"You're being way too dramatic." Asakura looked at Hitori and smiled helplessly. At this moment, the girl was holding a fork that came with cup noodles in her right hand, a trash can lid from the room in her left, and an empty noodle bowl perched on her head, looking fully "armored."
"B-but this is an exorcism," the girl stammered, her facial features practically flying off her face from terror as she spoke tremulously, "I-I've never done anything like this before..."
"Don't be afraid, I'm here." Asakura repeated the consolation for the umpteenth time.
"I-I don't want to either... but my legs just won't stop shaking..." The girl whispered.
"Then how about you stay in the room instead?" Asakura asked.
"P-please don't leave me alone...!" It seemed that in Hitori's heart, Kagamihara Nadeshiko didn't quite count as a "person."
"Ms. Kagamihara would be very sad if she heard you say that."
"Ah?!" Hitori suddenly realized what he meant and immediately began shaking her head violently, as if trying to mix her brains together: "I-I-I didn't mean it like that!"
Asakura looked at her with amusement. Then he wondered why the noodle box on the girl's head wouldn't fall off. It felt like it shared a similar mysterious logic with the potato chips on Nijika's head.
There was no point in continuing to dawdle, so Asakura took the lead and stepped out of the room, walking toward the ladder leading to the attic.
Hitori, who was still saying she didn't want to go, followed him immediately—her body being very honest—trembling as she hid in Asakura's shadow, trying her best not to let even a single strand of her ahoge show.
Just as the two were about to reach the ladder, a figure suddenly darted out from the direction of the stairs.
"W-wait a minute!"
Kitahara Iori ran out in a panic. He blocked the way in front of Asakura and Hitori, using a lying technique that anyone could see through at a glance: "Um... that is to say... our attic is currently under maintenance and is temporarily not open to the public... it's better for the guests to return to their rooms. I'll notify you once the meal is ready... our food is great, definitely worth looking forward to!"
However, after he finished speaking, he found that Asakura was just looking at him with a silent smile, and Hitori, who was already terrified, hid behind Asakura without saying a word. The hallway suddenly became very awkward.
Kitahara Iori broke into a cold sweat under their gaze. He didn't know the background of this young pair, and had even entertained the thought that they might be some kind of strange entities themselves. But seeing that they seemed to want to go to the attic, his innate kindness (?) still made him step forward to stop them from meeting the same horrific encounter he had.
"You've already been attacked by the thing up there, haven't you?" Asakura spoke up suddenly.
Kitahara Iori's expression turned even grimmer.
"And you over there, no need to hide anymore, please come out and let's talk," Asakura continued, speaking toward the side room.
After a few seconds of silence in the hallway, the door was opened, and an old man walked out.
"Boss?!" Kitahara Iori was shocked.
The innkeeper looked at Asakura: "I can't believe this guest actually knew I was hiding in there..."
"No living thing can hide from my eyes (with the [Snake] spell's infrared vision active)," Asakura said with mock seriousness.
"Truly remarkable." The old man sighed and looked at Kitahara Iori: "And Kitahara, you went up to see it, didn't you?"
Kitahara Iori turned pale and was about to bow to apologize: "Yes..."
"I'm sorry, Kitahara." To his surprise, the old man apologized first. "I should have warned you not to go up there much sooner."
"Boss... you really knew what was going on up there?" Kitahara Iori asked in surprise, not expecting an apology.
"Ever since the old woman heard that Umi Bozu story from somewhere, I've watched her doing those things in the attic... she wouldn't listen no matter how much I persuaded her... at first, I thought she would eventually realize it was useless and come to her senses..."
The old man's wrinkled face seemed to shrivel even further as he spoke: "I never expected the legend to actually be true."
"The story of Umi Bozu?" Kitahara Iori froze for a moment.
"There are rumors of Umi Bozu around here. It's said that if you perform a certain ritual for it, you can call back a 'child' who died at sea to your side in a non-human form." Asakura provided a simple explanation.
