Chapter 41: Rumors and Urban Legends (2)

"Thanks to the future Shinto priest, we're living a satisfying life."

"This is all thanks to the future Shinto priest."

The two men addressed Jinseong as the future Shinto priest and showed their utmost respect.

It was a truly awkward sight to see middle-aged rich men, whose combined attire could easily exceed hundreds of millions in value, bowing their heads to a young man wearing an ordinary suit. However, neither Jinseong nor the two men questioned this situation.

"You've escaped from drugs that destroy the body, and can now be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. How is this not a good thing?"

Jinseong said this with a smile.

"And such good things shouldn't be kept to oneself. Isn't sharing and experiencing together the way to double the joy?"

Jinseong's brightly smiling face looked like that of a cute animal. But amidst the bright smile, his unchanging eyes were deep and calm like a pond without a breeze, and held a dark color as if absorbing light.

"Of course!"

"Your words are absolutely right!"

The two men couldn't even think of looking directly into Jinseong's unsmiling eyes and could only bow their heads and grovel. This behavior stemmed from the fear originating from Jinseong, and was also the appropriate loyalty to the master holding the leash of vigor and pleasure.

"Here's another person to receive blessings!"

They politely presented a luggage bag to Jinseong as if offering tribute to a god. When he clumsily unlocked and opened the bag, a man who had been crumpled up inside sprang out with rough, gasping breaths.

The man kept his eyes closed even after falling to the ground as if he’d taken sleeping pills, and was breathing raggedly due to having difficulty with a gag in his mouth, sweating all over his body.

"Hehehe. This guy was also our colleague."

"He's the one who only injected methamphetamine. He's a perfect match for the 'blessing' bestowed by the future Shinto priest."

"Moreover, this guy is the president of a security company and even a sponsor of Jigen-ryu (school of martial arts focusing on swordsmanship). If we use him, we can perfectly ensure your security."

"I can vouch for the skills of the security guards under this guy. If you entrust it to us, you'll be absolutely safe!"

The two men competed to suck up to Jinseong. Seeing this, Jinseong approached them with a meaningful smile, as if he knew exactly what they wanted. Then he placed his hands on their heads and chanted an incantation.

"What has once left the body doesn't forget its roots. Move according to my will and do as I desire."

Then, strange lines were drawn on the heads of the two men.

The lines, slightly thicker than hair and dark in color, were crooked as if a child had drawn on the scalp with a ballpoint pen. The lines began to lengthen as if eating something, gradually filling the scalp, and kept wriggling and changing shape as if alive. And then, as if hiding inside the blood vessels, their color gradually faded and disappeared.

"It's coming, it's coming!"

"Ooooh!"

But the two men, disregarding this bizarre scene, instead let out cries mixed with pleasure. More precisely, they were cries full of anticipation for the pleasure they were about to receive.

Crack!

Crack!

The bodies of the two men changed rapidly. Their bodies became firm with muscle as if under a physical enhancement spell, and their faces with deep dark circles gained a healthy color. Their hollow eyes sparkled with vitality as if injected with life force, and unlike earlier when they had been weak from having their vitality drained, they now stood straight with overflowing energy.

And the front parts of the two men's pants swelled up.

And not just swelling up, but swelling so violently that one might worry the pants they were wearing would tear.

"Thank you! Thank you!"

"Hehehehe!"

Jinseong gave the two men excited by their surging sexual desire permission to leave, and the two men bid him goodbye with grinning faces and went outside.

What remained after the two men left was Jinseong, and the man who was still tied up and unconscious.

Jinseong approached the tied man and examined him by flipping his eyelids.

"Your eyes are ruined, seems like you've been using drugs every day. Tsk tsk tsk."

Jinseong clicked his tongue and began to drag the man by his hair. Then he entered a building in a secluded place and lifted the man into a square hole in the wall.

As if throwing garbage down a dust chute, or flushing waste down a sewer, the man was discarded. But despite being thrown away so carelessly, the man fell to the floor slowly like a feather, gliding, and landed on a soft bed under the hole without any injuries.

"Morita! It's Morita!"

He was made to inhale the smoke of incense by Kenji, who was waiting beside the bed, and had headphones playing cyber drugs put on his ears.

"Hahahahahahaha!"

It was a scene of daily life.

*                     *                     *

"Hahahahahahaha!"

Rise tightly closed her eyes at the sound coming from underground.

Father...

Kenji's voice full of madness.

The voice of someone gone mad that was hard to believe belonged to her father, who had usually treated her with affection despite being strict.

You weren't like this...

Rise closed her eyes and recalled her father from the past.

