Chapter 30: The Difference Between the Strange and the Uninvited (3)

While Rise was confused, the man's hand moved like lightning, grasping at the air.

Despite the distance between them, she felt her breath suddenly cut off as if she’d been grabbed by the collar from right in front of her. She had no choice but to be dragged along, leaving marks on the ground as she leaned forward, pulled by an invisible hand.

Creak.

As she was being dragged, Rise naturally brought both hands to her neck to try to remove whatever was choking her, but she couldn't grasp anything. She could only be helplessly dragged along, gasping for breath while looking down at the ground.

All Rise could see was the familiar shrine floor.

Huh? Why is the pillar...

In the midst of being dragged, she noticed something strange.

The base of the shrine's pillar had been dug up.

Judging by the amount of damp soil exposed outside, it seemed to have reached the pillar's roots.

But the man seemed to have no intention of satisfying her curiosity, as he continued to move towards the main hall without slowing his pace.

Cree-ak.

As they entered the main hall, the door opened as if it had been waiting, without anyone touching it, revealing a person hanging inside.

"R-Rise!"

It was Rise's father, Saigo Kenji.

Tied to a rough log from who knows where, Kenji shouted his daughter's name as if spitting blood as he saw Rise being dragged in. Seeing Rise struggling and gasping for breath, he glared at the man and shouted.

"You demon-like creature! Release my daughter at once!"

A cry full of anger.

But the man didn't seem scared at all, just smiling brightly.

That smile seemed innocent at first glance, but it gave off a bad feeling just by looking at it like it was full of ominousness.

"I will do so."

The man said after dragging Rise in front of Kenji.

"Are you playing word games with me now?!"

But that attitude agitated Kenji even more.

It seemed like he was lying without even trying to hide it.

However, the man looked straight into Kenji's eyes as he was shouting with veins popping on his neck. As if asking him to believe in his sincerity, as if there was not a shred of lie in what he was saying. He looked back with calm eyes as if trying to prove his truthfulness and innocence.

"You and your daughter will be released."

The man's pupils didn't waver.

"I have no intention of harming you."

They didn't waver.

"Rather, this could even be a blessing for you now."

"Dear heavens..."

"Yes. I came to give you blessings. Aren't you truly grateful?"

Kenji knew that only truth existed in the man's eyes, as deep as the ocean and as calm as a rock.

This man who approached him with a friendly face, suddenly choked him unconscious and tied him to a log, and dragged his daughter like a dog by the collar using some unknown means.

He could instinctively feel that he was only telling the truth.

How could that be?

How could this man's words be true?

The weight of the kotodama (soul of language) in the man's words was infinitely heavy and infinitely pure.

It was incomprehensible to Kenji's common sense.

"But well... Taking shortcuts is usually faster and easier. So I'll make just one proposal."

The man muttered something incomprehensible and grabbed Rise's hair. Then he brought her in front of Kenji's eyes and said,

"Are you willing to tell me the real name of the sacred object?"

The name of the sacred object.

Hearing those words, both Kenji and Rise's faces froze.

Names held power.

This was no exception for what was called the sacred object.

The sacred object, too spiritual to be called a divine object, yet far too lacking in reason to be called a divine spirit. They existed isolated from external stimuli, and the name of the sacred object alone was the sole channel through which they could be contacted.

Observation and interaction were closely related.

Knowing the name of the sacred object meant being recognized by it, and mutual recognition meant they could influence each other.

To use an analogy, the sacred object was like an intranet, and knowing its name was like knowing the login ID.

"...What do you intend to do with that?"

Kenji moved his heavy lips to ask.

"Does knowing that change anything?"

But the man just asked back playfully, without giving a proper answer.

"...I can't tell you."

"I thought as much."

He smirked and took out two objects from his bosom.