"Non-human..." Kitahara Iori remembered his encounter in the attic and couldn't help but ask the boss: "Is that really okay, Boss?"
"How could it be okay?" The old man shook his head: "Ever since she started doing that, the old woman's mental state has become stranger and stranger. Since 'he' came back, our physical health has been deteriorating, the leftover food in the attic keeps increasing, and hiding it from the guests has become harder and harder. Besides, there's no telling when 'he' might harm a guest. We were originally planning to close the business after this season, but I didn't expect you to get hurt, Kitahara... speaking of which, young man, are you in that line of work? You don't quite look like a monk..."
"As for me, you can think of me as the priest type from a shrine." Asakura replied: "My shrine is near Akihabara, though it's currently closed to the public."
Though in reality, rather than being a priest who worshiped gods, he was actually the fox-spirit being worshiped as a god—a bit of a reversal of the natural order.
"In any case, you're an exorcist, right?" the old man asked.
"That's right. Do you want me to handle the exorcism? My fees are quite cheap right now," Asakura said cheerfully.
Unexpectedly, the innkeeper performed a very standard dogeza (prostration), an old man who could easily be Asakura's grandfather bowing his head and pleading: "Please, I beg of you, please let 'him' go."
Kitahara Iori's mouth hung open in shock.
"And Kitahara as well... I'm sorry, I will compensate you double for the harm caused to you, just please forgive 'him'..." the old man continued to Kitahara Iori.
"Why?" Asakura asked calmly.
"When a son does something foolish, isn't it only natural for the father to come out and apologize?" The boss didn't raise his head, only saying in a muffled voice: "And if 'he' really disappears, the old woman won't be able to take it since her emotional pillar would be gone... I'll close the shop immediately and won't let 'him' hurt anyone else... please, guest, I beg you to spare 'his' life."
"If you close the shop, will you and the landlady move away?" Kitahara Iori couldn't help but ask.
"No, we will stay in the shop. The old woman could never leave."
"But if you do that..." Kitahara Iori frowned at the old man. The man clearly knew that thing was affecting their health.
"Because I am the old woman's husband, and 'his' father." The old man looked up with his usual gentle smile and said softly: "Walking with them to the very end is the only thing I can do."
His face showed no hatred or helplessness toward fate, only the resolve to accept everything and accompany his wife and their child—even if he had become a non-human thing—to finish that final, not-so-long journey.
Despite his hunched posture and small stature, Kitahara Iori felt the man's figure was inexplicably tall and upright at this moment.
"Boss..."
"Kitahara..."
The old and the young man looked at each other; a sense of masculine responsibility seemed to resonate, making them friends across generations who understood each other.
"Though it feels a bit bad to interrupt suddenly in this situation, you should at least hear me out first." Suddenly, Asakura spoke up, breaking the slightly touching and warm atmosphere. "You're the innkeeper, right? Who told you," he pointed mercilessly toward the trapdoor, "that the thing up there is your child?"
"Eh?" The old man, who was still immersed in his own self-sacrifice, was stunned: "But didn't the legend say..."
"Don't take things out of context!" Asakura said solemnly and loudly: "A so-called 'ritual' is a very serious set of occult actions, usually carrying a specific symbolism. Therefore, the most important 'material' must not be wrong."
"Is... is there a problem?" The old man asked in confusion.
"Even if the legend doesn't explain the full ritual, there have been partial descriptions—the material used in the story to call back one's child isn't just an 'umbilical cord,' but 'the half of the umbilical cord that was on the child who died at sea'." Asakura pointed out the problem directly: "When your child went out to sea, he couldn't have been carrying half of his own umbilical cord with him, right?"
Carrying half an umbilical cord out to sea was a tradition only found in fishing families in this area who worshiped the Umi Bozu decades ago.