The past image of him showing full affection to his wife and daughter.

Her father had been a person who could express affection to his wife, didn't make others suffer unnecessarily, and while strict, didn't discipline beyond what was necessary.

Although his strictness set such high standards that it was suffocating, there had clearly been affection at its foundation.

"Morita, you're going to become just like me! I'll accept your thanks later!"

He was never such a madman.

Not someone who rejoiced in others' misfortunes and kidnapped people to make them as miserable as himself.

He wasn't that kind of madman!

Everyone's going mad...

They were gradually going mad.

When another person was brought in by Kenji's hand, that person changed like Kenji and brought in yet another person.

The other people who were brought in would bring in more people, and the numbers would increase exponentially.

Thus, drug addicts were gradually brought in and became bodies that could never do drugs again, and instead, they tasted the carrot of increased vigor and maximized sexual pleasure, changing into fanatics.

Like that... the madness was gradually spreading.

Madness... Did father get infected by his madness? No, no...

Rise briefly resented the sorcerer who had suddenly appeared before her, but then remembering that Kenji had been doing drugs from long ago, she erased all that resentment.

Father started going mad when mother died...

Rise understood how her father, who had struggled with her mother's death, had been able to overcome it, and why he had taken hallucinogens.

She ended up understanding.

"Mother..."

Rise's father had become half-ruined after her mother's death. He performed the cleaning of the shrine and serving the sacred object as if by inertia, but he abandoned everything else, only drinking alcohol and spending time looking for her mother.

And those symptoms gradually worsened, to the point where he later lived drunk on alcohol, even skipping meals.

One day he suddenly returned to normal...

The young Rise had just accepted it as a good thing.

She had thought that perhaps her dead mother, unable to bear seeing her father like that, had appeared in a dream to scold him.

But now she knew.

Surely, Kenji must have started using hallucinogens from that time.

Father...

Perhaps at first, he had started using them to escape from the difficult reality.

Like escaping through alcohol, like forgetting momentary worries by smoking cigarettes.

He must have started using them for that kind of purpose.

But the effects were beyond imagination, leading to continued drug use, addiction, and gradual dependence...

In the end, it would have been catastrophic.

She looked into the drugs her father was said to have used. And she could understand that each one was a terribly awful thing, including methamphetamine, which her father was said to have used the most.

A drug that once started, can never be quit.

The documentary she saw about methamphetamine was truly horrifying.

In that documentary, there was a person whose life was ruined by drugs.

There was a woman.

This woman had lived a life of prostitution while taking drugs, and because her brain was damaged by the drugs and she became addicted to the pleasure obtained while on drugs, she became a body that couldn't live even a single moment without a man.

Her appearance in the shelter, having fits and causing disturbances saying she needed a man, had been scary enough to appear in nightmares.

There was a man.

This man was a former drug dealer who became disabled one day after getting into a fight with a gang. He started using the drugs he had collected for sale to shake off his despair, and quickly became addicted. He squandered all his assets and even sold his family to do drugs, and when he had nothing left to sell, he sold his own organs to do drugs.

Selling his family...

Rise recalled the image of her father begging while grabbing the sorcerer's legs as soon as he woke up.

And she also recalled his voice telling her to ask because she was beautiful, because it would likely work.

『 I came to give you blessings. 』

This might be a blessing.

Just as the lesser evil is better than the worst.

Because madness might be better than destruction.

But could it really be called a blessing when it was made by shattering the happiness that was barely maintaining its form?

Had Kenji and Rise herself become happy after receiving a blessing they didn't want to receive? And, would they be able to become happy?

Rise felt her head becoming dizzy.

"You said you would give me a blessing."

A blessing was a good thing.

A blessing meant good fortune.

A blessing meant happiness.

Then had she truly received a proper blessing?

Did she receive something good?

She did.

Did she receive good fortune?

She did.

Did she receive happiness?

"I'm not happy yet."

Rise looked at the Saetani with unfocused eyes.

The Saetani was clinging to the slime with a grin so wide that its mouth could tear, and the slime, though annoyed, was playing along, moving its body fluffily.

They looked truly happy.

"I'm happy! I'm happy! Morita, wake up quickly!"

Kenji's shouting could be heard from the underground connected to the main hall.

Although it was full of madness, there was clearly a base joy in it, and surely her father must have a smile all over his face.

Surely her father must be feeling happy.

"Please make me happy."

Rise muttered this and closed her eyes.

And she erased all the various thoughts coming to her mind and left only faith.

"I'll believe... I'll believe that you'll make me happy."

Rise knelt and bowed as if Jinseong was right in front of her.