Chapter 22
Eriri's entire body was thrown toward the window by inertia. Her forehead nearly hit the glass. A hand reached out just in time and grabbed her shoulder—it was Utaha. The black-haired girl's face was also a little pale, but her hand was very steady. She held onto the back of the front seat with one hand and shielded Eriri with the other.
"Hold on!" Utaha's voice rarely lost its usual laziness. There was a tense sharpness in it.
Eriri instinctively did so. Her heart was pounding. Adrenaline surged. But her mind was unusually alert—no, this wasn't an ordinary accident. The brakes and steering wheel failing at the same time? The probability was too low. And…
She looked out the window.
Something was spreading across the outside of the window.
At first, it was just a few black, silky traces, as if someone had accidentally drawn a few lines on the glass with a brush dipped in ink. But soon, those "silky threads" began to writhe, multiply, and intertwine, taking the shape of hands—black, slender hands with sharp nails, pressing tightly against the window glass, as if trying to tear the entire bus apart.
"What… is that…?" Eriri heard her own voice trembling.
Utaha saw it too. Her pupils suddenly contracted. For the first time, genuine fear appeared in her crimson eyes. She was a staunch atheist and creator, a believer in logic and science. But the scene before her completely overturned her understanding of the world.
More black hands appeared. They began to pound against the windows—not human pounding, but a sticky, corrosive kind of impact. The glass made a muffled crackling sound, and small cracks appeared on the surface.
"Eriri…" Utaha's voice was very soft, so soft it was almost inaudible. "What… are those?"
Eriri didn't answer. She turned her head and looked at Genji in the aisle.
The indigo figure had turned at some point, facing the window. His expression was no longer his usual relaxed and casual self. It was calm, almost indifferently focused. The sleeves of his hunting robes were still amidst the chaos inside the bus, as if he were in a separate, undisturbed space.
"Genji…" Eriri called his name quietly, with a dependence she didn't even notice herself.
Genji glanced at her and nodded slightly. Then he raised his right hand, his index and middle fingers forming a simple seal in the air.
A simple hand seal.
It wasn't even a complex technique—just the most basic control of cursed energy. But in the current situation, it was enough.
"Shadow Crane."
He quietly spoke the name of his shikigami.
No light. No loud noise. No spectacular glow.
But in the next second, the black hands outside the window froze.
Not blocked, not repelled, but… frozen. It was as if someone had pressed a pause button. All their writhing, pounding, tearing movements stopped at the same time. Immediately after, a thin indigo electric light burst from within those hands, instantly crawling across every dark palm like blood vessels.
Pop.
A soft sound, like a bubble bursting.
All the black hands simultaneously turned into flying ash. Not burning, not evaporating—completely erased from the level of existence, leaving no trace behind.
The scene outside the window returned to normal—the streets, the traffic, the sky, the morning light. It was as if the horrific scene just now had never happened.
But the bus was still out of control.
The brakes were still broken. The steering wheel was still locked. The steel giant carrying dozens of passengers was still hurtling forward at over sixty kilometers per hour. Ahead was an intersection. The light was red. Cross traffic was passing through—
"We're going to crash!" The driver roared in despair.
Genji frowned.
At that moment, Genji disappeared.
Not turned invisible, not faded away—he moved at a speed beyond visual capture. It was as if the space where he had been standing was just an afterimage, and his real body had long since left. Eriri didn't even see him move. She only felt a faint, almost imperceptible current of air, like the gentlest breeze brushing against her cheeks.
In the next second, Genji appeared directly in front of the bus.
He wasn't standing on the ground. He was hovering half a foot above the asphalt, right in the path of the roaring, speeding bus. His indigo hunting robes didn't move at all in the wind kicked up by the vehicle. The hem of his robe didn't even flutter. The morning light came from behind him, covering his entire body in a pale golden outline, as if he weren't standing there, but as if space itself had condensed into human form.
He raised his right hand.
The movement was very casual—like opening a closed door or brushing a fallen leaf off his shoulder. Five fingers spread open. Palm facing forward. No attacking stance, no defensive posture. Just so simple that it looked like he was greeting the oncoming steel giant weighing over ten tons.
Time froze at that moment.
This was not a metaphor. It was a statement in the physical sense.
The air one meter in front of the bus suddenly became viscous, dense, like solidified crystal. There was no visible barrier, but every particle of air, every speck of dust, and even the light passing through that area instantly stopped moving.
This was a dense concentration of cursed energy, like a non-Newtonian fluid.
Genji hadn't even used a technique—at least, Eriri hadn't seen him form any hand seals. He had simply released, compressed, and materialized his cursed energy, as if pouring an invisible wall out of thin air.
Then the bus hit it.
The world was silent for a moment.
The expected sounds of twisting metal, shattering glass, and screaming passengers disappeared. Instead, there was a strange silence that seemed to freeze the entire world.
The bus's front bumper stopped three centimeters from Genji's palm.
Not a sudden stop. Not a crash into an obstacle. It was like a person running at full speed suddenly running into a pool of sticky honey—all the kinetic energy was gently but decisively absorbed, dissipated, dissolved. The metal body at the front of the bus wasn't even deformed. It just shook slightly, as if it had lightly touched something soft.
But the immense inertia remained.
Inside the bus, all the standing passengers were thrown forward by an invisible giant hand, falling to the floor at the same time. The seated passengers were also pressed back into their seats by inertia, struggling to breathe. Bags on the overhead racks fell. The glass windows hummed and vibrated. The entire bus let out a groan, as if its metal skeleton were being crushed.
Except for Genji.
He hovered there, his palm still extended forward. Even the hem of his robe didn't move. His indigo hunting robes were completely still in the wind kicked up by the vehicle, as if the space he occupied had been cut out of this world, independent of all physical laws.