Anime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 30

Chapter 30: A Gentleman’s Word, Once Spoken, Cannot Be Retracted

Half an hour later.

“Excuse me for intruding.”

Yotsuya Miko stepped cautiously into the living room, her posture stiff and her voice laced with restraint.

Seeing her hovering awkwardly by the entrance, Yozora simply leaned back and let out a careless, dry chuckle.

“Who exactly are you greeting? I’m the only name left on my household register.”

“Huh? Yozora, are you…?”

He did not even need to let her finish that sentence to know exactly where her mind was going.

“Anyway, make yourself at home.”

This was indeed Yozora’s house.

Thanks to the sudden, torrential downpour, the two of them had been completely soaked to the bone the moment they stepped out of the unfinished building. Since Yozora’s place was less than a kilometer down the road, it made sense to bring her back here first. It also provided a secure environment to debrief and analyze the intel they had just gathered from their chaotic battle.

Is this really his home?

Miko surveyed the living room furnishings, a distinct flicker of surprise crossing her golden eyes.

Her shock did not stem from anything bizarre or unsettling. Rather, it was the exact opposite. For a guy like Yozora, wasn’t this two-story house a little too normal?

The living room was immaculately clean. There was minimal furniture, but everything was arranged with precise neatness, completely devoid of clutter. The entryway was spotless, decorated with nothing more sinister than a set of gentle wind chimes. This overly orderly, tranquil domestic space stood in violent contrast to the erratic, unhinged aura Yozora usually projected.

In her imagination, his living space would have featured blackout curtains, pitch-black leather sofas, and a generally gothic aesthetic. She fully expected a locked basement door plastered in ancient, blood-red seals leaking an ominous, suffocating miasma.

Clearly, she had overthought things.

Miko wrung the excess water from her long hair and looked down at her Sobu High School uniform. It was completely drenched.

Worse, the wet fabric was clinging to her skin, rendering it dangerously transparent.

“Go take a shower.”

Yozora pulled a spare set of casual clothes from the adjacent room and tossed them onto the low table.

“After you wash up, hang your uniform to dry and wear my clothes for now.”

Miko was shivering, her core temperature thoroughly sapped by the rain. She desperately needed that hot shower, and pacing around his living room in a soaking wet skirt was out of the question.

She picked up the neatly folded clothes from the table and turned toward the bathroom, but her footsteps abruptly halted. She cast a highly vigilant, suspicious glare back at Yozora, who was still lounging comfortably on the sofa.

“You… won’t peek, will you?”

“Heh, listen to you. I am a gentleman.”

Seeing his utterly righteous, deadpan expression, Miko almost let out a sigh of relief. Then, without missing a beat, he shifted his tone.

“And a gentleman’s word, once spoken, cannot be retracted. If I say I’m going to peek, I will absolutely peek. You have my ironclad guarantee.”

Miko ground her silver teeth together, glaring at him with intense resentment.

“Then I’m not washing.”

“Oh, threatening me? Wash or don’t, your call. But…”

Yozora’s gaze drifted lazily over her shivering form, and he waved a hand with complete nonchalance.

“Given your current outfit, it doesn’t leave much to the imagination anyway, does it?”

Miko’s pretty face instantly burned a furious, brilliant crimson.

The material quality of the Sobu High School uniforms was notoriously average. Now that it was plastered to her body by the rain, the exact color and lace pattern of her underwear were practically broadcasting themselves through the white blouse. And to make matters worse, she was wearing a pleated skirt that offered zero protection against the cold or his gaze.

“You’re ruthless.”

Miko hissed through gritted teeth, turned on her heel, and marched resolutely into the bathroom.

She locked the door, stripped off her ruined uniform, and piled the wet garments on the edge of the sink before stepping into the stall and cranking the showerhead.

The perfectly heated water cascaded over her freezing skin, finally bringing a wave of deep, physical solace. Today had been an absolute nightmare. First, she had been scared out of her wits by a horde of grotesque Evil Spirits, then she had been forced into a high-altitude bungee jump without a rope, and finally, she had been caught in a freezing deluge.

Miko let out a long, shaky breath as the steam rose around her, melting the lingering chill from her bones.

“What exactly… happened today?”

She leaned her head against the wet tiles, her eyes darkening with deep, lingering worry as she recalled the sheer scale of the unfinished building.

Every single Evil Spirit lurking in that concrete shell would have been a terrifying, rampant disaster if let loose on the city streets. And then there was that colossal, snake-like monstrosity with the vertical eyes.

Were all of those horrors the direct result of the “Door”?

Miko turned off the water for a moment. She reached out, grabbed her phone from the dry edge of the sink, and typed the street name of the unfinished building into the search engine, pairing it with the keywords “construction team casualties.”

The very first news headline that popped up made her gasp, her wet hand flying up to cover her mouth.

[Major accident at construction site: Death toll reaches 285, with 37 individuals currently in critical condition.]

The publication date stamped on the article was exactly half a month ago. It perfectly aligned with Yozora’s casual mention of frequent, deadly accidents at that specific site.

She scrolled down, her eyes scanning the grim details.

The catalyst for the massacre was a sudden, inexplicable wave of mass insanity. Several construction workers, acting as though they had been simultaneously struck by violent psychosis, deliberately took sledgehammers and cutting torches to the primary scaffolding. At the exact same time, the operator of a heavy excavator completely lost his mind, driving the massive machine directly into the structural supports.

Even through the heavy pixelation of the news photos, Miko could easily tell that the aftermath was a sprawling, bloody meat grinder.

“These monsters…”

Staring at the gruesome imagery and the heartbreaking interviews with the grieving families of the deceased, Miko clenched her fists, her knuckles turning white.

Yozora had written in his notebook that Evil Spirits warped by the “Door” possessed the ability to influence, and in severe cases, directly hijack the motor functions of living humans.

One or two people suffering a sudden mental break could be dismissed as a tragic coincidence. But seven or eight veteran construction workers simultaneously losing their minds and acting with suicidal, murderous intent?

This was a deliberate, orchestrated slaughter by the Evil Spirits.

The horrific truth finally clicked into place. Miko understood exactly why hundreds of high-tier Evil Spirits were entrenched in that specific building. They had used their supernatural influence to engineer a mass casualty event, slaughtering nearly three hundred humans in a single day. Then, by harvesting the fresh Evil Spirits born from that massive wave of wrongful, agonizing deaths, they exponentially expanded their dark influence over the surrounding territory.

They had artificially farmed a ghostly domain.

Did that mean the “Door” wasn’t just a spatial anomaly, but a sentient entity with independent, malicious intelligence?

Miko shook her head violently, sending wet strands of hair clinging to her cheeks. She needed to stop overthinking and focus on getting clean. She set the phone down and reached for the bottle of shampoo on the wire rack.

But as she raised her hands to massage the soap into her hair, she froze entirely.

To wash her hair properly… she would have to close her eyes.

For a girl who could see the invisible horrors of the world, voluntarily blinding herself in a vulnerable, enclosed space was the ultimate psychological torture. Miko logically knew that Yozora was sitting just outside in the living room. The chances of a stray Evil Spirit manifesting inside the home of an unhinged exorcist were practically zero.

But rational logic meant nothing in the face of primal, paralyzing fear.

Miko stood frozen under the dripping showerhead for a long, agonizing minute. Finally, swallowing her intense shyness and pride, she called out toward the door.

“Um… Yozora?”

To her immediate shock, his voice didn’t echo from the distant living room. It came from directly on the other side of the thin bathroom door.

“I’m here. Something up?”