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As thanks for stopping Chie, perhaps, Yuichi was now allowed to sit on a sofa. He was given tea, as well, and all in all, his treatment seemed to have improved.
Furu and Yuri were sitting on the sofa across from him, while Chie and the other spirits floated above.
“There was nothing to do at the school, so I just wandered around the city until I found others like me,” said Chie. “They were all as bored as I was, so we decided to start having a little fun.”
“Yeah, we were totally bored!” another spirit agreed.
“Chie’s strong, too! Hanging out with her meant we didn’t have to fall in with those seedy-looking types, so we really owe her.”
The spirits were all high school girls. It was the height of annoyance.
“So why did you decide to come to a shrine?” Yuichi asked.
Chie said, “It was like a test of courage, I guess. But then it was, like, totally anticlimactic. All we had to do was restrain our power a little, and they didn’t notice us at all.”
Chie’s words seemed intended to get a rise out of Furu, but Furu just let out a groan in response. “Jiangui is supposed to be my specialty, too...”
It was hard to tell if it was because Chie was so powerful, or Furu was the opposite. It seemed anything he said would just make it worse, so Yuichi decided not to touch on the incident.
Jiangui was the ability to see ghosts — in other words, spiritual sight. “Gui” was written the same as the Japanese word “oni,” and the name came from China’s tendency to refer to the spirits of the dead in this way.
“Sakaki, has that specter possessed you?” Furu asked.
“I’d possess him if I could...” Chie grinned.
“No, but... do you remember that recent evil spirit invasion at our school?” Yuichi asked.
“Yes, I really thought it was a sign of the end... but the next thing I knew, it just stopped,” Furu said.
“I gained the ability to see spirits at that time, and I got to know her then, too. Well, I don’t think she’ll do anything too bad now...” Yuichi had decided to handwave a lot of the story away. Explaining it all would be annoying, and difficult, and could take a long time.
“Spirits? A likely story,” Yuri scoffed.
“You’re one to talk...” Yuichi was far more skeptical about the existence of anthromorphs than the existence of spirits. At least spirits could be put down to tricks of the eyes; the ability to instantly transform into a beast like her was far more unrealistic.
“If you can see them, I may want to ask for your help with something... but...” Furu cast a glance at Yuri, suggesting that she wanted to say something to Yuichi, but was hesitant about doing so in front of her.
“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m like this, you see?” Yuri said, putting her hands in front of her.
Her nails elongated. They had always been long, but here, they were actually visibly growing. At the same time, cat ears sprouted from her head. This was the form she had taken when she had attacked Yuichi during his summer vacation.
“Are you... an anthromorph?” Furu asked.
“Yes. And you’re a monster hunter, correct? We have a mutual noninterference pact with your organization. I won’t say anything about the spirits here, either.”
On their way here, Yuichi had told Yuri that Furu was a monster hunter. He’d thought it might cause trouble for them to be in the same room together, but apparently they were fine.
“Are you too, by chance?” Furu looked at him dubiously.
“I’m just a human who’s Konishi’s classmate,” Yuichi said. “I know she’s an anthromorph, but I’m not involved with them at all. So I’d appreciate it if you’d treat me as a novice to all this.”
Furu seemed about to explain some sort of supernatural situation, and Yuichi didn’t want her thinking of him as an expert. All Yuichi could do was see and touch spirits.
“Understood,” she said. “Well then, Sakaki. I’m going to make a proposition. If you cooperate, I’ll let this incident go without complaint. I’ll even let you continue training here as you have in the past. Of course, I’d ask you to stop destroying our trees...”
She was leaving Yuichi little choice in the matter, of course. He’d have to take part to get his crime smoothed over.
“Fine. I’d like to cooperate, but I can’t agree until I know what the job is.” No matter how bad a situation he was in, he couldn’t just accept any proposal unconditionally.
“I’ll lay it out very simply. Magical creatures have been running rampant in our city for a while now. A certain vampire is the cause.”
