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ArabicAnime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 32
Chapter 32: The Power of Perception
Establishing a club at Sobu High School was a strategic move to cast a wide net for rumors among the student body.
Old Deng, on the other hand, was the heavy-duty pipeline.
Since the market price for a genuine exorcism was astronomically high, the commissions that actually landed on the old fraud’s desk were exclusively from desperate clients. These were people whose daily lives were actively crumbling under supernatural weight, victims willing to bleed cash just to avert disaster.
The abandoned construction site Yozora had just dragged Miko through was a prime example. A panicked construction firm, treating a dead horse as if it were still breathing, had thrown money at Old Deng in a last-ditch effort to save their doomed project.
Sites like that were absolute goldmines. They either harbored high-tier evil spirits capable of warping reality—which, to a devourer like Yozora, were basically Rare Candies waiting to be farmed for free EXP—or they concealed a ‘door’ to something far worse.
Between the Supernatural Quantum Mechanics Investigation and Research Club at school and the outsourced commissions from Old Deng, Yozora had Kyoto’s entire supernatural underground mapped out without breaking a sweat.
“So that’s how it works.”
Miko nodded, the pieces finally clicking together in her head. She honestly thought Yozora only visited that old man’s shop to extort him.
Turns out there was an actual business model involved?
“You mentioned a reward for the commissions earlier. How do you two split it? Fifty-fifty?”
“Fifty-fifty?” Yozora laughed, waving a hand dismissively. “A hundred-zero split. I take a hundred, he takes zero.”
“Zero!?”
Miko stared at him, utterly stunned. Old Deng didn’t want a single yen? He just handed over the entire bounty to Yozora?
This was simply too absurd.
Noticing the sheer disbelief in her eyes, Yozora leaned back and casually explained the mechanics of the grift.
“You still don’t get it. For an exorcist as ‘renowned’ as him, the cash reward from one or two jobs is pocket change.”
“The real prize is his golden signboard.”
“He takes credit for solving the impossible commissions that no one else can handle. If this arrangement continues, he will cement himself as the most legendary exorcist in Kyoto.”
“The long-term revenue generated by that kind of god-tier reputation is what holds true value for him. Old Deng proactively offered me all the bounty money and told me I could loot anything I wanted from his shop. That alone proves he understands the assignment.”
“That Old Deng really knows how to play the game.”
Miko nodded slowly, looking like she understood the words but couldn’t quite grasp the sheer audacity of the scam. To be fair, it was a bit much to expect a normal high school girl to comprehend the parasitic, mutually beneficial ecosystem Yozora had built with the old man.
“Oh, right. Then why did you drag me to that unfinished building today?”
“Didn’t I tell you? Training.”
The moment the word “training” left his mouth, Miko’s PTSD flared up with a vengeance.
Her mind instantly flashed back to that grotesque, rotting black-green tongue slathering her bento box, coating her lunch in spectral slime. And Yozora had just sat there, eating the contaminated food without batting an eye.
The guy simply wasn’t human!
Absolute madman. Respect.
“Do you know what our greatest advantage is as psychics when facing evil spirits?”
Miko shook her head obediently, sitting up straight like a model student eager to learn. “What is it?”
Yozora dropped his usual smirk. He stood up, walking over to the window to watch the relentless, heavy rain battering the glass. His voice dropped to a quiet, serious register.
“The condition for us to physically touch evil spirits, and the condition for them to harm us, are exactly the same: mutual observation. It only happens when they know we can see them.”
He turned his head, locking eyes with her.
“In other words, if the spirits cannot confirm that we perceive them, they are entirely powerless against us. They can only watch helplessly from the sidelines.”
“Therefore, the initiative of when to engage in combat doesn’t belong to the ghosts. It is entirely decided by us. Do you understand?”
Hearing it laid out so clearly, even Miko finally grasped the true purpose behind her agonizing “training” sessions.
“So… as long as we maintain our poker face and never reveal a single flaw, no matter how terrifying the situation gets, we will always hold the initiative?”
“Exactly.”
