Chapter 3: Vines
Perhaps because so many foreign embassies were concentrated in Minato Ward, the district carried a distinctly international air.
For high income foreigners living in Japan, Minato was often the first choice. That, in turn, gave the area its own unique character. Foreign residents were common, international restaurants were everywhere, and the neighborhoods each had their own flavor. Hamamatsucho with its business atmosphere. Roppongi crowded with bars, tourists, and nightlife. Azabu and Shirokane lined with upscale residential streets. Aoyama filled with luxury shopping. Odaiba, still rising as a new center for leisure and sightseeing.
After leaving the subway station, Gin Tsumugi hailed a taxi and gave the driver the address.
"The world's really gone crazy," the driver said before they had even gone far. He was an older man, the chatty sort, and once he started talking, he showed no sign of stopping. "Who would've thought the monsters and ghosts from old stories would actually show up one day?"
Gin was not surprised.
Ever since spiritual disturbances had begun surfacing across Japan, this had become one of the most common topics in everyday conversation. Two years ago, people panicked. Then came chaos. Now, most had settled into a kind of numb acceptance, the sort people developed when fear became part of daily life.
"Spiritual recovery..." Gin murmured, watching the city slide past outside the window. "This may only be the beginning."
His voice was soft enough that the driver did not catch it clearly.
The truly terrifying things had not yet come out into the open.
The great yokai that had once carved their names into legend still had not shown themselves. Whether they were sleeping, waiting, or plotting in the shadows, no one could say for sure. But when beings like those finally stepped onto the stage, that would be the moment the real crisis began.
Human civilization would not withstand it intact.
The balance that protected the modern world would collapse, and the old age of terror from a thousand years ago would replay itself beneath neon lights and glass towers.
Yokai would rule the night once more.
And for ordinary humans, night would become a chain of near-extinctions, one after another.
That trend was almost inevitable.
No amount of denial from modern society could reverse it.
What Gin could do, at least for now, was simple. Raise his role playing progress as quickly as possible. Become stronger before the coming upheaval swallowed everything whole.
"Minato's still lucky," the driver went on, hands steady on the wheel. "There are plenty of onmyoji stationed here. If not for that, they'd probably have imposed a curfew already, same as some of those rural areas. If that happened, business would get even worse."
He sighed, then gave a humorless laugh.
"I've already made up my mind. My son turns fourteen this year, so he meets the minimum age to try for the Onmyo Academy. If he can get in, great. If he can't..." The driver tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Then I'll sell everything I own if I have to, just to get him into some kind of supernatural office. At least then he'll have a better chance of surviving."
Gin exchanged a few idle words with him, but the thought itself was not unusual.
It had become a quiet consensus among ordinary people. If you had children, you did everything you could to push them toward a profession tied to the supernatural. Even a place like Minato Ward, which looked safe on the surface, had almost certainly seen countless incidents smothered in silence.
When the world was shifting in a direction no one could stop, survival instinct naturally came first.
Unfortunately, it was not so easy.
Leaving aside the Onmyo Academy, Japan's top institution for training onmyoji, even the countless supernatural offices that had sprung up all over the country had a basic entry requirement.
Spiritual sight.
Without the ability to perceive evil spirits, curses, or monsters, joining that world was suicide. You would not even qualify as cannon fodder. At best, you would die without understanding what had killed you.
"We're here," the driver said.
Gin paid the fare and stepped out of the taxi.
The destination was a two story French style villa.
It stood in a prime location. Onarimon Junior High School was right nearby, and a well known international shopping plaza lay only a few hundred meters farther on. The property alone was enough to make one thing clear.
The person who had posted the bounty on the Non-Scientific Supernatural Forum was rich.
Very rich.
Gin lifted his gaze toward the villa.
Even without deliberately sharpening his spiritual sight, he could already feel it. A cold, sinister aura seeped from the building like damp air from a sealed crypt. It was enough to confirm that something malignant was inside.
But what drew his attention was this:
The ominous presence was not spreading.
The evil energy was concentrated beneath the villa, locked in place instead of leaking into the surrounding area.
That made sense.