One was a bell. It was a small bell the size of a fingernail, but whether it was because it was cheap, it was rough on the surface due to poor finishing, and it was covered in rust and grime, perhaps due to poor maintenance. The grime especially was a mixture of parts that had turned black and parts where the grime had clumped and turned green, making it look at first glance like a piece of junk that had been abandoned for a long time in a remote place.

The other was a very small plastic bag. The contents of the plastic bag varied. Some contained white powder, some resembled herb powder, and some contained very thin paper. The powder was white, reminiscent of baking soda, but it formed sharp crystals resembling translucent, shattered ice. The herb powder looked like dried and ground mugwort at first glance, but it was clumped in places, forming bumpy spherical shapes.

The man shook the small plastic bag in front of Kenji and said mockingly,

"You, who are not even a sorcerer, possess such things. Why, did you want to enter a trance state and perform some ritual with this?"

"H-how did you..."

"How could I not know the foul smell of these? I could find them with ease."

Kenji looked at his daughter Rise with a pale face. Rise thought deeply about what the man's words meant, and then seemed to realize something and was shocked.

"Father! Have you been doing drugs?!"

"R-Rise! No! That's..."

Kenji tried to make some excuse but seemed to be at a loss for words and turned his eyes away from Rise. Then he shouted loudly at the man like he was trying to change the subject.

"You! Are you trying to threaten me! I will not tell you the name even if you threaten me like that! Just kill me instead!"

The man burst into laughter at his scolding shout.

"Why do you think I would kill you? You must live. I'll make sure of that."

But you must spit out the information, so I prepared this.

The man muttered this and shook the small bell.

Jingle.

Unlike its dirty appearance, the bell that was shaken as it hovered in the air emitted a clear sound that seemed to cleanse the heart, and it resonated throughout the building and spread outside as if ringing a (large) bell.

Splash.

The bell sound, ringing as if calling someone, moved something that had been waiting outside.

It swam through the damp soil, approaching by moving its body like a snake with its belly on the ground, then by climbing the stairs with broken fingers on a handstand, and left muddy footprints here and there by stretching its stiffly frozen feet like tentacles while sitting cross-legged.

"Uh, uh..."

A terrible appearance as if pickled in salt for a hundred years. The skin, which hadn't fully decayed despite being emaciated, barely covered the bones, having lost its elasticity, and from the hollow eye sockets, salt that had turned black from being contaminated with body fluids continuously left traces like sand falling.

It crawled with a body so shrunken that it was impossible to tell how big it had been when alive. It writhed its body like a snake even as it tried to stand on its hands with broken arms, and moved like that while leaving meaningless footprints on the walls and floor.

"I was wondering what method to use when I saw there was a human pillar. Human sacrifice where a person is buried alive under a pillar like this is rarely seen these days. How fortunate, isn't it?"

Rise felt as if she was having a lucid nightmare.

"And it happened to be a child. So I stuffed it with the abundant souls to create a Saetani (vengeful ghost of a boy who died from being abandoned by his mother). Perhaps because there were many souls, it was easily created. How is it? Isn't it quite something?"

Human pillar?

Saetani?

She couldn't understand any of it.

S-save me...

She didn't want to understand.

Salty smell, rotten smell...

Rise, in confusion, watched the horrifying evil spirit approaching her. From its hollow holes wafted a smell reminiscent of salted meat, and from its mouth, which was growing larger and larger, came a terribly foul odor of death.

The evil spirit's mouth grew larger and larger, continuously expanding. And as its mouth tore apart its entire face and opened wide, it looked like...

A flower.

She thought it looked like a flower.

"Rise!"

Just before the evil spirit's mouth was about to swallow her head, Rise...

Had such a thought.

*                     *                     *

『 Rise! Remember well what I told you! 』

『 You must never say the name! 』

『 No matter what tricks they use, you must never give in!! 』

*                     *                     *

"Rise! Rise! Class is over!"

Rise felt someone shaking her body.

Forcing her closed eyes open and slightly raising her head, she saw Airi.

"What’s got you so tired that you're sleeping without even eating?"