The innkeeper's child was clearly not from that era, nor did he go to sea as a fisherman; he likely just encountered a shipwreck while out on a boat trip, so it was naturally impossible for him to have such a thing on him.
That being the case, the ritual was flawed from the very foundation of material selection, so it naturally couldn't work properly.
Cold sweat broke out on the old man's face.
"Then," he couldn't help but look at the closed trapdoor, his elderly face full of horror: "The thing the old woman called back... what on earth is it?"
Thud... Thud. Thud!
Heavy and terrifying pounding sounds began to come from the ceiling.
"I-is that thing coming down?" Kitahara Iori said, swallowing hard.
"What's happening? It's usually quite peaceful..." the innkeeper said, looking at the ceiling in fear.
"This thing was summoned by you under the identity of a 'child,' so it was naturally bound by that identity before, following your intentions to a certain extent."
Asakura enjoyed the sensation of Hitori clinging to his back—she was shaking so much she felt like a high-end massage chair on vibration mode, yet she was soft and comfortable. He then narrowed his eyes and continued: "But in that moment just now, when you doubted its identity as a 'child,' that binding was naturally weakened. It's likely reverting to its true nature."
Just then, footsteps came from the stairs."Old man, I thought I heard a sound in the attic, is it Takuya..." The landlady hurried over from the stairs, only to see the group in the hallway. She instinctively stopped in her tracks: "This is..."
"Old woman..." The innkeeper hurried forward to grab his wife and whispered what Asakura had just said.
The landlady's initially confused eyes turned blank, followed by an expression of disbelief.
"No! That's not true... if he isn't Takuya... then where is Takuya? ... Takuya..." The landlady shook her head desperately, tears streaming down her face.
And at the moment the landlady also developed doubts about the existence upstairs, the original binding vanished completely.
"It" was free.
"No! That's not true... if he isn't Takuya... then where is Takuya? ... Takuya..." The landlady shook her head desperately, tears streaming down her face.
And at the moment the landlady also developed doubts about the existence upstairs, the original binding vanished completely.
"It" was free.
The wooden ceiling made a sound of being overstrained.
In the next instant, the sound of wood snapping rang out abruptly. The ceiling burst open, and rancid soup and rotting leftovers poured down from what should have been the attic floor like a torrential rain.
Asakura opened two pieces of [Scale] in an inverted V-shape in a split second, shunting the falling filth to both sides.
The elderly couple, whether through luck or some other reason, managed to narrowly avoid the rain of rotting leftovers because the boss had pulled the landlady aside just moments ago.
Only Kitahara Iori failed to dodge in time and was drenched head-on. He looked like he had just crawled out of a trash heap that had been fermenting for months, emitting a nauseating stench.
"...Couldn't you have saved me while you were at it?" Kitahara Iori asked with deep resentment, looking at the unscathed Asakura and Hitori behind him.
"Sorry." Asakura apologized without any sincerity: "I didn't see you just now."
Who was the guy just saying 'no living thing can hide from my eyes'! Kitahara Iori screamed in his heart.
But now was clearly not the time for complaints.
Even if he couldn't see it with his eyes, he could tangibly feel that on the other side of the hallway, at the spot where the broken shrine had fallen along with the mountain of leftovers, something indeed existed.
Furthermore, that thing was emitting an aura that made his scalp tingle—less like "malice" and more like "murderous intent."
"Don't be afraid."
Just as Kitahara Iori was so paralyzed by a terrifying malice he had never encountered in his life that he couldn't even move a finger, the boy's calm words beside him made him feel as though he had suddenly returned to the human world from a frozen hell.
Kitahara Iori looked at the boy. He remembered the name the boy used when registering at the entrance was Asakura Takuma.
And now, this boy named Asakura Takuma—even standing amidst the wave-like malice of that invisible, terrifying existence—had an expression no different from before: calm and composed.
He held out his hand and made a "Fox" hand seal: "Just small fry. To settle it..."
"Just an instant is enough."