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ArabicAnime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 31
Chapter 31: Marked Points
Miko froze for a moment, then massaged her temples and let out a long, helpless sigh.
“…Are you really peeping?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? A gentleman’s word is his bond. I said I would supervise, so I must supervise.”
Hearing his shameless declaration, Miko did not look the least bit displeased. She merely shook her head with a wry, knowing smile.
Before stepping into the bathroom, she had already done a thorough inspection of the architecture. The glass door connecting the washroom to the living area was constructed from high-grade, two-way privacy glass. Once inside the actual shower stall, there was another layer of frosted glass, completely shielded from the outside by a thick, waterproof curtain.
He wanted to peep through all that?
Unless Yozora possessed actual X-ray vision, he was staring at a blurry, opaque wall.
Wait a minute. He could not actually have X-ray vision, could he?
A brief spike of panic hit her, but after a second thought, Miko let out a soft, self-deprecating laugh. The sound of running water echoed against the tiles as she relaxed her shoulders. If Yozora truly possessed X-ray vision, would he need to wait until she was bathing to look? He could simply look whenever he pleased, right through her school uniform.
She was just worrying over nothing.
“Thank you.”
“Thank me for what? I don’t follow.”
“If you don’t get it, then never mind.”
Since she could not think of a single logical reason for him to actually peep on her bath, there was only one valid explanation left. He was not sitting outside the bathroom door to act like a pervert. He was standing guard.
Perhaps he was worried about a lingering evil spirit tracking her scent and launching a surprise attack while she was vulnerable in the shower. Or maybe, beneath that thick layer of sarcasm and internet slang, he was simply worried she would feel scared being alone in a strange bathroom after nearly dying.
Regardless of his actual reasoning, a sincere expression of gratitude had to be spoken.
Through this quiet domestic moment, Miko felt she finally understood the enigmatic exorcist a little better.
This guy… did he actually have a bit of a tsundere complex?
Naturally, she kept that thought locked safely inside her head. If she said it out loud, there was no telling what kind of unhinged garbage Yozora would spout in retaliation.
While Miko was washing the grime and cold sweat from her hair, Yozora was sitting on the living room floor with his back resting against the frosted glass door, calmly marking up a detailed document.
“Hmm… S-rank area, just about.”
The paper resting on his knee was a complete map of Kyoto. Right over the district containing that nightmarish abandoned building, he drew a heavy, dark circle and marked it with an S-rank designation.
A short while later, the bathroom door clicked open. Miko stepped out into the living room, drying her long, damp hair with a fluffy towel. She tugged at the collar of her borrowed clothes and mumbled softly.
“These clothes of yours are a bit too large.”
She wore Yozora’s plain short-sleeved shirt on her upper body and a pair of his casual shorts on her lower half. Her two fair, delicate feet stepped softly across the hardwood floor, the light-pink polish on her toenails catching the living room light in a way that would make anyone instinctively want to reach out and play with them.
The main issue was that her current outfit looked absolutely comical.
Yozora’s shirt was so massive on her slender frame that it easily passed for a loose summer dress, completely swallowing her waist. The hems of the shorts extended all the way down past her kneecaps, making her look like a child playing dress-up.
Among girls her age, Miko was already considered quite tall and well-proportioned. But wearing the garments of a guy who stood over one point eight meters, there was a severe visual mismatch. It looked exactly like a tiny pony struggling to pull a massive carriage.
Wait, that was incorrect.
A tiny pony pulling a massive carriage was a highly cultured internet aesthetic.
Seeing Yozora scribbling away in a notebook, Miko padded over to the sofa opposite him. She sat down obediently, tucking her legs beneath her, and looked at him with genuine curiosity.
“Um… I have a few questions I want to ask you.”
Yozora lifted his head from the map. His eyes landed on Miko, completely swallowed up by his oversized clothes, the collar slipping slightly off one pale shoulder. He nearly lost his carefully maintained composure. He coughed twice into his fist, forced his expression back to a cool baseline, and gestured with his pen.
“Sure, go ahead and ask.”
The moment he gave permission, Miko fired off the doubts that had been piling up in her chest like a Gatling gun.
“How can I awaken an ability like yours so I can actually fight against those evil spirits?”
“How exactly should the door inside that abandoned building be handled?”
“Why did you refuse to take that antique sword from my house today? If you had brought it along, could you have defeated that massive evil spirit?”
“Also, back in the building, you said the evil spirit looked like a turtle something… I did not hear you clearly over the noise. A turtle what?”
Yozora was entirely unfazed by the first three rapid-fire questions.
But upon hearing her final inquiry, his pen stopped moving. His brow furrowed slightly as he leaned forward, studying her face with intense scrutiny.
“You… genuinely do not know what that thing looked like?”
Miko blinked. Her large, expressive eyes held nothing but clear, innocent confusion as she tilted her head to the side.
“Like what?”
