his craw.
“Write your contact information here,” Furu ordered. “Your school, too, please. If things go very poorly, we may need to get in touch with them, too.”
Furu placed the paper and pen on the table in front of him. Yuichi obediently wrote down his personal information.
“‘Yuichi Sakaki,’” the girl read. “‘Age 16. Seishin High School 1-C’... isn’t that the class next to mine? To think that the culprit was so close...”
“Could you please not treat me as a criminal?”
“If it had just been a little picnic in our shrine forest, I’d look the other way. But there’s more to this, isn’t there? I’d bet you’re the one who’s been killing our trees. And given how many have died, you must have been at it for a while, right?”
She hadn’t actually seen it happen, so it would be possible for him to lie. But he was hesitant to do that.
“Yes, that’s right. I’ve been punching trees in that forest for a while now.”
“Destruction of property. You really are a criminal.” Yuri said, glaring down her nose at Yuichi.
“Seriously, whose side are you o—”
The girl’s own glare cowed Yuichi into silence, which then reigned over the room for some time.
Yuichi squirmed under their gazes before at last taking another look at Furu.
I feel like I’ve met her before...
He was looking up at her now, but seeing her from front on had stirred some kind of memory.
“Where are you looking? Pervert! Criminal!”
“Oh, um, I just realized... there’s something familiar about you...”
“Who recognizes someone by their chest? You really are a pervert!” Furu, who was wearing a sweater, folded her arms to cover her ample chest.
Yuichi knew that it was rude to stare at a girl’s chest, but at the same time, he really did think it looked familiar. The monster hunters he’d met at the abandoned hospital before... One of them had been a woman dressed in a cloak and wearing a mask. Maybe it was too early to judge just from the Monster Hunter label and the similar body type, but they really were close.
“I’m starting to wonder if you really would an acceptable companion to me at all,” Yuri piled on, looking at Yuichi disdainfully.
“Look, do you actually have a crush on me? Because it’s really not sounding like it...”
“My body is forced to desire you, despite my mind’s rebellion,” she sniffed.
“That’s a really, really horrible way to put it! You make it sound like I did something to you!”
“But you did do something to me. Something incredible,” she informed him.
Anthromorphs had a tendency to be attracted to the strong, and Yuichi had destroyed the god they worshiped. It had, annoyingly, caused this anthromorph woman to develop an irresistible attraction to him.
“Wh-What were you two doing out there?!” the girl cried.
“Nothi— um, nothing, miss.” Yuichi restrained himself from arguing more fervently. He was the one being censured right now, after all.
“I wouldn’t mind if we had, of course,” Yuri said casually. “It is the middle of our mating season, after all.”
“Konishi! Stop talking! You’re just making things worse!” Yuichi shouted. He had at one time been curious about how anthromorphs reproduced, but at the moment, it was the furthest thing from his mind.
“Your immoral relationship aside, may I continue?” the girl asked.
“Yes, please do,” Yuichi agreed gratefully.
“I’d been trying to investigate what was behind the rash of dead trees popping up in our forest of late. It took me a while to find you because I was convinced it was happening during the night. I never thought it could be happening after sunrise.”
She was a monster hunter, so perhaps she’d thought it was the work of a yokai or some other supernatural creature. Of course, there are plenty of yokai that operate during the day... he thought.
“Now, would you mind telling me why you are destroying our trees?” the girl demanded.
“It’s, um... martial arts training...” Yuichi muttered. He felt a little embarrassed now that he was saying it out loud.
“You did all that to those trees just with martial arts?”
“Sorry. Guess I got a little carried away...” He hadn’t been just hitting them; he’d often been striking them with penetrating punches, which could cause their insides to burst without leaving a single external trace. A single tree never lasted for long, so after one tree died, he’d just move on to another.
“I can’t believe this,” the girl said coldly. “The forest around a shrine is that god’s territory. Not only were you intruding on god’s territory without permission, you were actively desecrating it! How do you intend to make amends for this?”
“Um, first, can I ask something I’ve been wondering?”
“What is it?” Furu’s eyes narrowed, perhaps feeling like he had ignored her lecture.
“Is there really no one else from your family here? Like, no adults who usually come home at this time?” Though that was not, precisely, Yuichi’s actual question. The presence he had felt in the hallway earlier was starting to get stronger, and he was getting concerned.
