Yuichi Sakaki stood in the hotel lobby, facing off with an older student from his school, Hiromichi Rokuhara.
Hiromichi was a slender boy with a sullen atmosphere to him. Yuichi had run into him after they’d returned to the surface after saving Natsuki in the underground.
Behind Yuichi stood three girls and one golden-furred cat: his big sister Mutsuko, his classmate Natsuki Takeuchi, “serial god killer” Aki Takizawa, and his classmate Yuri Konishi — she was the cat.
Hiromichi was standing a ways away, grinning. They hadn’t drawn much attention from the people in the lobby yet. There had been a bit of movement between them — Hiromichi had swung a hand at Yuichi and then quickly backed off — but most people probably just interpreted it as high school students goofing around.
Yuichi couldn’t see labels above anyone’s heads right now. Soul Reader, his ability to identify other people’s roles in life, was not functioning.
Something strange was going on.
But Yuichi immediately regained his cool. He checked his body’s condition, but sensed nothing physically wrong, besides a bit of the standard exhaustion that came from using the furukami.
In other words, the lack of Soul Reader was the only issue.
So, what should I do? he wondered.
It had happened after Hiromichi took a swing at him, which suggested Hiromichi was behind it.
Yuichi put up his guard. He didn’t know what Hiromichi had done, exactly, but he knew that he had to be careful.
“Oh? So it’s called Soul Reader, huh?” Hiromichi said mockingly. “I knew you had to have something, so I tried taking it, but I guess it was a miss.”
Yuichi didn’t know why the guy was going out of his way to narrate his thoughts out loud, but it did tell him a few things.
It told him that Hiromichi had stolen Soul Reader, and that in order to steal something, he had to be close enough — about the distance he had been at when he had swung his arm before.
“Yu! What happened?” Mutsuko asked from behind him, seeming to notice that Yuichi was acting strangely.
“Looks like he took Soul Reader,” Yuichi said. “I can’t see labels anymore.”
“Oh!” For some reason, there was joy mixed in with her surprise. “That’s right! There’s always someone who can steal powers! So if we want to steal it back, we’ve gotta figure out how he stole it! The conditions for stealing it seemed a little too simple, so maybe stealing it back will be simple, too? Anyway, you should probably beat him up and knock him out! If that’s all it takes to get it back, then you’re good! Then if that doesn’t work, we’ll tie him up and take him back with us, negotiate, and torture him! Then if he still won’t give it back of his own free will, we’ll think of something else!”
Mutsuko’s thoughts seemed to be trending in a “beat him up no matter what” direction.
Yuichi looked at Hiromichi. It would be easy enough to beat him up; his stance suggested he was a novice at fighting.
Yuichi had ways of bridging the gap to Hiromichi in an instant, and he had long-range attacks, too. He didn’t know what kind of abilities the other boy had, but he could probably dominate him in the instant before he could use any of them.
Well, all my sister ever says is to beat people and break stuff anyway...
As Yuichi was about to do what he’d been told, he realized something.
Did he even need to take back Soul Reader? As he thought about that, he flicked the coin he’d been hiding for a while with his finger.
Hiromichi couldn’t react in time. If it had hit his throat, it could have killed him, and if it had hit his eye, it could have significantly crippled his ability to fight. But Yuichi had only grazed it across his cheek.
“Eek!” Hiromichi let out a shriek of fear, apparently not sure what Yuichi had done.
“Hey! Yu! Why’d you miss intentionally?!” Mutsuko seemed angry about his unexpected action.
“I know that you can do something weird when you get close to someone,” Yuichi said. “But I don’t need to get close to attack you. So, what now?”
Hiromichi cackled. “You think you’ve won, do you? Fine, then! I’ll leave for now! But I won’t forget this! And I’m gonna get even stronger!”
Leaving behind a number of what mainly sounded like ass-covering excuses, Hiromichi retreated. It seemed he had no way to fight back against long-range attacks.
Knowing what he did about Hiromichi’s personality, Yuichi had judged him to be the type who would back off at the slightest threat. It seemed that was true. With his opponent completely demoralized, this was now a good chance to attack; instead, though, Yuichi just watched silently as Hiromichi ran away.
“Yu! What’s going on? This isn’t like you! Normally you’d run after a fleeing enemy, drag them to the ground, straddle them, and start beating them senseless while cackling the whole time!” Mutsuko exclaimed.
“The hell I would!”
“Wait! Did he hit you with a psychological attack?” Mutsuko asked with a theatrical gasp.
Yuichi smiled awkwardly. “Why would you assume that? Look, I can’t exactly fight with all these people around, can I?”
The people in the lobby were starting to look their way, likely noticing that something was off.
“True, but...”
“Besides, we need to take Takeuchi and Takizawa to the hospital first. And we can’t let Konishi stay a cat forever. If he’s gonna run, for now, let’s let him do it.” That wasn’t how he really felt, but it would do well enough to get her off his back for the time being.
“True... I guess that’s that, then. We’ll take Soul Reader back later.” Mutsuko sounded very reluctant about it, but she did give her assent.
The relevant players — Yuichi Sakaki, Mutsuko Sakaki, Yuri Konishi, and Monika Sakurazaki — had gathered in Nihao the China.
Yuri, having formerly taken the form of a cat, was now a blonde girl dressed in expensive-looking clothing. An old man who’d looked like a butler had brought the clothing to the hospital so that she could change there.
Monika was a young girl with her hair tied back with a scrunchy. Though she wore an elementary school uniform, she was actually 16 years old, the same age as Yuichi. She apparently had stopped aging after she’d become an Outer.
He’d strong-armed Natsuki and Aki Takizawa into checking in at the hospital, so they weren’t here right now.
A waitress in a cheongsam, Tomomi Hamasaki, though not exactly a relevant player, stood a little ways away, watching them.
On Sunday morning, a girl named Furu Shinomiya from the local shrine had asked him to go searching for an evil presence. He’d made it underground, fought the avatar of the Evil God, run into Hiromichi after he surfaced, and then taken the girls to the hospital. It had been just after noon when they’d gotten back. That was the busiest time for most restaurants, but as usual, there were no customers here.
“Why’d you call me here so suddenly? And who’s this person? I don’t want to get anyone involved who doesn’t need to be!” Monika was pointing peevishly at Yuri Konishi.
“It is true that I do not need to be involved, but now that I am, you are hardly in a position to throw me out,” Yuri shot back.
It was true that Yuri was a mere tag-along, uninvolved in the Evil God’s war. But having come this far, he had felt obligated to explain things to her to some degree.
“Well, she’s an anthromorph, so she can probably keep up with the weirdness,” Yuichi said.
“Okay, fine. So, what’s the important thing you had to tell me?” Monika demanded.
“Oh, right. I lost Soul Reader, actually.”
Soul Reader had originally belonged to Monika. It had been transferred to him as part of repaying a debt.
“So what?” she asked. Then suddenly, her jaw dropped. “Wait, what?!” It seemed it had taken her a moment to realize what he was saying.
“It’s true that I can’t sense Soul Reader in Yuichi right now,” said a thing that looked like a daifuku mochi with eyes and a mouth that had appeared on Monika’s shoulder.