“It is hard to describe. You will understand when you are older.”
Yozora immediately killed the topic. Before Miko could press the issue and demand a proper biological explanation of the grotesque monstrosity they had just escaped, he smoothly redirected the conversation.
“Let me answer your first three questions.”
“First, based on my personal deductions, you absolutely possess the latent talent to awaken an ability similar to mine. As for the specific methodology required to trigger it… I have a rough working theory. I will give you a concrete answer after I discuss the variables with Rio Futaba on Monday.”
Miko opened her mouth to argue, clearly wanting the answer right now, but ultimately closed it and nodded in helpless agreement.
Yozora had made the reality of their situation brutally clear earlier.
The two of them were likely the most powerful psychic anomalies in the modern history of Japan. The supernatural events they were currently facing were entirely unmatched. There were no textbooks, no ancient scrolls, and no veteran mentors to guide them. They were crossing a treacherous river by feeling for stones in the dark. No one knew the true nature of the spiritual ecosystem or the sheer scale of the dangers waiting for them in the future.
Even someone as absurdly overpowered as Yozora could not hand her every answer on a silver platter.
“Second question.”
Saying this, Yozora flipped the map of Kyoto around and slid it across the low table toward her.
“The location we barely escaped today is an S-rank anomaly. Combined with the scouting I have done over the past forty-eight hours, there are currently three A-rank doors and one S-rank door discovered but left unresolved within the Kyoto city limits.”
He tapped the dark circles on the paper.
“My personal rating standards are quite crude, but they get the job done.”
“An S-rank target is something I could potentially exterminate if I burn all my resources and fight like a madman, but there is a very high statistical probability of me dying in the process.”
“An A-rank target is something that will likely cause me moderate to severe physical injury during the extermination process.”
Miko leaned forward, her damp hair falling over her shoulder as she studied the scattered ink marks on the city grid. She traced a finger over an empty district and asked softly.
“Then why are there no B-rank or C-rank markers on this map?”
She looked up, only to find Yozora staring at her as if she had just asked what color the sky was.
“Are you stupid? B-rank and C-rank trash are things I can slaughter effortlessly at my current stage. I consume them the exact second I find them, so why would I waste ink marking their graves?”
Miko felt a hot flush of embarrassment hit her cheeks. When he put it that way, it made perfect, ruthless sense.
Yozora’s chaotic personality was incredibly difficult for her to read, but there was one absolute truth she could rely on. This guy harbored a deep, predatory hatred for evil spirits, and he would never, ever show them an ounce of mercy.
“As for your third question, that antique longsword was never meant for me to use. It was prepared specifically for you.”
Miko pointed a finger at her own face, her eyes widening in shock. “Prepared for me?”
“Obviously.”
Yozora spread his hands and offered a dry, amused smile.
“You witnessed my raw combat strength firsthand today. While that sword is a genuine spiritual artifact, it is completely unrealistic to claim it would provide any meaningful boost to my current damage output. After all, it is just a trinket from old man Oda.”
Miko processed this information slowly, nodding in understanding before another thought crossed her mind.
“Speaking of which, I am actually quite curious about that. Why did Mr. Oda give us such a valuable, authentic longsword completely free of charge back then?”
“Is it not obvious?”
Yozora leaned back against the glass door, taking this perfect opportunity to educate her on the hidden economics of the supernatural underworld.
“As an established exorcist, the old man certainly does not keep the lights on just by selling cheap paper amulets to gullible tourists. His primary source of income actually comes from taking on highly lucrative, private exorcism commissions from wealthy clients.”
He crossed his arms, his tone turning analytical.
“But recently, due to the sudden manifestation of these dimensional doors, the quality and density of the spirits have skyrocketed. A massive portion of his incoming commissions now far exceed his actual combat capabilities.”
“If he repeatedly fails to fulfill his clients’ requests over a long period, the local elite will start to doubt whether Oda is a genuine psychic master at all. His reputation will tank, and his entire business empire will collapse.”
Yozora smirked, his eyes gleaming with the satisfaction of a perfect scam.
“The ultimate solution to his problem is to secretly outsource those impossible commissions to me.”
“I get the highly classified intelligence I need regarding the movements of high-tier evil spirits in Kyoto, along with the massive financial rewards provided by the original clients. In exchange, he gets to keep the prestigious reputation of successfully completing impossible exorcisms.”
“Each party gets exactly what they need. It is nothing more than a mutually beneficial business transaction.”
[Inorin’s Note: “Small pony pulling a large cart” (小马拉大车) is Chinese internet slang typically referring to a younger/smaller male with a mature/larger woman (shota/oneesan), but here Yozora applies the degenerate logic to a petite girl wearing massively oversized men’s clothing. Additionally, the “turtle something” Miko misheard refers to the Chinese word for glans (龟头 – literally “turtle head”), implying the S-rank evil spirit they encountered had a highly questionable, phallic shape.]