If it had begun to spill outward, the onmyoji assigned to Minato Ward would have noticed the anomaly long ago. Something this obvious would never have been left alone until now.
Gin had just started to observe the house more carefully when a sudden burst of spiritual power and yin energy erupted from inside.
His eyes narrowed.
"Another exorcist?"
That possibility did not surprise him much.
People trapped in supernatural incidents often threw out requests for help everywhere they could think of. They posted on every relevant site, contacted every office willing to listen, and gambled on sheer volume. This sort of overlap was common.
For a brief moment, Gin thought he might have made the trip for nothing.
Then his expression changed.
The spiritual power inside the villa was dropping fast.
Too fast.
It felt like water from a cracked basin, draining away without support, without follow-up, without any sign of sustained control.
"Hold on."
Gin frowned, and his spiritual sight sharpened.
In the next instant, the situation inside the villa became clear.
Inside, the entire residence had turned into a nest.
Hundreds of bronze colored vines crawled along the walls, across the floor, and even over the ceiling, writhing like living things. Thick yin energy churned through the house, and within it, distorted ghostly figures seemed to rise and twist, letting out shrill screams that scraped against the nerves.
Gin's eyes hardened.
This was no ordinary infestation.
Inside the villa—
Kurazaki Fuko sprinted down the corridor in a panic, her long brown hair in complete disarray. Her breathing had already fallen into chaos by the time she crashed into a bedroom, slammed the door shut behind her, and staggered backward before collapsing to the floor.
Her chest heaved violently.
A deep cut ran across her pale leg, torn open when one of those strange bronze vines had lashed at her earlier. Blood had soaked through her white stockings, staining them in a bright, shocking red. The pain hit harder once she stopped moving, and she hissed through clenched teeth as her mind finally caught up with reality.
"What the hell are those things...?"
Her hand shook as she raised the talisman she was holding.
The charm had already burned more than halfway through.
"The talismans Kou gave me are almost gone..."
Her face went pale.
If not for those talismans, she would have been ripped apart the moment she stepped into this house. That much she knew now. The fact that she had made it this far already felt unbelievable.
But that only made the rest worse.
If even Kou's talismans were nearly exhausted, then what was she supposed to do now?
Call for help?
Escape?
There was barely enough time left to think, much less act.
Then came the sound.
Crash!
Fuko flinched so hard her body nearly left the floor.
Outside the room, something shredded the door apart.
Wood splintered.
The next second, bronze vines burst inward in a writhing wave. They flooded through the ruined doorway, hissing and twisting as they spread across the room, sealing off every possible escape route in the blink of an eye.
Fuko's pupils shrank.
"What do I do...?!"
Her voice cracked.
She could not stop shaking.
The terror of death climbed straight up her spine, so cold and so absolute that it nearly strangled her. Even if she burned every last talisman in her hand, she still could not see a way out.
The vines slithered closer.
Hiss. Hiss. Hiss.
They moved like a nest of serpents, slowly reducing the space around her, squeezing her little by little as if they were savoring her despair. There was no rush in their approach. No wasted movement. Just the patient certainty of predators that already knew their prey had nowhere left to run.
Fuko could only stare, breathless and cornered, as all hope closed in with them.
Then a voice rang out.
It was calm, clear, and carried a quiet majesty that cut straight through the suffocating air.
"Rin, Pyo, To, Sha, Kai, Jin, Retsu, Zai, Zen."
A single white talisman flew in through the window.
It passed through the tangled mass of bronze vines as though their obstruction meant nothing at all. Then, in midair, the talisman flared with light.
"Five Pointed Star Incantation."
At once, a brilliant pentagram array unfolded and spread across the entire room.
Light burst outward.
Not the weak light of a lamp, but a pure and righteous radiance charged with exorcistic force. It filled every inch of the bedroom in an instant, grand and overwhelming, sweeping through the darkness like a divine decree.
The effect was immediate.
The bronze vines shrieked.
The sound that tore from them was hideous, like something between a beast's death cry and a spirit's wail. Wherever the light touched them, they ignited. Blue flames bloomed across their bodies, racing from vine to vine until the entire mass was burning.
Under Fuko's stunned gaze, the vines writhed madly for only a few seconds before collapsing into ash.