“I am the only one at home at present,” said Furu. “And that’s lucky for you; my father would have called the police right away.”
“I see. Then, I guess it must be—” As it appeared suddenly beside him, Yuichi struck it with a backfist.
“Bwugh!”
The being, which should have had no substance, went crashing into the living room wall.
Yuichi turned to see a girl dressed in a Seishin High School uniform lying in a heap on the floor.
Above her head was the label “Specter.”
It was Chie Amatsu, a girl Yuichi knew well.
“Hey! Why’d you hit me like that? You almost killed me again!” Chie sat up, sulking as she held a hand to her cheek.
“Yeah? And what are you doing here?” Yuichi demanded. “I thought you were bound to the school!”
Chie’s fellow spirit, Nami Eto, had been condemned to fall from the same place over and over again. Mutsuko had called her a bounded spirit — a ghost tied to the place of her death — and Yuichi had assumed Chie was the same way.
“Huh? Oh, see, since I almost managed to ascend, I can go wherever I want now.”
“Yuichi Sakaki... who are you talking to?” Yuri looked at Yuichi, eyes full of pity.
“Oh, well, see...” Yuichi looked over at Furu, flustered. From the outside, it must have looked like he had had a seizure and then started muttering to himself, but he couldn’t collect his thoughts enough to explain himself properly.
Furu’s reaction, though, was contrary to Yuichi’s expectations.
“How... how did you get inside my barrier?” she asked, looking at Chie in fear.
“Barrier? I don’t remember a barrier... was that the tingly thing I felt on my way in here?” she asked.
“Why didn’t I notice the presence of an evil spirit nearby?” Furu asked.
Yuichi didn’t understand all the differences. But since Chie was a Specter, that might make her more powerful than an ordinary Spirit.
“I wasn’t just ‘nearby,’ honey,” said Chie. “Me and my friends have been playing around in this house for a while. I dunno if you’re supposed to be a miko, but if you are, I guess you’re not much of one.”
As if called by Chie’s words, more “Spirit”-labeled beings appeared in the room. They were dressed in a wide variety of school uniforms, but they all seemed close in age to Chie.
“Run! I’ll hold them off!” Furu said desperately, rocketing to her feet.
“Uh? Oh, I see. I get it... In that case... BWAHAHAHA! I WILL SLAUGHTER YOU ALL!”
The sky outside the window went dark and the whole house began to shake. Chie’s eyes turned into empty sockets crying tears of blood.
Furu’s face was stricken with despair. But as if to try to fight it anyway, her trembling lips began reciting a spell.
“I ask, with utmost humility and submission, that the great gods of purification — given form at the time of the great and wise Izanagi-no-Mikoto’s purification at Tsukushi-no-Himuka-no-Tachibana-no-Odo-no-Agihara — might purify and cleanse me of my failings, sins, and fi—”
“IS THAT SUPPOSED TO DO SOMETHING?” Chie asked, mockingly, as Furu’s chant seemed to fail to have any effect.
“Don’t get cocky!” Yuichi walked up to Chie, grabbed her face, and squeezed.
“Ow! Ow! That hurts! Cut it out! I’m sorry, okay?” Immediately, the shaking stopped, and the sunlight poured in through the windows once more.
Furu collapsed back down on the sofa, staring glassy-eyed at Chie and Yuichi.
Yuichi released Chie, who fell back onto the floor, cradling her face in her hands. “Ugh... Yuichi, you’re too rough. Is this domestic violence? Are you an abusive husband?”
“I don’t recall us ever getting married.”
“At the same time, it’s pretty cool... I can see why people get attracted to the really manly type.”
“Um, Sakaki, what on earth...” Furu seemed to be recovering some of her presence of mind, and with it, she was beginning to harbor some questions about what was going on.
“By the way, could I have some tea? I’m absolutely parched,” Yuri threw in abruptly as Yuichi was racking his brain trying to think of how to explain the situation.
Yuichi said, “How can you be so calm in this situation? You’re kind of impressive, Konishi...”
Yuri didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by all of Furu and Yuichi’s rushing around and shouting. She had just been a tag-along to start with, and had spent the entire time acting like a disinterested spectator.