Yozora’s philosophy regarding the supernatural ecosystem was diametrically opposed to Miko’s.
In her eyes, the evil spirits were the apex predators. A psychic like her, cursed with the Yin-Yang (Spirit Vision), could only survive by constantly hiding, disguising her reactions, and fleeing in terror.
But in Yozora’s eyes, ghosts and demons were incredibly foolish, highly exploitable creatures.
As long as the trigger condition of “seeing” wasn’t activated, they absolutely would not attack.
Wasn’t that basically an invitation for a free sneak attack?
“But there are evil spirits that even you can’t easily deal with… This is going to be a problem.”
Miko pursed her lips, her gaze dropping to the map on the table. A stark black ‘S’ marker had been drawn over a specific district, and a heavy knot of worry tightened her brow.
“No choice.”
Yozora, however, looked completely unbothered, merely offering a lazy shrug.
“When I summon the Ghost Hand, it locks out my devouring ability. If it were just those baseline trash mobs, I wouldn’t care if ten thousand of them swarmed us. I could just eat them to replenish my stamina while slowly wiping them out. But that giant turtle… actually, no, that snake-shaped monstrosity. That thing requires the Ghost Hand to put down.”
“I see.”
Miko nodded. A strange, almost warm sense of closeness suddenly softened her gaze as she looked at him. It was as if a massive weight had finally been lifted from her shoulders.
“To be honest, the fact that you actually have limits and face spirits you can’t just instantly eat surprises me. But… it also makes me feel, for the very first time, that you’re actually a normal human being, just like me.”
“Indeed.”
Yozora nodded solemnly, a faint smile touching his lips.
“Humans truly have their limits.”
“You mean…?”
“Miko, I reject my humanity!”
“Stop being crazy.”
In a flash, the peaceful weekend evaporated.
Miko’s daily life had become incredibly, agonizingly fulfilling.
Training, training, and more training.
By Sunday evening, she had leveled up her mental fortitude to the point where she could calmly pick up a fish ball with her chopsticks and eat it without a single twitch in her expression—even while surrounded by a horde of grotesque spirits attempting point-blank jump scares.
As a certain pink-haired ninja from the Hidden Leaf once famously declared:
Lady Tsunade, I’ve finally caught up to them!
Monday arrived. During the lunch break, inside the designated activity room of the Supernatural Quantum Mechanics Investigation and Research Club—or SQMRS for short.
Futaba Rio, draped in her signature white lab coat, was methodically stirring freshly brewed coffee inside a glass beaker with a glass rod.
“May I come in?”
Hearing the sudden voice at the door, Futaba didn’t even bother lifting her head. Her tone was perfectly flat.
“This is your activity room too. Come in if you want. You don’t need to request permission.”
“Hmph. A deal is a deal, and the rules of engagement must be honored.”
Yozora replied with equal nonchalance. He strolled into the room, pulled out a chair directly opposite Futaba, and sat down, cutting straight to the chase.
“There’s a phenomenon I need your analytical expertise on.”
“Hmm. Go on.”
“It’s like this…”
Leaning forward, Yozora gave Futaba a highly detailed breakdown of his “Soul Manifestation”—the power he used to physically combat evil spirits.
Naturally, he filtered the entire explanation through a heavy layer of chuunibyou terminology to keep things suitably dramatic.
“I see…”
Futaba nodded slightly, raising a slender finger to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose. The glass rod clinked softly against the beaker.
“Let me translate. One protagonist has successfully awakened a unique ability, and now a second protagonist wishes to achieve the same awakening. You are currently searching for the trigger mechanism, correct?”
“Exactly.”
Futaba lifted the beaker, taking a slow, measured sip of the dark coffee before speaking, her eyes narrowing in thought.
“Based on your highly stylized description, I hypothesize that the prerequisite for awakening this ability is not grounded in objective reality.”
“Is there another possibility?”
“Could it be,” Futaba murmured, setting the beaker down, “that the two ‘protagonists’possess fundamentally different perceptions when facing the’enemy,’ and this psychological divergence is the exact reason why one has awakened while the other remains dormant?”