“A vampire?” A number of faces rose up in Yuichi’s mind; he knew quite a few vampires.
“Yes. If anthromorphs exist, it’s natural that vampires would too, isn’t it? The princess of the vampires has been in the city since summer. She’s the root of it all.”
The Vampire Princess, then. His list of candidates narrowed to Aiko.
“You’re not gonna slay the vampire or anything, are you?” he asked. He’d be happy to cooperate to help make up for what he’d done, but if they were going after Aiko, he had to refuse.
“Certainly not,” said Furu. “She’s one of the more powerful beings in the magical realm. There’s no way a few local peacekeeping monster hunters can stop her. And as your friend mentioned before, we have an agreement. We can’t attack a vampire that hasn’t done anything actively wrong.”
That’s true. Noro hasn’t actually done anything wrong...
“But even if she’s done nothing wrong, she’s still calling magical beings to her. And some sort of tremendously evil being with great power arrived in the city a while back.”
“‘Some sort of evil being’... you mean you haven’t seen it?” Yuichi asked.
“I haven’t,” said Furu. “But I sometimes experience revelations. As monster hunters go, I’m particularly sensitive to evil presences.”
Despite that, it seemed she hadn’t noticed Chie, who had been right next to her. Yuichi decided not to say that out loud, though, to avoid stirring up the hornet’s nest. “Can your local peacekeeping monster hunters handle the situation?”
“We cannot. But we also cannot merely ignore it. That’s why I was hoping to gather more information. I’ve been searching all around the town, but then I thought, ‘It’s always darkest around the lighthouse,’ and that’s when I noticed our forest being ruined...” Furu cast him another cold glance.
“What will you do with the information once you get it?” Yuichi asked, trying to steer her off that subject.
“We monster hunters are like a franchise, with a central organization of sorts. We basically petition them, and they send someone who can deal with it. But we can’t do that until we know more about what’s going on. That’s why we want to get your help in searching for information.”
“I see. And you think I can help you with my spirit-sight?”
“I don’t know.”
Yuichi blinked. “Huh? So what’s the point?”
“I think it’s likely that the evil presence is repressing its aura. That’s why I was hoping to use your jiangui. That perhaps you would be able to see something that I couldn’t, or...” Furu seemed to be aware she was grasping at straws. If she was willing to ask Yuichi, a man she’d only just met, she must really be at the end of her rope.
“Well, even if you don’t know anything, Yuichi might be able to do it right away, right?” Chie said.
Furu might not have much real faith in him, but like Chie had said, any faith Furu had in him wasn’t actually misplaced. Yuichi had Soul Reader. In other words, if there was an evil presence out there, he stood a good chance of being able to identify it from its label.
And there’s a chance it might be connected to the Outers and the Divine Vessels...
“I get it,” he said. “I just have to look around, right? What’s the search range?”
“I’m not sure. ‘Within Seishin City’ is about all I know, really,” Furu admitted.
“That’s pretty wide...”
Seishin City was a big place with both mountains and ocean nearby. Searching indiscriminately wouldn’t get him anywhere. He needed some other form of direction. “Okay. I guess I’ll start searching now, then. Let’s see... I guess I should go somewhere with a lot of people, first.”
Yuichi decided to head for the station area; it was the most populous location he could think of.
“Want me to search, too?” Chie asked.
“Sure, if you want,” he said. “You really should get out of here, anyway.”
“I know that,” she said. “It’s not as if there’s anything keeping us at this shrine anyway.”
“Covering the same ground won’t do us any good, so you should go searching somewhere else,” he told her.
There were probably places that would be easier for spirits to search in. Maybe she could be of use to him somehow that way.
Furu said with conviction, “I’m sorry it’s all so ambiguous... I just feel like some evil plot is unveiling itself in this city, and we have to stop it at any cost!”
Yuichi decided to head home and get changed before heading out again.