The malevolent presence that clung to Arashi looked like thick black smoke, and it attacked him incessantly to cause him harm. An inugami like Arashi was, of course, fending off those attacks, but it was obvious that it was taking its toll. The exhaustion was clear on his face.
Hana felt an inconsolable anger that Arashi had let it get to this point before coming back. She was even angrier because of just how much she treasured him as part of her family.
“I swear, I go a few days without seeing you, and this is the state you come home in…”
“Ooh, I apologize… I tried to do something about it on my own, but…”
It seemed this was the result of him not wanting to cause trouble for Hana, but personally, she would have rather he consulted her sooner. Hana couldn’t tame her anger, making Arashi shrink back farther.
Hana scolded Arashi and checked on his condition, which quickly made her eyes open wide. This was a sensation she’d felt from Arashi before, one that she could never forget.
“You’re about to turn into a tatarigami again!”
In the past, the kindhearted Arashi had once taken the spiteful, vengeful souls left behind by slaughtered animals into his own body, which turned him into a tatarigami. And right now, Arashi looked pretty similar to what he was like back then.
But something didn’t fit.
“Though…I guess it feels a bit different from the tatarigami incident?”
If nothing else, the thing that enveloped Arashi back then didn’t attack him. Both did still cause him harm, though.
“Miyabi, start by purifying him.”
“R-right! Understood!”
Miyabi hurriedly took out her kagura bells and waved them at Arashi. An invigorating sound rang out as Miyabi gathered her purification power, purifying the thing clinging to Arashi.
Hana figured that since Arashi hadn’t yet turned into a tatarigami, a simple purification would be enough to return him to normal. And sure enough, the malevolent energy polluting his body seemed like it was disappearing. But it couldn’t be fully removed, meaning the dark cloud clinging to him didn’t disappear.
Miyabi rang her kagura bells once more, but the dark cloud continued attacking Arashi undeterred. Hana had never seen anything like this before.
“What the heck is this? It’s different from the remnants of a shade, and it’s different from the malevolent energy of those animals from back when you turned into a tatarigami…”
She didn’t know what this was, but she wasn’t about to leave Arashi in this state.
Hana once again reached out to the thing clinging to Arashi. And sure enough, the alarm bells in Hana’s head rang that this wasn’t just sickening, it was dangerous. The urge to do anything to avoid touching it washed over Hana, and in the end, she couldn’t go through with it.
“Master, are you all right?”
“I might not be…but I can tell that Arashi’ll be in danger if we don’t do something.”
“It’s attached to me through the vengeful wills I accepted into my body…”
“So the cloud won’t go away until the vengeful wills do, and Miyabi’s purification alone won’t get rid of it because it’s attached to those vengeful wills. What a pain!”
She had to deal with both at the same time.
“For now, I’ll set up a protective barrier…”
She created an extra-strong barrier around her hand, then touched the cloud around Arashi with it.
The moment Hana laid a finger on it, she could instinctively tell this cloud wasn’t some parasite that would infect Arashi little by little until he became a tatarigami—it was outright trying to kill him.
Hana touched the malevolent thing and searched through it. This was going to be a bit different from exorcising a shade; a new challenge for Hana, but not something that seemed hopelessly impossible.
It was going to be dangerous; that was for certain. But Hana’s experience fighting against shades and saving Arashi from becoming a tatarigami told her she could handle this.
Hana prepared for the worst as she jammed her hand right into the thing harming Arashi and grabbed it tightly. The thing thrashed about like a cat that didn’t want to go to the vet, but Hana was determined to drag it kicking and screaming. She poured power into the part of it she’d grasped, and slowly but surely, the thing enveloping Arashi started to peel off.
“Oooh…”
Arashi whimpered in pain for a moment, but Hana continued nonetheless.
Arashi was right about the thing being connected to the vengeful will within him; it clung hard to his insides, but enough raw power aimed at it got it to cooperate. However, this was no haphazard show of brute force; Hana performed this procedure with caution and precision.
“Graaagh!”
Hana pulled one last time, as though her hand were around a fishing rod that had just caught a big one, and then she fell over backward. Aoi wasted no time catching her.
“Miyabi, purify!”
“Right!”
Hana gave the order the instant she finished tearing out the root of the problem, and Miyabi rang her kagura bells to purify the vengeful wills from within Arashi.
This time, Hana checked to make sure they’d managed to exorcise the spirits before heaving a sigh of relief, but they weren’t done yet. The thing that had harmed Arashi was still in Hana’s hand.
With its host gone, the thing now changed its target to Hana, expanding from her hand to encroach upon the entirety of her arm. Hana furrowed her brow at the sickening sensation that came with it, but she had no intention of letting this thing take over. She used her other arm to peel it off, then rolled it tightly between her powered-up palms as though she were molding a piece of clay. Finally, she swiftly trapped it in a barrier and eliminated it the same way she would a shade.
“Eliminate!”
She could feel how dangerous this thing was, so she poured in as much power as she could to destroy it. Once she took another look and saw that it was gone without a trace, Hana and her shikigami finally breathed a heavy sigh.
Everyone was relieved to be past that ordeal. Hana, completely exhausted, collapsed on the floor.
“It’s ooover!”
Being freed from all that tension made Hana’s mind go blank.