They chose to meet at a fairly popular family restaurant nearby.
"Why are we meeting at a family restaurant?"
"Because Xu Fu-chan suddenly felt like having a parfait~!" Xu Fu stirred the half-finished parfait in the tall glass with her spoon. She wore a bright smile, with a little bit of cream smeared on her face that made people want to wipe it off for her. "I saw a lot of people online recommending this place's parfaits, and they really are delicious~!"
Scooping up a huge spoonful and stuffing it into her mouth, Xu Fu said indistinctly to Yoshida Saori and Yoshida Kotaro, "After all, work's about to start, so I need to stock up on sugar first..."
Because she suspected the abnormality affecting her father had something to do with an evil spirit, Saori had sought out Xu Fu, the "expert," and asked her to take a look.
Saori turned to glance at her father, then looked nervously at Xu Fu, who was still eating her parfait.
"So... my dad really is being haunted by an evil spirit?"
Xu Fu swallowed the parfait in her mouth and spun the stainless steel spoon deftly between her fingers, speaking in an offhand tone.
"The traces are very faint, but your father really is carrying the lingering aura of an evil spirit. It probably is the work of an evil spirit, yes."
Fear crept across Saori's face, and to stop her from spiraling, Xu Fu immediately added, "But you don't need to worry too much. That evil spirit's been in the hospital this long without killing a single person, which means either it doesn't want to kill people, or it can't. And if it's the latter, then it must be very weak."
The reason Saori was so scared was because the only evil spirit she had ever encountered in her life was the monk evil spirit from the temple. So when she learned her father had also been targeted by one, she naturally assumed this one would be just as terrifying.
But that was a misunderstanding.
Not every evil spirit was as dangerous as the monk evil spirit. If anything, an evil spirit on that level was extremely rare among evil spirits as a whole.
Yayoi Hozuki had once said that the monk evil spirit was most likely a Graduate-level evil spirit.
After capturing many evil spirits, Yayoi had come up with a simple ranking system based on strength: "kindergarten kids" and "Graduates."
So what exactly was a "Graduate"?
Evil spirits could grow stronger by devouring other evil spirits. Based on that principle, Yayoi had used a survival-of-the-fittest method, locking over a hundred "kindergarten kid"-level evil spirits in a room and letting them slaughter each other. The ultimate evil spirit that survived to the end and devoured all the others was what Yayoi called a "Graduate."
All one could say was that Saori and the others had genuinely awful luck. They had run into a Graduate-level evil spirit right off the bat.
But at the same time, they had also been very lucky.
Because they had run into Xu Fu.
"The evil spirit itself isn't on your father, so we'll still have to go to the hospital and take a look. Once I finish this parfait, we'll head out." As she spoke, Xu Fu shoved another bite of parfait into her mouth. "Oh, and one more thing... Dr. Kotaro-sensei~, could you lean over here for a second?"
Yoshida Kotaro froze for a moment, then did as Xu Fu asked. Rising from his seat, he leaned his head across the table toward her.
"What is it—"
Before he could finish his question, Xu Fu suddenly slapped him on the forehead with lightning speed.
"How do you feel?"
"...This is incredible. All the fatigue in my body is gone. I feel awake all at once... like I've got endless energy now."
A gentle force instantly swept away every trace of exhaustion in Kotaro's body. Color returned to his face, and even the dark circles under his eyes disappeared.
The moment he noticed the change in himself, the way he looked at Xu Fu completely changed.
Before this, he had still harbored some doubts because of how young she looked.
But now he understood.
She was the real deal.
"I already replenished the bit of your vitality that was drained away by the evil spirit's curse. Think of it as a complimentary bonus outside the scope of the job. Don't forget to leave me a five-star review~!"
Saori naturally noticed her father's restored complexion too, and immediately seized Xu Fu's hand in excitement.
"Xu-chan! You're amazing!"
"Good grief, and you're already surprised? Xu Fu-chan hasn't even shown you the really amazing part yet. After all, I'm a world-famous Taoist, hmph hmph~!" Xu Fu let out a smug little snort.
...
The three of them set off for the hospital where Yoshida Kotaro worked.
And once they arrived, they ran into a few familiar faces.
"Ah! Xu Fu-chan, Saori, hello!" Eiko Hozuki greeted them with a smile. "We only said goodbye yesterday, and here we are meeting again already!"
"Eiko, and Yayoi too—what are you doing here?" Saori asked in surprise. Weren't they supposed to have gone off to some haunted location yesterday?
"Well, um..." Eiko scratched her cheek awkwardly.
After hearing her explanation, Xu Fu and the others learned that after parting with them yesterday, Eiko's group had indeed gone to a nearby haunted spot and had successfully encountered an evil spirit.
Because Keitaro Gentoga had a special constitution that attracted spirits, every time they ran into an evil spirit, it always attacked him first.
And this time had been no different.
Then, while fleeing from the evil spirit, Keitaro had accidentally stepped on a dog's tail and gotten furiously bitten on the calf by a large enraged dog.
So after Keitaro got bitten by the dog, Eiko and Yayoi brought him here to the hospital.
"Xu Fu! Come explore haunted spots with us!"
Yesterday's failed invitation clearly hadn't discouraged Yayoi, because now she was once again holding up a paranormal magazine and inviting Xu Fu to become their companion.
Xu Fu shook her head.
"I still have work to do, so I don't have time to fool around with you... Actually, these two told me there might be an evil spirit haunting this hospital, so they asked me to come take a look."
"An evil spirit!" The instant she heard that, Yayoi lit up with excitement.
"What? Where is it? Where's the evil spirit?!" Eiko looked over with gleaming eyes, seeming even more excited than Yayoi.
Hey, are you two really okay?
Keitaro is still lying in a hospital bed, and you're already planning your next operation?
After getting a quick rundown of the situation, Yayoi and Eiko immediately announced, brimming with excitement, that they wanted to join the operation too and hunt ghosts together with Xu Fu's group.
The moment she heard that Yoshida Kotaro had already been affected by the evil spirit, Yayoi turned her gaze on him.
"I can't see anything..."
"Of course you can't," Xu Fu explained softly. "I already removed both the evil spirit's lingering aura and the curse it left on him."
That immediately earned her a surprised look from Yayoi.
"You dispelled the curse without first destroying its source? As expected of a Taoist."
Yayoi Hozuki had awakened her Spiritual Sight after a car accident. She was neither an onmyoji nor any kind of formal spiritualist. The methods she used against evil spirits were all rough, self-taught tricks she had picked up through repeated trial and error. But anyone who underestimated her because of that was bound to pay dearly.
"You got to the hospital before I did, right?" Xu Fu stroked her chin and asked Yayoi curiously, "Well? Did you notice anything?"
At Xu Fu's prompting, Yayoi began carefully observing the doctors and patients passing by around them.
"...Yes. There are traces of black residue lingering on those doctors," Yayoi said expressionlessly. "It's so faint you'd never notice it unless you looked closely."
"The doctors?" Eiko asked curiously. "Are only the doctors here being haunted?"
Xu Fu nodded.
"Yes. Only the doctors. That evil spirit hasn't targeted the patients here... or else the cursed patients simply aren't here anymore. Either possibility gives us a clue."
"In other words..."
Yayoi and Eiko looked at each other.
Then, at the same time, they clapped hands.
Yayoi: "Let's go!"
Eiko: "Time to run into ghosts!"
"What about my opinion?!"
Having returned to the group, Keitaro had not expected that in the short time he'd been gone, Yayoi and the others would already have decided on another ghost-hunting expedition—and had even dragged him into it again without consulting him in the slightest.
Yayoi gave him a thumbs-up with a completely expressionless face.
"Keitaro's opinion doesn't matter."
"It matters! It matters a lot! Please take my personal opinion a little more seriously!" Keitaro shouted in exasperation.
"Well, it can't be helped. Then I'll give Keitaro some compensation after it's over." As she said that, Yayoi tugged the collar of her clothes down below her shoulder, making one very curious what exactly this so-called "compensation" was supposed to mean...
Of course, what Yayoi had pulled down was her outer jacket, not the clothing underneath.
"Hey, Chief!" Eiko raised her hand excitedly. "At your age, that would be a crime!"
"Eek~! So you'd even make a move on an elementary schooler like Yayoi? So Keitaro is a lolicon?" Xu Fu frowned deeply and quietly edged away from Keitaro, looking at him with naked disdain like she was staring at a pervert.
That half-step you took back—was that really necessary? Such a tiny movement, and yet it hurt so much.
"I'm not! I'm innocent! Don't listen to their nonsense, Xu Fu-chan!" Keitaro said, laughing and crying at the same time as he turned to Eiko. "Eiko, please, help clear this up, okay?!"
"Leave it to me!" Eiko thumped her chest with a completely dependable expression, took a deep breath, planted her hands on her hips, and proudly declared to Xu Fu and the others, "Kei-kun is not a lolicon! His chastity has belonged to me and me alone from beginning to end!"
"What are you saying in front of other people—?!"
Keitaro Gentoga, now burned to a pale ashen white, sat lifelessly on a bench with the look of someone who had lost the will to live, while Xu Fu, Eiko, and Yayoi high-fived one another in celebration as though their scheme had succeeded perfectly.
Yayoi: "Operation Tease Keitaro: complete success."
Eiko: "See? I told you, didn't I, Xu Fu-chan? Kei-kun is really fun to tease."
Xu Fu: "Ooh~! Ooh~! I see, I see. You're right, this really is fun. Now I'm looking forward to next time~!"
"I really don't want there to be a next time..." Keitaro said weakly.
"Eiko was the one who invited me to help tease you," Xu Fu said, turning toward Keitaro, "but seeing how pitiful you are—and considering how much fun you gave me—I'll give you a little compensation."
At the word "compensation," Keitaro's pupils immediately shrank, his whole face filling with rejection.
"Don't be so quick to refuse, or you'll regret it later... All right, take off your glove."
When Keitaro was little, he had been afflicted with a terrifying curse. It had once robbed him of the ability to live a normal life, and even after all these years, it still clung to him relentlessly, forcing him to keep his right hand hidden under a glove at all times.
Once the glove came off, what was revealed before Xu Fu's eyes was an utterly bizarre hand.
Countless tiny white threads wrapped all over Keitaro's right hand.
But in truth, those "white threads" were neither threads nor fibers.
They were nerves.
As time passed, those nerves would gradually grow longer and spread farther, and the pain would worsen right along with them, placing an enormous burden on Keitaro's everyday life. That was why every so often he had to undergo "exorcism"—which, put simply, meant being anesthetized while the abnormal nerves were carefully cut away with a goshintou blade.
Back when the curse had first struck him, those nerves had covered his entire body.
At the time, not only had he been in constant agony every second of every day, but with an appearance like a monster's, there was no way he could have interacted normally with other people.
All these years, that curse had remained the deepest thorn in Keitaro's heart.
So when Xu Fu said she could help him, something inside him trembled violently.
"Whoa~! This thing... is even scarier than I expected~."
Xu Fu hugged the Yu Mei-ren doll tightly under one arm while holding a golden bracelet in her other hand.
Then a miraculous scene unfolded.
The instant the bracelet drew near Keitaro's arm, it suddenly burst into golden light. The band rapidly expanded within that radiance, transforming into a brilliant ring large enough for an arm to pass through. Once Keitaro's wrist slipped cleanly through it, the bracelet immediately began shrinking again, all the golden streams of light pulling back into it at once until it looked like an ordinary gold bracelet.
Of course, after witnessing those changes, no one present could possibly have mistaken it for an ordinary gold bracelet.
"Kei-kun! Your hand..." Eiko covered her mouth in shock.
Keitaro himself was just as stunned. He stared fixedly at his own right hand, while wave after wave of shock crashed through his heart, his wildly pounding chest refusing to calm down no matter what.
The dense, terrifying network of nerves that had covered it before was now gone without a trace.
Not even a single strand remained.
His right hand now looked just as normal as his left—just as ordinary as any other person's right hand.